While most people will assume that equipment alone is the aspect that makes a home theatre perfect, it is just one component of what makes this space truly magical. Don’t get us wrong, equipment is (and will always be) important when it comes to curating the perfect home theatre, but there is a lot more involved if you really want your home theatre to stand out/function at its best ability. To learn about the main things to consider when setting up your home theatre, check out the information we here at Voltronic have provided below.
The Positions of The Speakers
Positioning speakers properly is important in nearly every audio setup, but this is even more true when it comes to building a home theatre. Since a home theatre requires outputting audio from every direction (front, sides and back), you must pay extra attention to where these speakers are placed and where they work best.
When you are unsure about how to place your speakers, we highly recommend that you position them in regards to your theatre’s seating arrangement. For example, if you decide to buy floorstanding speakers, you want to be sure that they are angled perfectly towards the audience while also being partially spaced away from the wall. While these types of speakers may look better backed into your theatre walls, your sound quality will take a hit. For maximum sound, leave some room between the freestanding speakers and the wall.
If you are looking to purchase height speakers, we recommend that you ensure your ceiling height is no taller than 13 feet. On average, height speakers are best installed in a room with ceilings that are 10-12 feet from the floor. If your ceiling is taller but you still want to take advantage of these types of speakers, be sure that they are louder, more powerful speakers, as it will take more energy to send the sound to where the audience is sitting.
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Atmos technology is now available for the home and produces a listening experience never before experienced in a home theater. You’ll get a great immersive experience, no matter what kind of Dolby Atmos home theater setup you have. Dolby Atmos content is mixed as audio objects instead of traditional channels. This means the content is not tied to any specific playback configuration. Further, the technology automatically adapts the object audio to take full advantage of the number and placement of your speakers, from systems with five speakers on the floor and two speakers producing overhead sound up to a Dolby Atmos system with as many as 24 speakers on the floor and 10 overhead speakers.
The naming of Dolby Atmos speaker configurations is based on the standard nomenclature (stereo, 5.1, and 7.1) but adds a number at the end to specify the number of height speakers in the playback system. For example, when we refer to a 5.1.4 setup, the 5 indicates the left, center, right, left surround, right surround, left rear surround, and right rear surround speakers; the .1 indicates the subwoofer; and the .4 indicates the four speakers that play overhead sound (left top front, right top front, left top rear, and right top rear).
Figure 1: At left is a Dolby Atmos system with five speakers on the floor and four overhead speakers; at right is a Dolby Atmos system with up to 24 speakers on the floor and 10 overhead speakers. Additionally, a new Dolby® surround upmixer allows for channel-based content that has not been mixed for Dolby Atmos to be expanded to fill the flexible speaker layouts of a Dolby Atmos system. These installation guidelines are intended to be a resource for integrating Dolby Atmos into a home theater system and unlocking the potential of this revolutionary audio format. Details include the use of conventional overhead speakers and Dolby Atmos enabled speaker technology, which enables you to architect a system capable of reproducing overhead sound, even if you’re not able to put speakers in or on the ceiling.
We will discuss Dolby Atmos in more details in another blog post.
Speaker Calibration
So, you’ve properly positioned your speakers and you’ve made sure your products are high quality. Everything should be perfect now, right?
The truth is, without the proper calibration for your speakers, a home theatre is still incomplete and not as good as it could be. As a matter of fact, every audio system requires some kind of calibration to ensure that all of the audio sources are synced perfectly. While calibration systems are usually installed into most modern audio systems, every device could use a manual calibration to perfect the audio as well.
Subwoofer Usage
When you want to be sure that your audio is balanced in the best way possible, using subwoofers is the best way to do so. Not only do subwoofers work as the final piece to the home-theatre audio puzzle, but they also add a strong, powerful bass to the audio in your theatre. As you may or may not know, bass adds a lot of impact to certain movie scenes (explosions, musical scores etc), and will help immerse the viewers in your theatre even more.
How Our Team Can Help
If you’ve been looking to install a theatre into your home but require the best team to help you reach this goal, let our company at Voltronic help. With all of our expertise, skills and equipment, we help optimize our clients homes in the best way possible, with one of our specialties being home theatre installations. To learn more about our home theatre services, be sure to call our team at +1 (416) 276-6869 today.