Most of todays digital receiver manufacturers would like you to believe that their on-board, proprietary equalization systems will make your home theatre sound like the best commercial theatre experience.
While it can certainly help, there is no way you can correct for the actual room interaction. Every room has a very unique sound quality (or lack thereof!). Most home theatre rooms have very reflective surfaces (floors, ceiling & walls) that make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the electronics and the speakers to re-create the illusion of a commercial cinema sound experience no matter how expensive they are. Next time you head to your local cinema take a look at the walls, in most cases there is carpet extending almost to the ceiling on the sides and back of the theatre. This carpeting is not there to “look nice”, it is there to try to lessen the reflective characteristics of the room, and hopefully, increase the intelligibility of the movie soundtrack. Sound reflects off of hard surfaces the same way that light reflects off of a mirror. You don’t want these reflections to interfere with the originating sound coming from the speakers. If this happens you lose most of the motion effects of the soundtrack and you will definitely have trouble understanding the dialogue of the movie simply because your ears are hearing what is being reflected off of these hard surfaces almost as loudly as the sound that is coming from the actual speaker. By lessening these offending reflections from your room your ears can start to hear the performance as it was intended. So how can you tame an unruly room?
The best solution that we have found is from a company called Primacoustic. They offer “kits” designed to help you with this very common problem. We have had nothing but absolutely fantastic results and great feedback from our clientele at Wired 1 Consulting. Our clients are experiencing far better dialogue intelligibility, tight, controlled bass response and instruments that sound more like the actual instruments! It brings back new life to any theatre that we have applied this product to. The kits are aesthetically pleasing, easily installed and very affordable! You can “do it yourself” or have the experts at Wired 1 Consulting help you with your installation. We guarantee that you will be more than impressed!
Visit Primacoustic web site at www.primacoustic.com click on “room kits” at the top of the page. We also offer their professional recording studio and commercial product line.
Give us a shout!