Having a “balanced” Home Theater

I recently shared a Facebook post from one of our speaker manufacturers concerning the importance of balancing the sound in your home theater. In the early days of surround sound the source devices were, by today’s standards, quite primitive. VCRs (Video Cassette Recorders) and LDP (Laser Disc Players) only had the ability to deliver stereo audio playback, but commercial theaters since 1974 had the ability to deliver both stereo sound AND a discrete surround channel. There was lots of room on the theatrical movie film to add this separate audio track. Initially this track was monophonic, but movie producers quickly discovered that there was so much room on the film for audio that they could add more discrete tracks; center channel sound for better dialogue recognition; instead of monophonic, stereo rear channels could be added. This greatly enhanced the theater goer’s entertainment experience, but it wasn’t until digital video sources were developed that the home theater owner could experience the sound of a commercial theater. DVD brought a revolution to the audio delivered to the home theater market. Now the same theatrical audio soundtrack could be experienced at home! Pandora’s box had been opened! Digital audio meant that the number of channels is now a moot point, only limited to the imagination and budget of the movie producers. It wasn’t long before Dolby Digital commercial theaters became Dolby ATMOS theaters and DTS became DTS X theaters delivering sound discretely to an array of speakers directly overhead, in addition to the 7 or more speakers already tied into the sound system. WOW!!  Do you REALLY need all of those speakers in the home?? You do if you want a state of the art home theatre experience, but a great theater can be yours with only 5 speakers and a subwoofer IF, the design of the system is done right. Which brings me back to THE MOST important factor in creating a super system. It’s a thing called timbre matching. All of the speakers MUST have the same sound, particularly in the treble and midrange frequencies and the simplest way to do that is to use the same speakers or the same speaker manufacture’s series of speakers. Yo don’t want a Sherman tank running towards you to turn into a SMART car as it rolls over you! The other reason to use the same speakers everywhere is the efficiency or sensitivity of the speaker. This is how much power in gives how much sound out. Even though the efficiency of two different manufacturer’s speakers may be the same on paper they may differ greatly in practice. If you are looking for a GREAT home theater experience get in touch with Wired 1 Consulting. You’ll be glad you did!