Newest Technologies Make Setting Up Home Theater Kits A Snap

Setting up multi-channel audio such as a home theater system has always been rather complex and manufacturers recently have created unique products and technologies like wireless speaker kit products or virtual surround sound to help simplify this procedure. I am going to look at several of the newest technologies that were designed to make installing home theater systems a breeze. I will suggests what to look out for when making your buying decision.

As previously setting up a TV has been relatively easy, the appearance of multi-channel sound has made installing home theater systems much more challenging by requiring a number of external speakers to create surround sound. In case of 5.1 surround, 6 speakers are utilized: center, left and right front, left and right rear and a subwoofer. Newer 7.1 systems require a total number of 8 speakers by adding 2 additional side speakers.

For that reason, home theater setups have turn out to be fairly complex. Running wires to remote loudspeakers also is often undesirable because of aesthetic reasons. Several technologies have appeared to simplify this procedure.

One option is minimizing the quantity of loudspeakers by making virtual loudspeakers. This approach applies signal processing to the audio and adds phase shifts and cues to the sound that would ordinarily be sent by the remote loudspeaker. The signal processing is engineered according to how the human hearing determines the location of a sound. The audio signal is then broadcast by the front speakers. The viewer is in effect deceived into assuming the sound is originating from a location other than the front speakers.

Virtual surround avoids the remote loudspeakers and simplifies the setup and also avoids long speaker wire runs. Then again, it also has a drawback. The shape of each human’s ear is somewhat different. Thus everybody processes sound differently. Because the signal processing is based on a standard human ear model, virtual surround will not function equally well for each person depending on how much the viewer varies from the standard model.

Wireless surround sound products are one more solution for simplifying home speaker installations and normally include a transmitter module that connects to the source in addition to wireless amplifiers which will connect to the remote loudspeakers. The transmitter will often come with amplified speaker inputs as well as line-level inputs and come with a volume control to adjust it to the source audio level.

A number of wireless speaker devices are designed to connect 2 loudspeakers per wireless amplifier. A better solution would have a wireless amplifier for each remote speaker to get rid of the cord runs between each of the 2 remote loudspeakers. The most basic wireless products utilize FM transmission. FM broadcast is prone to noise and sound degradation. More advanced products employ digital audio transmission to perfectly maintain the original audio. In multi-channel audio kits, it is vital to choose a wireless option with a latency of only several milliseconds. This will make sure that the sound of all loudspeakers is in perfect sync. If the latency is higher than 10 ms then there will be an echo effect which will deteriorate the surround sound. Many wireless products work in the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands. A number of products use the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band and consequently have less competition from other wireless products.

Another option are side-reflecting loudspeakers. These products are also called sound bars. The sound that would normally be sent by the remote speakers is instead sent by loudspeakers at the front. These front loudspeakers send the audio at an angle. Then the audio is reflected by the side and rear walls and appears to be coming from besides or behind the viewer. This option works best in a square room with minimum interior design and obstacles. It will not function well in many real-world scenarios with different room shapes however.