Newest Technologies Make Building Home Theater Systems A Snap

Newest Technologies Make Building Home Theater Systems A Snap

The process of installing multi-channel audio speakers in home theater products is fairly tedious and suppliers have invented new products and technologies such as wireless surround sound speakers or surround sound wireless headphones recently to help simplify the installation. I will look at a few of the most recent technologies that were designed to make setting up home theater systems a breeze. I will suggests what to look out for when making your buying decision.

Many of today's TVs will be installed as a multi-channel audio system. As historically TVs would contain built-in stereo loudspeakers, nowadays a number of external loudspeakers are used to let the viewer experience surround sound. In case of 5.1 surround, 6 speakers are utilized: center, left and right front, left and right rear and a subwoofer. More recent 7.1 systems require a total amount of 8 loudspeakers by adding 2 extra side speakers.

Consequently the installation of home theater systems has turn out to be a fairly complex procedure. Numerous houses are not pre-wired for surround sound. In addition, long speaker cables are often unattractive. Part vendors have designed several technologies to simplify the setup.

The first solution is creating so-called virtual speakers by applying signal-processing to the audio and introducing phase shifts and special cues to those audio parts that would normally be broadcast by the remote speakers. The signal processing is engineered based on how the human hearing determines the location of a sound. The audio signal is then broadcast by the front loudspeakers. The signal processing has an effect that will deceive the listener into presuming that the sound is originating from a different location.

The benefit of this technology is that only a handful of loudspeakers are needed and no long speaker cord has to be run all through the viewing environment. The disadvantage though is that each human will process audio differently because of the dissimilar form of each human ear. Since the signal processing is based on a standard human ear model, virtual surround will not function equally well for every person depending on how much the viewer varies from the standard model.

An alternative approach for simplifying home theater installations and eliminating long speaker wire runs is to utilize wireless surround sound kits or wireless loudspeakers. A wireless solution will normally include a transmitter component that connects to the TV or source in addition to wireless amplifiers that will be connected to the remote loudspeakers. The transmitter will often come with amplified speaker inputs along with line-level inputs and have a volume control to adjust it to the source audio level.

Some wireless speaker products are designed to connect 2 speakers per wireless amplifier. A superior solution would have a wireless amplifier for each remote speaker to avoid the cable runs between each of the 2 remote speakers. Entry-level wireless systems use FM transmission or audio compression which will deteriorate the audio quality to some degree. More sophisticated wireless systems utilize uncompressed digital audio transmission. Be certain that you pick a wireless system with a low audio latency, at most several milliseconds. This will ensure that the audio from all speakers, including the non-wireless speakers, is in sync. Low latency is also important for good sync with the video. If the latency is higher than 10 ms then there will be an echo effect which will degrade the surround sound. Wireless kits frequently utilize the 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band. A number of products also use the 5.8 GHz band. These products have less competition from other wireless gadgets than products using the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz bands.

A third technology employs side-reflecting speakers. This option is named sound bars. The audio that would normally be sent by the remote speakers is instead broadcast by loudspeakers at the front. These front speakers broadcast the sound at an angle. Then the sound is reflected by the side and rear walls and appears to be originating from besides or behind the viewer. The effect heavily is dependent upon the interior, especially the shape of the room and the decoration. It will function well for square rooms with no obstacles and sound reflecting walls. Then again, realistic scenarios often will vary from this ideal and reduce the effect of this solution.

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