Home Theater Audio: How To Design Your Personal Sound

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.

First, you need to start with the source; the means to power your system. Many go with a receiver where you have a processor as well as an amplifier built into one to save space in a HT center. The other option would be to go with separates. One unit processes the information, while the other unit does the amplification. Separates enable a better sound quality, but generally cost more than a receiver.

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.

A set of speakers for the front left and right of your TV should be the first set of speakers you invest in. This decision should be based off the fact on whether you're going to be using these speakers for movies, 2-channel music, or both. The size of room you're placing these speakers is also a big factor in terms of choosing between a tower speaker and a bookshelf. Tower are generally recommended for 2-channel music, as then you wouldn't necessarily need a sub to achieve a low end response. Having towers are also beneficial for movies, where a full and more accurate response would be created for movies. If your room is on the smaller side, bookshelves may be the way to go.

The speaker often depicted, as the most important in an HT environment is the center channel, as about 60% of the information pertained in a movie comes through this channel. Having a center speaker with larger drivers and a decent-sized internal cabinet volume will prove valuable for maintaining a constant volume across all channels in your HT system, regardless of the movie.

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.

The third type is the passive radiator whereby you have an active driver with at least one or more inactive drivers that work in unison with the active driver to bring you an overall lower frequency response. This design is efficient in a way where the cabinet size can be on the smaller side, but still have the ability to generate some serious bass. These type of subs work fairly well playing music with only minimal delay, but come alive in the sub-low frequency world for movies.

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.