I’d like to get some sort of surround sound set-up for my TV, in the living room. I don’t want to spend a lot of money, but I do want good sound, mostly for watching DVDs. (It’s also going to be hard to run wire, but I’ll deal with that.) Are those sets any good? Should I buy individual speakers? I don’t know very much about this at all, I need to be talked through it. How much will I have to spend to get something I’ll be happy with? Any and all advice, please!
We got our first home theatre system not too long ago.
I have a 55" Sony Grand Vega television, a Yamaha receiver, and we got a 7 channel Klipsch surround sound system and a subwoofer. The Klipsch set was free with the purchase of the subwoofer. We also added to this an LG HDMI DVD player. Total cost on the whole she-bang was around $4k.
I’m sure someone with way more techno geek knowledge will come along to give you some good advice, but here’s my personal opinions on what we have:
LOVE the tv. Love the DVD player (while we’re not playing any special DVD’s in it, I do notice a difference from the old, non-HD compatible one we had).
Sound system is not bad at all, although I am sure there are better ones out there. As for the receiver, it’s ok but is a bit difficult to set up and add equipment to. BF wishes it had more “tweaks”.
Overall, what we got was a good way to get our feet wet with the whole home theatre thing. I would say pay close attention to what you get as far as a sub and a receiver, because they seemed to be some of the more expensive pieces and make the biggest difference soundwise, at least to my ears.
If you’re talking about a home-theater-in-a-box, they have some problems. They ususally don’t have tweeters, and the subwoofers aren’t very good. The speakers are too small so you have to cross them over too high, which leads to you being able to hear where the subwoofer is.
You’d get better sound from a $250-350 10" sub, small decent 2-way speakers with 5.25" woofers (say $150-200/pair for the fronts & backs), and a decent receiver. You can get refurbished receivers for $150 or less from jr.com (Onkyo), or from Harman-Kardon on Ebay. That should sound pretty good for movies if you don’t have a huge home.
I think some of the speaker companies make speaker/sub sets that are better than a mass-market HTIB but cheaper than individual speakers.
So, okay, the receiver is the thing that all the speakers and stuff plug into, right? They always look awfully complicated to me. What’s a “decent receiver”? What do I need it to have? And you’re saying I ought to get a subwoofer and four speakers, right? Is that all I need? (That’s still an awful lot of money, considering, but if that’s what something I’d be really happy with would cost, I’d be okay with it.)
Yep, Sony LCD, Klipsch mains, center and surrounds and Yamaha receiver here too. Velodyne for the sub. There are of course different models for different needs… I think ours ran about 12K but that included a local HD antannae, universal learning remore, prof. install, etc. That’s the nice thing about today’s technology though, you can get a really nice set-up for a whole lot less.
Go to some specialty stores and see what you like. They have the capability to mix and match different arrangements with the push of a button. Different people prefer and expect different sounds and you won’t know what speaker’s best until you listen and compare.
Congrats, you’re in for a real treat. It’s well worth the effort and expense.
Most “home theater in a box” sets are 5.1 (5 speakers and a subwoofer) sets and a few are 6.1 sets.
On the other hand, most receivers are 6.1 or 7.1, and a few are 5.1. You can buy 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1 speaker packages separately to connect to the receiver.
I have a 7.1 receiver and a separate 7.1 speaker package from Sony, and prefer that over a “home theater in a box” set. With receivers, you can usually hook many more components up to surround sound than with “home theater in a box” sets. For example, right now I have a DVD recorder, VCR, DVD player, 6 CD-changer, and audio cassette all plugged into the receiver right now. If I wanted to, I could add a turntable.
If you get a 5.1 speaker setup, you can place the subwoofer anywhere in the room. The center speaker (mostly for dialogue) goes on top of the TV or as close to the TV as possible. The front left and front right speakers go to the left and right of the center speaker. The left surround and right surround speakers go directly to the left and right of where you are seated (and maybe slightly behind you).
