jeremyfrombenton

How many times have you been watching your favorite DVD and had to continuously adjust the volume? Are you frustrated with not being able to clearly hear the dialogue over the sound track of the movie? You’re not alone. Relying totally on your TV speakers is the problem. Even though your TV may say “Surround Sound” or “Simulated Surround Sound”, its not surround sound! Why?? The answer is the movie you are watching is encoded with something called 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound or better. Quite simply, this means the DVD was designed with 6 discrete audio channels. The channels consist of front left and front right, center, surround left and surround right. The “.1” refers to the ultra low frequency bass channel for a sub-woofer. Check out the diagram below. The sub-woofer is not shown in the diagram but would typically be located in the upper left corner of the room.

The front left and right channels are responsible for emitting the sound track. The center channel emits almost all of the special effects sounds and all of the dialogue. The surrounds take care of the, you guessed it, surround track such as [airplane or spaceship] fly-bys. Finally, the “.1” indicates the sub-woofer channel where all the earth shaking bass comes from.

Now that we understand what 5.1 means and that almost all DVDs are encoded with 5.1 or better we can now see why two TV speakers don’t cut it. So, how do we get 5.1 sound or better for our TV. You need some sort of home theater in a box (or HTIB) or better system. An HTIB consists of 5 speakers, a sub-woofer and an AV receiver.

An audio video receiver (or AV receiver) consists of a surround sound processor and an amplifier. The surround sound processor decodes the 5.1 or better sound track from the source (a DVD player, video game system, etc.) and sends the track to the amplifier. Once the amplifier receives the data it amplifies the channels and they are now ready to be sent to the speakers.

In a 5.1 system, all of the speakers receive a different sound. The center channel is the most important because it receives the special effect sounds and most importantly the dialogue. With this system connected to your TV, you will no longer have to continuously adjust the volume just to hear what the actors are saying.

Now that we know a little about the HTIB and how it works, lets go over a few of the specifications you will need to have a good quality sounding home theater.

Earlier I spoke about 5.1 sound. In order to have true 5.1 sound, the AV receiver in your HTIB must be capable of decoding Dolby Digital or better. All of the new HTIBs have Dolby Digital or better decoding, so this shouldn’t be a problem. The next important item is watts.

Watts signify the power your HTIB can send to your speakers. The AV receiver’s amplifier is rated by how many watts it can throw out to the speakers. The more watts, the more sound your room will have. If you have a very large room you will need a system with more watts to fill it. Likewise, if you have a small room you won’t need as many watts. I recommend at least 500 watts as a minimum for the 5 main speakers. Most HTIBs come with a powered subwoofer. This means the subwoofer has its own amplifier built in and will not take away any wattage from you 5 main speakers. I prefer a powered subwoofer with at least 100 watts.

Some HTIBs come with an AV receiver that has a DVD player built in. This would be a good option for someone who doesn’t have much room for audio video equipment or likes to keep things simple. An AV receiver with a built in DVD player means one less remote to keep track of.

Now for the last question, how much money will this cost me? That depends on how much you want to spend. In most cases when it comes to home theater equipment, the more you spend the more you get. But there is a point of diminishing returns. I know people who have bought HTIBs with built in DVD players for as little as $250.00 and been very happy. I heard the system, it does a great job. It just depends on how much noise you want your system to make and how clear you want the audio decoding to be. If you have more than $250.00 you won’t be disappointed if you spend a little more. However, be weary of spending anymore than $600 on an HTIB.

But in any case, before you buy check the internet for reviews. Go to hometheatermag , soundandvisionmag and CNET reviews are very helpfull. But your best choice would be to go to an audio video specialty store and listen for yourself. Bring some of your favorite DVDs that you are familiar with (just make sure you check them in at the front of store before you shop).

I think this should just about cover the basics of home theater and an HTIB. Some of my future articles will include information on proper cabling for home theaters and universal remotes to eliminate switching back and forth between 4 or more remotes when controlling your system. Hope this helps!!

- Mitch

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 3:49 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.