02 Feb Creating a Great Sounding Home Theater
Some people are into home theaters, some people are more into home stereos, and some people want it all – both a great home theater experience that includes fantastic audio reproduction capability, and a home stereo system with the fidelity of a live symphonic concert or jazz club performance. We see all three types here at PAC-NJ, northern New Jersey’s source for high quality home entertainment systems. So how do you get both? Like we tell our clients, you need to know how to design great audio into a home theater equipment selection, and which equipment choices make a great home stereo and audio system. Here’s what you should know about each.
For a home theater system, here’s a checklist of desirable qualities and performance characteristics: First, the home theater speakers must have excellent speech Intelligibility, so you can understand what the actors are saying – even when they speak in whispers or growls. To maximize intelligibility, choose a great center channel speaker and position it directly above, below, or behind the video screen – assuming you have a micro perforated projection type home theater screen. Secondly, you need a minimum of five channels of sound plus a separate home theater subwoofer for low bass reproduction. The best home theater sound systems are also capable of high volume for realism when reproducing movie sound tracks – and they have to be able to reproduce non-musical sounds like thunder, cannon fire, jet engines and dinosaur footsteps at high volumes, too – after all, so much of the theater experience is the sound. Another must: you need three front speakers with wide horizontal dispersion to present a realistic transition of motion from the left to the center to the right speaker, or from the center to exiting stage right, or any other motion. And finally, the home theater sound system must be able to reproduce the audio tracks from video games, because we find many customers, or their children, are into video games, and want to enjoy them to the max.
Keep these guidelines in mind when shopping for a home theater package and you’ll have a home entertainment system that sounds as good as it looks.