New Technologies Make Installing Surround Sound Kits A Snap

Multi-channel audio has become mainstream and vendors have come up with many types of basic and more advanced technologies including wireless surround speakers, virtual surround sound to simplify the setup of home theater kits. I will have a look at a number of of the products and technologies that have emerged and give some advice about picking proper components for a hassle-free setup.

The majority of modern TVs will be installed as a multi-channel audio system. As traditionally TVs would come with built-in stereo loudspeakers, nowadays a number of external speakers are used to allow the viewer experience surround sound. While the traditional 5.1 format requires 6 speakers: a front center, two front side speakers, two rear speaker and a subwoofer, the more modern 7.1 format adds two additional side speakers.

Consequently, home theater installations have become quite complex. Running cables to remote loudspeakers also is often undesirable due to aesthetic reasons. Component vendors have developed a number of technologies to simplify the setup.

One approach is reducing the number of speakers by creating virtual loudspeakers. This approach applies signal processing to the audio and adds phase shifts and cues to the sound that would normally be broadcast through the remote loudspeaker. Because the signal processing is based on how the human hearing detects the origin of audio, the audio components which underwent signal processing can be mixed with the front speaker components and broadcast by the front loudspeakers. Because of the signal processing, the viewer is deceived into believing the audio is originating from virtual remote surround speakers.

This technology reduces the quantity of required loudspeakers and avoids long speaker cords but each person will process sound somewhat differently because of the shape of the 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. Thus virtual surround will not work equally well for each person.

A different approach for eliminating long speaker wire runs is to utilize wireless surround sound products or wireless loudspeakers. A wireless kit includes a transmitter and one or several wireless amplifiers. The transmitter connects to the source. The wireless amplifiers connect to the remote speakers. The transmitter will often come with amplified speaker inputs as well as line-level inputs and have a volume control to adjust it to the source audio level.

Whereas some wireless speaker kits have a wireless amplifier that connects to two speakers, other products offer separate wireless amplifiers for every loudspeaker. The most basic wireless devices employ FM broadcast. FM broadcast is prone to noise and audio degradation. More sophisticated products make use of digital audio transmission to perfectly maintain the original audio. To make sure that all speakers are in sync in a multi-channel application, make sure that you select a wireless system that has an audio latency of just a few milliseconds at most. A high latency would lead to an echo effect. This effect would deteriorate the surround effect. Many wireless devices operate in the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands. Some products utilize the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band and therefore have less competition from other wireless gadgets.

Another method, which is often called sound bars uses side-reflecting loudspeakers. There are additional loudspeakers positioned at the front which broadcast the sound for the remote speakers from the front at an angle. The audio is then reflected by walls and appears to be originating from besides or behind the viewer. This method works best in a square room with minimal interior design and obstacles. It will not work well in a lot of real-world scenarios with diverse room shapes though.


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This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 10:01 am and is filed under Best Buy Wii. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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