Home Theater Audio: How To Design Your Personal Sound
by Jonathan Schultz
When it comes to home theater, controversy can often reign supreme, with so many choices and decisions in our modern day world. What does it mean to have a killer system, and why so many brands and different philosophies? How does one choose? How do you know where to start and where to end getting something that'll not only fit your needs, but your budget as well? One reader certified as J. Dogg breaks down the basics and informs as well as educates what you need to look for in a home theater system and filter out the moonshine so you can guarantee to stay on top of your game.
The first objective is to start with a decent home theater receiver or going with separates that'll enable a better sound quality that may fit your liking. Receivers are a one-stop shop, while separates consist of 2 units that require more than one shelf in your rack and often cost more than a receiver. With separates, one piece of equipment does the processing capabilities, while the other does the amplification.
The next step is to choose speakers. Before going into the different types of speakers, it really does help to keep all the speakers the same brand and same series with the same type of driver material to obtain the very best timbre match. Without a proper timbre match, you'll hear that bus explode, but will leave you guessing as to which direction it came from. In other words, you'll want birds of a common feather.
Generally, if you're looking at acquiring a system to use for both movies and music, you're going to want to purchase a set of tower speakers that will allow for sufficient bass during 2-channel as well as provide the needed fullness for explosions in movies. The laws of physics state that the more drivers you have and the larger these drivers are, the greater the potential you now have to obtain the full frequency response. This is crucial in terms of enabling the 'perfect sound' to encapsulate you.
It's been often said that the most important speaker in a home theater setup is the center channel. This is because about 60% of the information in a movie comes through this channel. Once you have this speaker chosen, the rest is downhill. The larger the center, the fuller vocals will be. This allows the volume of each channel to remain the same and an overall sense of balance.
As for rears, the information passed to this channel is generally in the midrange and treble frequency range. Also, keep in mind the recommended crossover for a movie setting format is 80 Hz, so the drivers in the rear speakers don't necessarily have to be the same size as those in your front mains. Dipole speakers are typically the most popular, however bookshelves are also a good choice. In a dipole speaker, one of the tweeter's phase is reversed to present greater distance between you and the dipole speaker. In turn, this creates a larger feel to what's going on in the movie; similar to that of a movie theater. You would want to use bookshelves in the case of using your system for either super audio (SACD) or DVD audio. SACD and DVD audio require a greater dynamic range and having drivers with proper excursion rates in a larger-sized cabinet will benefit the sound stage and imaging of your system.
A subwoofer in a system will enable the explosion low to come through loud and clean. In short, the greater the excursion, the more bass you'll have. Having 2 subs in a system can only benefit the bass response that much better, as you would then have a balanced response, as well as less wear and tear on each sub. The ported design is generally the most popular since this is a great sub to incorporate into a home theater, specifically to meet your movie type of needs. This design allows the sub to release its pressure, creating a lower than what you'd expect response, because the driver now has the ability to produce some serious excursion.
Another type of subwoofer is one with no port hole built in or known as a sealed enclosure. This sub will play tight and accurate with the rest of the frequencies, making this sub the most musically sounding and versatile to play with both movies and 2-channel music. The bass response isn't generally as low as that of a ported design, but often sounds cleaner and more refined in the sealed enclosure type due to increased decay.
Another design, not quite as popular as the first two, is the passive radiator type. This design utilizes an active driver with one or more 'fake' drivers on opposite sides of the cabinet that act in a way to increase excursion of the overall subwoofer itself. This provides for an efficient method to achieve a lower frequency yet maintain a proportional cabinet design. These subs are generally used for movie settings, but can also be used for music although a delay may occur as these subs are purposely built to fulfill sub-low frequencies.
Speaker wire is needed to transfer the electrons from your receiver/amplifier to each channel, where by the means of electromagnetics, these electrons are transformed to audible sound waves. The thicker the speaker wire, the higher the potential for more electrons to travel to each speaker. If you're running speaker wire longer than 25 feet, it's often recommended you have speaker wire at least 12 gauge.
Don't buy any home theater system, make sure you read our home theater blog for detailed information on speakers, audio, DVD, and custom installations. You are welcome to reprint this article - but get your own unique content version here.
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