Sifting through home theater sound systems

By Dina Gerdeman

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You've got your new large-screen HDTV set up, and you have plenty of your favorite DVDs waiting to be viewed. Now all you need is the right sound.
  
When you sit down to watch a movie -- or live music concert -- in your own home theater, you want to feel as though you're in a real movie theater. The audio is just as important as the picture quality, which means you should take great care in shopping for the right receiver and speaker pieces.

As you shop for audio components for your home theater, first check out "HDTV – A beginner's guide."  Then, consider the following points: 

The AV receiver

Most average home theater users don’t need to buy separate tuners and amplifiers for the different channels. The easiest and perhaps most cost-effective way to get several pieces all in one package is to go with an audio/video receiver, which lets you plug in most, if not all, of the pieces in your system, including your television.
  
Because your surround sound receiver drives your speakers, it should offer at least 100 watts of power per channel. Your receiver should support all the surround sound and multiple channel audio formats you want to hear, such as Dolby Digital EX and Dolby Pro Logic IIx.

You will have your choice of systems with 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 channels, but obviously the 7.1-channel system allows for more speakers, which typically means a better overall sound.

The speakers

For a high-quality room-filling sound, look for three-way speakers that include a woofer, tweeter and midrange. Most audio system dealers recommend systems with 7.1 channels, which means you’ll be placing two speakers in front, two on the sides, two in the rear and one underneath the television, along with a subwoofer in a corner.

Speakers come in all kinds of sizes, and while some systems can get a decent sound out of a small speaker, generally the bigger tower speakers provide more range and better sound. If you intend to use the speakers for movie viewing as well as for listening to CDs or watching live concerts on DVD, it may be worth your while to spend more on larger-sized speakers.

For the best sound, consider placing the speakers at about four or five feet off the ground, near ear level. However, if you’re planning to use the home theater room for a lot of non-movie entertaining, you may want to place the speakers lower so the music you play during parties doesn’t compete with your guests’ conversations. In some of the more expensive speakers, the tweeter can be moved in different directions depending on where the listener wants the sound to go.

If having so many speakers around the room seems a bit much, you can have them installed behind the walls – or you can choose to keep the speakers out but hide the wires inside the walls. 

The subwoofer

The subwoofer is the speaker that carries the lowest frequencies, those deep bass sounds that almost seem to shake the room and grab hold of you when you’re watching a movie.

Subwoofers may be sold along with other speakers, they may be bought separately or they may even be built into the same tower as the conventional speaker – which means you would have one less box you would need to add to the room. However, when a subwoofer is included inside another speaker, it is often so small that it can’t produce the deep bass sounds you may want. 

Home theater-in-a-box systems

If you're having trouble deciding which pieces to choose, check out our advanced home theater checklist. If the cost is skyrocketing as you add up the prices of each component, you might consider buying a home theater in a box system, which packages together most -- and sometimes all -- of the components you need, including a receiver, speakers, DVD and CD player. Sometimes these packages even include DVD and VCR combination players or DVD recorders.
  
While a salesperson will likely tell you that these box systems don't compare in sound to a system made up of components sold separately, many are pleased with the sound they get from home theater-in-a-box systems.
  
Many of these systems are reasonably priced --some as low as a few hundred dollars – plus the components tend to run smaller, and installation is often easier.

Test the sound

The best way to test the sound of home theater components you're considering is to listen to your favorite CD or DVD through the system. So when you shop around, bring your own disk from home and don’t be shy about asking a salesperson to slip it in.