Setting up multi-channel audio such as a home theater system has always been quite complicated and manufacturers recently have created unique products and technologies such as wireless audio products or virtual surround sound to help simplify this procedure. I will review the newest trends to see which devices really work. I will also give some advice for choosing the perfect components.
Therefore setting up a home theater has turn out to be fairly intricate and long speaker wire runs are normally undesirable for aesthetic reasons. Vendors have recently launched new devices and technologies. These devices were designed to help simplify the installation of home theater systems.
As a result, home theater installations have become relatively complicated. Running cables to remote loudspeakers also is often undesirable due to aesthetic reasons. Part vendors have developed a number of technologies to simplify the installation.
The benefit of this technology is that only a handful of speakers are required and no long speaker cord has to be run all through the viewing environment. The downside though is that each human will process sound differently because of the dissimilar shape of every human ear. Since the signal processing is based on a standard human ear model, virtual surround will not work equally well for everyone depending on how much the viewer varies from the standard model.
An alternative option for simplifying home theater setups and eliminating long speaker wire runs is to make use of wireless surround sound devices or wireless speakers. A wireless solution will usually include a transmitter module that connects to the TV or source and in addition wireless amplifiers that will be connected to the remote loudspeakers. Customarily the transmitter component will have amplified loudspeaker inputs and line-level inputs. This provides freedom to connect to each type of source. A transmitter volume control helps take full advantage of the dynamic range and avoids clipping of the audio within the transmitter.
A number of wireless systems come with wireless amplifiers that connect to two speakers. This still requires cable runs between the two speakers. Other products come with individual wireless amplifiers for each speaker. Entry-level wireless devices employ FM broadcast or audio compression that will degrade the sound quality to some extent. More advanced wireless devices utilize uncompressed digital audio broadcast. To make certain that all speakers are in sync in a multi-channel application, ensure that you select a wireless system which has an audio latency of just a few milliseconds at most. If the latency is larger than 10 ms then there will be an echo effect which will degrade the surround sound. A few wireless products operate at 5.8 GHz which offers the benefit of less competition from other wireless products than devices utilizing the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band.
An alternative method, which is often referred to as sound bars utilizes side-reflecting loudspeakers. In this case the audio for the remote loudspeakers will be broadcast by individual speakers located at the front at an angle and reflected by walls as to appear to be originating from besides or behind the viewer. The result largely is determined by the shape of the room and interior design and not function well in many real-world scenarios resulting from different room shapes and obstacles in the room.
Therefore setting up a home theater has turn out to be fairly intricate and long speaker wire runs are normally undesirable for aesthetic reasons. Vendors have recently launched new devices and technologies. These devices were designed to help simplify the installation of home theater systems.
As a result, home theater installations have become relatively complicated. Running cables to remote loudspeakers also is often undesirable due to aesthetic reasons. Part vendors have developed a number of technologies to simplify the installation.
The benefit of this technology is that only a handful of speakers are required and no long speaker cord has to be run all through the viewing environment. The downside though is that each human will process sound differently because of the dissimilar shape of every human ear. Since the signal processing is based on a standard human ear model, virtual surround will not work equally well for everyone depending on how much the viewer varies from the standard model.
An alternative option for simplifying home theater setups and eliminating long speaker wire runs is to make use of wireless surround sound devices or wireless speakers. A wireless solution will usually include a transmitter module that connects to the TV or source and in addition wireless amplifiers that will be connected to the remote loudspeakers. Customarily the transmitter component will have amplified loudspeaker inputs and line-level inputs. This provides freedom to connect to each type of source. A transmitter volume control helps take full advantage of the dynamic range and avoids clipping of the audio within the transmitter.
A number of wireless systems come with wireless amplifiers that connect to two speakers. This still requires cable runs between the two speakers. Other products come with individual wireless amplifiers for each speaker. Entry-level wireless devices employ FM broadcast or audio compression that will degrade the sound quality to some extent. More advanced wireless devices utilize uncompressed digital audio broadcast. To make certain that all speakers are in sync in a multi-channel application, ensure that you select a wireless system which has an audio latency of just a few milliseconds at most. If the latency is larger than 10 ms then there will be an echo effect which will degrade the surround sound. A few wireless products operate at 5.8 GHz which offers the benefit of less competition from other wireless products than devices utilizing the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band.
An alternative method, which is often referred to as sound bars utilizes side-reflecting loudspeakers. In this case the audio for the remote loudspeakers will be broadcast by individual speakers located at the front at an angle and reflected by walls as to appear to be originating from besides or behind the viewer. The result largely is determined by the shape of the room and interior design and not function well in many real-world scenarios resulting from different room shapes and obstacles in the room.
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