Home Theatre Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

If you want to get the best for less out of your home theatre system there are some basic pitfall to avoid.

1. Hiding the speakers

Speakers already have their own enclosures, and are carefully engineered to perform at their best in a freestanding location. By hiding them in special custom cabinets, shelving, or cubbyholes behind special grilles you will change the tonal balance that the speakers were made to produce. Deep bass performance will be boomy and hollow sounding, midrange and treble balance may become noticeably nasal or muddy and congested.

2. In Ceiling Speakers

Do not use in ceiling speakers for your home theatre. You will not get the overall sound to accurately reproduce movie soundtracks, sounds or dialog. If in ceiling speakers worked well for surround sound, cinemas and theaters would use them. Moreover, our hearing is much more sensitive to horizontal and front arriving sounds, not to overhead sounds or sounds from the rear. That is why our external ears are focused to the sides and forward.

3. Square Home Theatre Rooms

If you have a choice, irregular or rectangular room shapes are always best. Avoid square rooms if possible. Deep bass sound waves produce "standing waves," which result in areas of extreme bass emphasis and areas lacking bass. Trying to fix the standing wave problem after the fact is virtually impossible. Instead, select a rectangular shaped room or a irregular room if possible to eliminate the standing wave problem.

4. Use of Equalization Systems

It is a fact that Equalizers cannot be used to compensate for bad rooms and poor speaker choices. EQ systems often correct one problem while creating others. By using Accurate loudspeakers that have been properly placed EQ systems should not be needed except for fine tuning your overall sound.

5. Using one small subwoofer to fill a Large room.

Big rooms, especially the great rooms common in many suburban homes, really eat up deep bass; so two subwoofers will generate enough sound pressure to fill the place. They'll also give you smoother distribution of extended bass over several different listening locations. Taste plays a big role as well. If you like music or soundtracks really loud and deep, go for two subs. If you have a huge room and want really loud sound and deep bass, then look at physically larger subwoofers with bigger amplifiers.

6. Over treating

Well engineered loudspeakers designed for home theatre listening have their tonal balance adjusted so they'll sound smooth and natural when heard in rooms that are typically furnished. The best formula for a fine sounding home theater is to have a reasonable mix of furnishings that reflect and break up sounds as well as providing some absorption. A typical living room set with carpeted floor, cloth upholstered furniture, drywall or plaster walls and some fabric window treatments usually results in a room that works well acoustically for both music and home theater. It's easy to get sidetracked about applying special treatments to a home theater with the belief that this will bring huge gains in sound quality.

7. Using cube speakers to hide your system

The small cube speakers may look cute and almost disappear into the room's decor, but they just can't move enough air. They're fine at quiet background levels, but the little two inch cones inside get rattled when things start to get exciting. A subwoofer will not fill in all the important upper bass and lower midrange sounds that the two inch cubes can't handle. Any speaker with a claim to authentic high fidelity, even a fairly small model, must divide the sound spectrum into at least two parts, the bass/midrange for the woofer, and the treble for the tweeter. The best speakers divide the spectrum into three parts bass, midrange, and treble using multiple drivers for each part to achieve clean, high level, high quality sound. Remember to scale the size of the speakers to the size of the room that needs to be filled. Advances in technology and design have made it very possible to combine smaller size enclosures with high grade sound. Look for high end speakers that have tuned enclosed cabinets, or customizable real wood finishes that can be stained to match existing furniture, cabinetry, or trim.