If you get a 6.1 or 7.1 speaker setup, it’s like a 5.1 setup, with the addition of 1 or 2 “back surround” speakers. These go behind where you are sitting.
Most DVD movies are in Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. These will function normally with a 5.1 speaker setup. If you have a 6.1 or 7.1 speaker setup, you can use the “rear channel matrix” option. Basically, what this does is takes the sound components that are common to both the left surround and right surround speakers (“in phase”) and extracts them to the back surround speakers (which, of course, provides more sound depth). Some movies that are in Dolby Digital 5.1 sound are optimized for people with 6.1 or 7.1 speaker setups. These are called Dolby Digital 5.1 EX movies. A list of Dolby Digital EX movies can be found here
All DVD movies (as required by law) will have Dolby sound on them, and most will have 5.1 sound. Some movies will have an additional DTS (Digital Theater Systems) track on them. DTS is a competing format, and is on maybe 10% of movies released. DTS is presumably of higher quality, since it is compressed only about half as much as Dolby sound. I’ve personally never been able to tell the difference though.
Most DTS movies, like Dolby Digital movies, are in 5.1 sound. However, a few DTS movies are in DTS 6.1 Discrete sound. These movies have a separate left, center, right, left surround, right surround, and back surround channel encoded onto the DVD. This provides cleaner sound than using the receiver to extract a 5.1 movie to 6.1 or 7.1 speakers. By the way, if you watch a DTS 6.1 Discrete movie on only 5.1 speakers, the back surround channel gets downmixed and goes to the left and right surround speakers. A list of DTS 6.1 Discrete can be found at the same site listed above.
As for what to buy, it’s hard to say. I just shopped around until I found the best deals. Best Buy and Hhgregg usually have the most “home theater in a box” sets. If you go with a separate receiver and speaker package, make sure the speakers are rated at equal or more wattage than the receiver. For example, my receiver is 700 watts (7 channels @ 100 watts per channel/speaker), but my speakers are rated at 135 watts apiece.
This is probably more information than you needed to know, but I learned all this stuff slowly over time, and after spending a lot of money. Another thing that helped was buying the Home Theater for Dummies book.
Engineer Dude, that was a factual and informative post, but this one statement pegged my BS meter. What law requires DVDs to have Dobly sound? This may be an “industry standard” or “general practice”, but I have a hard time believing that it is required by law.
Wow, Engineer Dude, that was super-helpful! I never really understood the numbers before! Not more information than I wanted at all!
The thing is, how do I know what a good speaker is? I mean, when you hear it in the store that doesn’t really say much about when you hear it at home, and they seem to come in any and all price points. Do you really have to spend over a hundred per pair to get decent speakers?
Engineer Dude, that was well-stated. I learned quite a bit from that – much appreciated.
Do you have a Tweeter or Home Theater or similar store? They have small, intimate rooms in all sizes that should give you a close approximation of what you’ll experience at home.
You can probably expect to pay the least amount for your surrounds, followed by your center, but try not to skimp too much on your mains. Remember that they’re what you’re listening to when you’re playing music and while you won’t need to spend thousands, it will be one of the more telling elements in what you’ve assembled.
There are plenty of established brands, like JBL for example, that should be able to provide you with quality without breaking the budget. I’m sure other will have suggestions on what’s worked for them too.
Can’t wait for Engineer Dude to weigh in on that. Dude’s a font of useful knowledge. I’m tossing Sam Stone in here too if case he checks, as he’s a wonderful source as well.
Don’t skimp on the center speaker - that’s the one that’s going to carry the on-screen dialog. A cheap speaker there will only give you muffled voices. If anything, you should spend the most on the center.
It’s also important for the speakers (at a minimum, the front Left, Center and Right) to be either the same or of the same series. Mixing brands or types here can yield odd effects where the tonal quality changes drastically as a sound moves from side to side.
For the OP - what’s the budget? And what are your sonic preferences? Easy-going and mellow, or bright and sparkling? Trying to be a nice neigbor in an apartment, or “let’s try to blow out the windows!”
