Quick Start Guide
Home Theater: The Basics
Most consumers are used to using stereo equipment to listen to music but many people are not used to home theater systems that give you many more options when listening to soundtracks. In fact, home theater is not really compli- cated and this little guide should give you an understanding of basics.
The main reasons why it seems so difficult is that there are three different factors involved in home theater and each will contribute to what kind of sound you get.
These factors are:
1)The equipment you are using for you home theater set up. Particularly important is the number of speakers you are using. We call this your speaker configuration. The default settings should be fine in most cases.
2)The 'source' material you are using. This is the actual product (like a DVD) or broadcast (like cable TV) you are listening to/watching. We call this the source.
3)The last factor is the listening mode you choose on the
Let's start with the home theater set up you have in your home.
Your Home System
The heart of your system is the
The Source Material
DVDs have become the basic source material for home theater because they offer excellent sound and picture quality, allow users to choose the movies they want, and are easy to store, etc. You can also enjoy home theater with other sources, such as digital satellite TV, cable TV and VHS videotapes. The important part here is all these sources have soundtracks recorded on them with various kinds of technology (this is called the sound encoding). Home theater sources are recorded (encoded) with multiple sound channels, that is discrete parts of the overall sound. CDs (which are stereo sources) work the same way but they only have two sound channels, the left channel and the right channel. These two channels carry different parts of the soundtrack and mix together when you hear it to make an enjoyable, stereo sound. The same idea applies to home theater sources except home theater sources are recorded with multichannels, that is, more than two channels. For example, Dolby Pro Logic encoding has four channels (front left, front right, center and a single channel for both surround speakers), Dolby Pro Logic II, Dolby Digital and DTS encoding usually have six channels (front left, front right, center, surround left and right and a channel that powers the subwoofer). Since the subwoofer channel is only for bass sounds this multichannel set up has been named 5.1 channel sound. These multiple channels are what create a surround sound effect and give you a similar experience of that of a movie theater. It is important you consult the manual that came with your DVD player as well to make sure the player is outputting a surround soundtrack and all the other settings are appropriate for home theater.
The Listening Modes
This receiver has many different listening modes and they are designed to cover all the speaker configurations and types of sources you might be using. In general, if you follow the recommend advice and have five speakers hooked up in most cases the AUTO listening mode is the easiest way to get realistic home theater sound. This is the default setting so you don't have to do anything. Other possibilities (like listening to a stereo CD with all five speakers or, conversely taking a stereo source and it getting multichannel home
These are the three basic factors that contribute to your home theater sound. The easiest thing is to hook up five speakers and simply play your DVDs with AUTO mode. This will give you realistic and enjoyable home theater sound.
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