System Placement For The Best Home Theater Sound
A home theater system can really change your home entertainment experience. Most of us are very visual creatures, and are much more enthusiastic about the next HDTV than a breakthrough sound system. We tend to forget just how much impact sound adds to the things around us. But filmmakers wouldn’t spend so much time fine tuning and playing with the sound effects if it didn’t affect the viewing experience.
To get the most out of your sound system, your speaker placement needs to be done properly. If it isn’t, the sounds won’t quite match what is happening on the screen. This takes you out of the film and takes away the impact.
If you purchase a surround sound system, it will most likely be a 5.1 speaker system. The 0.1 is the subwoofer, which creates the deep vibrations that allow you to “feel” the movies rather than just hear it. The other five speakers are two side speakers, two rear speakers, and a center speaker.
The side and rear speakers are used to create the “surround” effect. They make it seem like sounds are coming from all around you, rather than just from the television. Each of these four speakers makes different sounds. For this reason, these speakers must be far enough from one another not to interact. If the sounds mesh together before they reach your ear, the sound no longer seems to surround you. It just seems like a wall of sound that doesn’t seem to come from anywhere.
The center speaker grounds everything. Sounds of things that are happening “on screen” come from the center speaker. The setup of the center speaker is crucial for the on screen dialogue. For this reason, it should either be placed directly above or below the television. You may need to adjust the volume of the speakers individually in order to ensure that they don’t overpower the center speaker.
As for the subwoofer, it should be placed somewhere that the vibrations effectively reach everybody in the room, and where it doesn’t stand out too much.