For comparison, my system at home is an Onkyo amp driving NHT speakers (A Super Center and 1.5’s up front, and Super Zeros in the back) and a 12" Velodyne sub. The sub alone was $1200, but I made up for it by finding all of the speakers on eBay. For some reason, Onkyo/NHT/Velodyne seems to be a popular trinity, but not one that you’d be able to buy as a set.
I have a Yamaha amp and B&W speakers, the setup running me about $1800, but whatever you buy, make sure you listen to it first and crank it. Cheap box systems will generally fuzz out on the woofer and the sound can be muted. Mine is far from being top quality, but I’ve blown light bulbs with the woofer.
Engineer dude gave a nice explanation of what is out there. I’d like to add a non-technical bit of advise.
I’ve been to a lot of houses where people don’t set their systems up so that they sound good. Gotpasswords makes a good point about center channels. They carry the voice and can make or break a good system. They should be slightly louder than the left and right channels to maintain audio focus on the screen. The next major mistake is adding too much bass. If a small child is talking and he or she sounds like God talking to Moses then the bass is up to high.
The last mistake is often the surround sound packages themselves. Watching a movie in surround sound is just like listening to a stereo. You want to here the left and right channels with equal balance. That is tough to do if you are sitting to the far left or far right which is what usually happens in a family situation. What helps immensely in this situation are front stereo speakers that have tweeters aimed both straight out and at a 45 degree angle. That way someone sitting on the right side of the room will hear what is coming from the left speaker. The reason this is important is that higher frequencies are highly directional. Lower frequencies coming from the sub-woofer will radiate in a non-directional pattern so it won’t matter where you put it.
With that said I would like to suggest a cheap alternative to get your feet wet. You can use your home stereo to create much of the surround sound affect because of how surround sound is recorded. One of the techniques for adding depth to stereo images is done by staggering the same sound through both speakers. The effect can generate sound that appears to come from directly right or left of where you’re sitting.
By connecting the stereo output of your TV to the input of your stereo you greatly enhance a movie recorded in surround sound despite only using 2 speakers. Most TV’s have excellent speakers for reproducing the sound of voices so you adjust your TV volume to act as a center channel. Once you have the speakers balanced you can then raise or lower the volume through your remote. Everything stays in balance. If you have a good stereo this will give you a listening benchmark when shopping for a new system.
One last thought. Subwoofers should have a driver that is at least 8” in size. Subwoofers with smaller speakers will struggle to produce the really low frequencies.
Believe it or not, I haven’t owned a home stereo in years. I listen to music in the car, mostly, or take a boom box to the beach or whatever. I never thought about it, but that’s kinda weird, isn’t it? Not having a stereo?
Okay, that gives me some questions about the setup of my room. My TV is at a diagonal, in front of and kind of to the right of my couch. It’s not a really big room, so “where you are” in the room would be quite different from one side of the couch to another in terms of the speakers, right? How do I figure out where to put them, particularly considering I’ve got huge doorways and the front door and such to deal with? The subwoofer can go pretty much anywhere, at least, right? There’s not a whole lot of space on top of the TV to put a center speaker - isn’t that where they often go?
Any decent home theater amp will give you the ability to balance the volume on your individual speakers. This is very handy when the location isn’t optimal. Make sure that this is a feature on any amp you buy.
Okay, let’s start back at the beginning.
The minimum ‘surround sound’ setup you should be looking at will be 5.1. That means five main speakers, plus a subwoofer. The speakers are arranged like this - two front mains, a center channel speaker that should be directly above your TV, and two surround speakers.
The surround speakers come in two types - ‘dipole’ speakers have two sets of drivers in them, which fire sound front and back, but not straight out. These speakers should be mounted directly across from your listening position, on a wall, about 2-3’ above your head when seated.
The other type is a direct-firing speaker like the mains. This type of speaker should be positioned about 30 degrees behind the main listening position, with the speakers aimed at the listener.
