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Recent Accessories Make Installing Home Theater Systems A Snap

Multi-channel audio has become mainstream and vendors have developed many types of basic and more advanced technologies including wireless surround speakers, virtual surround sound to simplify the installation of home theater products. I will look at a few of the products and technologies that have emerged and give some pointers about picking appropriate components for a hassle-free setup.

The majority of recent TVs will be set up as a multi-channel audio system. While traditionally TVs would contain built-in stereo loudspeakers, today a number of external loudspeakers are used to allow 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 need a total amount of 8 loudspeakers by adding 2 extra side speakers.

Therefore the setup of home theater products has become a relatively complex procedure. A lot of houses are not pre-wired for surround sound. In addition, long speaker wires are often unattractive. Some technologies have emerged to simplify this process.

One approach is reducing the number of loudspeakers by creating virtual speakers. This method applies signal processing to the audio and adds phase shifts and cues to the audio which would usually be sent through the remote loudspeaker. The sound is then broadcast by the front speakers along with the front speaker audio components. The signal processing is modeled after the human hearing. It uses the information about how the human ear can determine the source of sound. Due to the signal processing, the viewer is tricked into assuming the sound is coming from virtual remote surround loudspeakers.

This technology minimizes the number of required loudspeakers and avoids long speaker cords but every person will process sound somewhat differently due to the form of the ear. The signal processing of these virtual surround systems is based on a standard model which was calculated with a standard ear. However, virtual surround will not function equally well for each human.

Wireless surround sound devices are another solution for simplifying home speaker installations and usually come with a transmitter component that connects to the source as well as wireless amplifiers that will connect to the remote speakers. The transmitter will often come with amplified speaker inputs and line-level inputs and come with a volume control to adjust it to the source audio level.

Whilst a number of wireless speaker kits come with a wireless amplifier that connects to two speakers, other products offer individual wireless amplifiers for every loudspeaker. The most basic wireless kits utilize FM transmission. FM transmission is prone to noise and audio distortion. More advanced products make use of digital audio transmission to perfectly preserve the original audio. Make certain that you choose a wireless system with a low audio latency, at most a few milliseconds. This will make sure that the audio from all loudspeakers, including the non-wireless speakers, is in sync. Low latency is also important for good sync with the video. Otherwise there will be a noticeable echo kind result. A number of wireless systems operate at 5.8 GHz which offers the benefit of less competition from other wireless products than systems using the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band.

An alternative method, which is often referred to as sound bars utilizes side-reflecting loudspeakers. There are extra speakers positioned at the front which broadcast the sound for the remote loudspeakers from the front at an angle. The audio is then reflected by walls and appears to be originating from besides or behind the viewer. The result heavily depends on the interior, especially the shape of the room and the decoration. It will work well for square rooms with no obstacles and sound reflecting walls. Then again, realistic scenarios frequently will differ from this ideal and reduce the result of this approach.

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