Latest Technologies Make Setting Up Home Theater Kits A Breeze
Multi-channel audio has become mainstream and manufacturers have developed many types of basic and more advanced technologies such as wireless surround sound speakers, virtual surround sound to simplify the installation of home theater kits. I will review the newest trends to understand which products actually work. I will also give some advice for picking the ideal components.
Traditionally, setting up a TV would be fast since they would already come with built-in stereo speakers. This, though, has all changed with multi-channel audio. These days external speakers are utilized to create a surround sound effect. In case of 5.1 surround, 6 speakers are used: 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 additional side speakers.
Therefore, home theater installations have turn out to be rather complicated. Running cables to remote speakers also is often undesirable due to aesthetic reasons. A number of technologies have appeared to simplify this procedure.
One approach is minimizing the number of loudspeakers by building virtual loudspeakers. This method applies signal processing to the audio and adds phase shifts and cues to the sound that would usually be broadcast by the remote speaker. The audio is then broadcast by the front speakers together with the front speaker sound components. The signal processing is modeled after the human hearing. It utilizes the knowledge about how the human ear can determine the origin of sound. Due to the signal processing, the viewer is deceived into assuming the audio is coming from virtual remote surround speakers.
This technology reduces the number of needed loudspeakers and avoids long speaker cords but every human will process sound somewhat differently due to the form of the ear. The signal processing is based on measurements which are done using a standard human ear model. If the shape of the ear changes, sound will travel differently. For that reason virtual surround will not work equally well for every person.
A different method for avoiding long speaker cable runs is to utilize wireless surround sound systems or wireless speakers. A wireless kit includes a transmitter and one or a number of wireless amplifiers. The transmitter connects to the source. The wireless amplifiers connect to the remote speakers. The transmitter will normally have amplified speaker inputs and also line-level inputs and come with a volume control to adjust it to the source audio level.
Some wireless speaker products are designed to connect 2 loudspeakers per wireless amplifier. A superior option would provide a wireless amplifier for each remote loudspeaker to avoid the cord runs between each of the 2 remote loudspeakers. The most sophisticated wireless systems employ digital transmission to avoid signal degradation. Make sure that you choose a wireless system with a low audio latency, at most a few milliseconds. This will make certain that the audio from all speakers, including the non-wireless speakers, is in sync. Low latency is also vital for good sync with the video. A large latency would lead to an echo effect. This effect would degrade the surround effect. Many wireless devices work in the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands. Some products use the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band and consequently have less competition from other wireless gadgets.
Another option are side-reflecting loudspeakers. These kits are also known as sound bars. The sound that would normally be broadcast by the remote loudspeakers is instead sent by speakers at the front. These front loudspeakers broadcast the audio 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 depends on the interior, in particular 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 often will differ from this ideal and reduce the effect of this approach.