So here’s your first decision - dipoles or straight speakers for the surrounds? If you have walls to either side of the listening position where you can mount speakers, I’d go for dipoles, especially if most of your listening is movies and not music. If you don’t have walls in the right place, then get direct firing speakers that you can put on stands and place them off to the sides and slightly behind the main seating position.
Here’s Dolby’s page on speaker layout.
Now, the next question is whether you need 6.1 or 7.1. These formats add one or two back-channel speakers, which should be placed on the rear wall. First of all, you need at least three feet behind your main seating position to place these speakers. If you don’t have that, forget it. Second, if you are on a budget, I think you are much better off saving the money you’d spend on the two extra speakers and upgrading the quality of the others. 6.1 and 7.1 offer fairly marginal benefits on the vast majority of movies, which are only recorded in 5.1. The receivers that support 6.1 and 7.1 have their own processing that moves some of the surround information to the back channels, with varying degrees of success. So I’d say for a budget system skip the 6.1 and 7.1
Now, you need to decide what your budget is. Be aware that less than $1,000 for speakers is going to get you a pretty compromised sound, but at the $1000 price point you start getting into some pretty good stuff.
Receivers
Now let’s look at the receiver. A lot of inexpensive receivers will work fine in this application, but there are some ‘must-have’ features that you really want to look for:
Must-Have
1. Video Up-Conversion. What this means is that you can run one cable to your TV - typically the highest-resolution possible. Then if you plug in lower resolution sources, the receiver will up-convert them and output the signal on your single cable. For example, an HD cable box will have an HDMI output, and your high-definition television will have an HDMI input for it. But your DVD player will have component video out probably, and your VCR will probably only have S-Video connections. A non-HD cable box may have S-video or even just composite video out. So without video up-conversion, you’d have to run an HDMI, S-VIDEO, Composite, and maybe even component video cables to your TV. And then when you switch from your HD source to your VCR, you have to go to the TV’s menu and switch the input there as well. It’s a big pain, and the added cost and complexity of all the cables isn’t worth it. So get a receiver with HDMI and video up-conversion, and you can ignore all these problems and leave your TV switched to the best input and be done with it.
2. DTS decoding. Lots of movies are in DTS, and there are also DTS audio DVDs. And in my experience, DTS does sound better. Luckily, any receiver good enough to have up-conversion will almost certainly have DTS.
Nice to have:
Automatic room adjustment. Something very few people take into consideration is how much effect the room itself has on your sound quality. It’s probably the most important factor, and it often goes totally ignored. So it’s a big advantage to have a receiver that will compensate for room acoustics. Yamaha has a feature called YPAO that does this - the receiver comes with a little microphone that you place at the listening position, then the receiver will run a series of test signals and adjust the equalization, delay times, and output levels of every channel automatically to optimize the sound at the listening position. This can have a dramatic effect. Note that this feature only starts to become availabable at a price point above $500 for the receiver.
Not necessary:
THX logo. A THX logo means nothing more than that the receiver passed the minimum specs for THX certification. Most decent receivers will do this, but putting the THX logo on a piece of hardware increases the price because of THX licensing fees, so some manufacturers skip it. Don’t be dissuaded by the lack of THX.
DVD Player
Not much needs to be said here. Make sure it’s a progressive-scan player. Unless you’re a serious video-phile with a big screen, most DVD players today will have very similar picture quality, as long as you are using component, optical, or HDMI out. Other features that you may or may not want are SACD or DVD-A compatibility for high-resolution music, compatibility with JPEG or MPEG movies so you can look at slide shows and movies you burned from your computer, etc. You do NOT need DTS on a DVD player to watch DTS movies, so long as your receiver has a DTS decoder.
So here’s where you can save some money. DVD players can be had cheap, and even the cheap ones do a pretty good job.
Speakers
Aside from what I said above, you need to decide if you can put down floor-standing speakers, or if you need tiny cube speakers, or bookshelf speakers. I would advise you to stay away from the really tiny cube systems like the BOSE speakers. They’re generally very compromised, and do not give you as good a sound as a good bookshelf or floor-standing system. In-wall speakers are also available, but again, the sound will be compromised somewhat.
