Setting up multi-channel audio such as a home theater system has always been rather complex and manufacturers lately have created unique products and technologies such as wireless speaker kit products or virtual surround sound to help simplify this procedure. I will look at the newest trends to understand which products actually work. I will also give some advice for selecting the ideal components.
As previously setting up a TV has been quite straightforward, the emergence of multi-channel audio has made setting up home theater systems a great deal more complex by requiring a number of external speakers to create surround sound. In case of 5.1 surround, 6 speakers are utilized: center, left and right front, left and right rear and a subwoofer. Newer 7.1 systems need a total number of 8 loudspeakers by adding 2 additional side speakers.
Therefore, home theater installations have turn out to be rather difficult. Running cables to remote speakers also is often undesirable because of aesthetic reasons. Manufacturers have recently introduced new devices and technologies. These products were designed to help simplify the installation of home theater kits.
The advantage of this technology is that only a couple of speakers are required and no long speaker cord has to be run throughout the viewing environment. The disadvantage though is that each human will process audio differently as a result of the dissimilar form of each human ear. The signal processing is based on measurements which are done using a standard human ear model. If the form of the ear changes, sound will travel in a different way. Therefore virtual surround will not work equally well for every person.
One more option for eliminating long speaker cable runs is to make use of wireless surround sound products or wireless loudspeakers. A wireless product consists of a transmitter and one or several wireless amplifiers. The transmitter connects to the source. The wireless amplifiers connect to the remote speakers. This transmitter will normally have line-level in addition to amplified loudspeaker inputs. Ideally it should have a volume control to adjust it to the audio source.
As a few wireless speaker devices come with a wireless amplifier that connects to two speakers, other devices offer individual wireless amplifiers for every speaker. Entry-level wireless kits utilize FM broadcast or audio compression which will degrade the sound quality to some degree. More advanced wireless products employ uncompressed digital audio transmission. To be certain that all speakers are in sync in a multi-channel application, make certain that you pick a wireless system which has an audio latency of a few milliseconds at most. Otherwise there will be a noticeable echo kind result. Many wireless products operate in the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands. A number of products utilize the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band and therefore have less competition from other wireless products.
A third technology uses side-reflecting speakers. This option is called sound bars. The audio that would ordinarily be broadcast by the remote speakers is instead broadcast by loudspeakers at the front. These front loudspeakers broadcast the audio at an angle. Then the audio is reflected by the side and rear walls and appears to be originating from besides or behind the viewer. The effect largely depends on the shape of the room and interior design and not function well in a lot of real-world scenarios because of different room shapes and obstacles in the room.
As previously setting up a TV has been quite straightforward, the emergence of multi-channel audio has made setting up home theater systems a great deal more complex by requiring a number of external speakers to create surround sound. In case of 5.1 surround, 6 speakers are utilized: center, left and right front, left and right rear and a subwoofer. Newer 7.1 systems need a total number of 8 loudspeakers by adding 2 additional side speakers.
Therefore, home theater installations have turn out to be rather difficult. Running cables to remote speakers also is often undesirable because of aesthetic reasons. Manufacturers have recently introduced new devices and technologies. These products were designed to help simplify the installation of home theater kits.
The advantage of this technology is that only a couple of speakers are required and no long speaker cord has to be run throughout the viewing environment. The disadvantage though is that each human will process audio differently as a result of the dissimilar form of each human ear. The signal processing is based on measurements which are done using a standard human ear model. If the form of the ear changes, sound will travel in a different way. Therefore virtual surround will not work equally well for every person.
One more option for eliminating long speaker cable runs is to make use of wireless surround sound products or wireless loudspeakers. A wireless product consists of a transmitter and one or several wireless amplifiers. The transmitter connects to the source. The wireless amplifiers connect to the remote speakers. This transmitter will normally have line-level in addition to amplified loudspeaker inputs. Ideally it should have a volume control to adjust it to the audio source.
As a few wireless speaker devices come with a wireless amplifier that connects to two speakers, other devices offer individual wireless amplifiers for every speaker. Entry-level wireless kits utilize FM broadcast or audio compression which will degrade the sound quality to some degree. More advanced wireless products employ uncompressed digital audio transmission. To be certain that all speakers are in sync in a multi-channel application, make certain that you pick a wireless system which has an audio latency of a few milliseconds at most. Otherwise there will be a noticeable echo kind result. Many wireless products operate in the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands. A number of products utilize the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band and therefore have less competition from other wireless products.
A third technology uses side-reflecting speakers. This option is called sound bars. The audio that would ordinarily be broadcast by the remote speakers is instead broadcast by loudspeakers at the front. These front loudspeakers broadcast the audio at an angle. Then the audio is reflected by the side and rear walls and appears to be originating from besides or behind the viewer. The effect largely depends on the shape of the room and interior design and not function well in a lot of real-world scenarios because of different room shapes and obstacles in the room.
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