You’ll want a subwoofer if you listen to movies. Movie soundtracks have a low-frequency effects channel, designed to be routed to a subwoofer. Subwoofers typically have their own amplifiers and a big speaker designed for low frequencies. This takes a load off your amplifier and other speakers, allowing them to be smaller while still giving you good bass.
You only need one subwoofer because low frequency sounds are non-directional. The wavelength is too long for humans to be able to tell where the sound came from. As a result, you are also free to place your subwoofer wherever you want (subject to some acoustic concerns), which is good because a subwoofer will likely be your largest speaker.
The center channel is very important, as the majority of a movie’s audio is focused on the center channel. It should also be matched to the main channels, so make sure you get one from the same manufacturer, and in the same speaker line. You want the three front speakers matched so that when sounds pan across the front soundstage it’s seamless. If the center speaker has different tonal characteristics, it will sound strange.
That said, here are some specific recommendations for systems at a couple of price points:
For example, here’s my idea of a good ‘starter’ 5.1 system:
Receiver: Panasonic SA-XR70 Digital receiver (about $350). Unfortunately, it doesn’t have up-conversion, but it does have HDMI out. But most important, the sound quality is superb. I haven’t heard it, but people I trust say that these new digital amps will rival a multi-thousand dollar traditional amp.
DVD player: Any cheap player with progressive scan will do. Just pick the features you want.
Speakers: Here’s the most important part of the system. My personal preference is for Paradigm speakers, which I think offer an extremely high bang for the buck. At this price point, look at Paradigm Titans ($199/pair). You could set up a great system with four Titans and a Paradigm CC-170 or CC-270 center channel speaker. Total cost: about $600-$700. Then find a good subwoofer - the subwoofer is a speaker that doesn’t have to be matched with the rest of the system, so it doesn’t have to be Paradigm, although Paradigm has some excellent ones.
This whole system can be put together for under $1500, and it will rival many systems that cost two or three times as much. And if you take care with speaker placement and tune the system properly, you’ll have a surround system better than the vast majority of home installations.
If you want to move up in price a bit, I would start by upgrading the speakers. In the Paradigm line, the next level up would be into the ‘monitor’ series, such as the Monitor 7, ADP dipole surrounds, and a CC-370 center channel. That will move the cost of the speaker up from $1,000 to perhaps $1600 or so. Here’s a review of a monitor series home theater system with a retail of about $2000 (you shoudl be able to get it for $1600 or so).
Other speakers worth looking at in these price ranges would be Energy, PSB, NHT, B&W. Stay away from speakers by mainstream electronics manufacturers like Sony, Pioneer, etc. Some of them are good, but some aren’t. And none offer the kind of value you can get from the dedicated speaker manufacturers.
The next level up is really where you can get into very high quality stuff for a reasonable investment. My audio system consists of Paradigm Studio series speakers (Studio 60 fronts, ADP surrounds, CC-470 center channel). The receiver is a Yamaha 7.1 channel receiver with up-conversion and YPAO. The whole system is worth about $4500, and IMO after that price point you rapidly run into the law of diminishing returns. I don’t think you could get a system that sounds audibly better for less than $10,000.
One other thing - don’t let a salesman talk you into buying expensive cables. They’re a ripoff. If you buy a system for $1500, you shouldn’t be spending more than $100 on all your cables combined. Don’t be sucked into ‘monster’ cables or any of that stuff. The salesman will tell you it’s absolutely necessary, but he’s only saying that because those cables have insanely high margins and often the salesmen get extra commission for selling them. It’s not uncommon for the cables to generate more profit for the store than the entire system does. So they push them pretty hard.
You can go to Radio Shack and buy their ‘Gold’ series cables for much cheaper, and they are every bit as good. For speaker wire, go to Home Depot and buy 18 ga or 16 ga wire off the reel for .28 cents per foot. It’s all you’ll ever need.
Hope this was helpful.
Oops, you were right. I checked my Home Theater for Dummies book
PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) is the basis for .wav files on computers. I should’ve remembered because I have a speech somebody gave on DVD that comes up as “PCM 48” on my receiver. I have yet to see (and I have hundreds of them) a Hollywood DVD that does not have a Dolby track. Even when I record a cable TV program on the DVD recorder and play it back, it shows up as “Dolby Digital 2/0” on the receiver.
One thing that I should mention is that, if you go with a separate DVD player, receiver, and speakers (as opposed to a home-theater-in-a-box), you need to do two things to get surround sound.
- Run a optical digital or coaxial digital cable from the DVD player to the receiver.
- Enable the “Dolby Digital out” and “DTS out” in the settings of the DVD player (they will usually be disabled by default)
People sometimes forget to do both of those things.
The center channel HAS to be centered above or below the TV. If you have a hanging flat screen it’s usually below. If you have a console TV then lay it on top. Most of the actual sound should appear to come from the picture. That’s why the center channel is so important. Depth is derived from the remaining speakers and most of that is handled by the 2 front speakers. Think in terms of what is happening in a movie. Rarely does a director require sound to approach you from behind (it’s pretty cool when it happens). I’ll re-emphasize what is useful in front speakers. It is useful if the tweeters are either omni-directional (have a reflecting lense system of some kind) or have 2 tweeters aimed in different directions. This helps people who are all the way to one side of the room hear the sound from the opposite speaker. Bose has the right idea with the adjustable cubes but they just don’t sound very good (for the money). They also use a 6" subwoofer, which isn’t up to the task. There all kinds of manufacturing techniques to widen the listening area of a tweeter so you should be able to tell how well they work by standing in the center and comparing it to the sound you hear directly in front of the left or right speaker. If it is decidedly tough to hear the opposing speaker then you’ll have the same problem at home. Angling speakers inwards can help with this process if the speakers don’t cover the entire listening area.
You also mentioned that you had a weird room with big doorways and such. Again, most of your sound should appear to come from the center channel so this shouldn’t be a huge problem. The other speakers are used to add depth.
Final thought, If you like quality stereo music then I would recommend you invest in a higher quality system. Test the sound of the speakers by using a selection of music you would normally listen to. If speakers reproduce music accurately then they will sound great in a surround sound system.
Okay, mostly what I’ve learned is that I need to save my pennies! 
I was thinking this was going to be maybe a $500 adventure, tops.
My TV, like all the TVs seem to be these days, is by no means flat on top at all. It slopes right down. How on earth can I put a speaker on it? Are there, like, stands tall enough that I could put one behind it? Oh, and there’s only about a foot or two between the couch and the wall, so 5.1 it is. How far to the right of the main listening area do the right speakers have to be? Would it sound awful if somebody happened to be sitting on the other side of the room, past the right speaker? I’m trying to figure out how to do it without running wires over doorways or under the floor.
Maybe you were right. This thread has been very informative, but don’t get intimidated. I watch DVDs with my kids on my desktop computer with a simple set of four small, good quality speakers and a subwoofer on the floor, a JBL off-the-shelf package. The picture is razor sharp and bright and the sound is fantastic.
My girlfriend just bought a home-theatre-in-a-box from Costco for $300. Four speakers in the corners, a center channel unit on top of the TV and a subwoofer on the floor. The TV isn’t as sharp as my computer monitor, but the sound is spectacular and can be tuned for a variety of spatial effects and sound quality preferences.
Both setups are totally satisfying for all of the people who watch movies on them. The key ingredient in both is that we sit fairly close to the screen. Kind of like the old saying “Red man build small fire, stand up close. White man build big fire, stand far away.”
If you really need to seat eight people for movie watching in your home, the bigger, higher capacity systems may be necessary. But unless you’re a real audiophile, the sound from the low cost boxed systems is more than adequate - far better than the best systems ten years ago.
If you’re more sensitive to what your friends will think of your choices than you are to how they sound to you, however, the sky is the limit.