The ABC of Home Theater
SPEAKER ARRANGEMENT
Home theater performance depends very much so on product performance, room size and speaker placement. Reading this booklet, following your priorities and these procedures will pay off with a big improvement to sound quality and sonic performance. Basics of speaker placement can help you make the smartest choice for your specific room.
There is no magic bullet in home theater, which is why this is called custom home theater. Every speaker has different sonic characteristics, every room has different acoustic properties, everyone's ears hear sound a little differently and your left ear has a different sensitivity than your right ear. So in the end, you may use this booklet as a starting guideline. However, when it comes to actually setting up your speaker system, let your own ears be the judge.
CENTER CHANNEL SPEAKER PLACEMENT
This should be the first speaker you place in your home theater room. The job of a center channel is to anchor dialogue and other
Place your center channel directly above or below your TV — centered, make sure the speaker's front edge is precisely aligned with the front edge of your TV screen. This helps in reducing distortion caused by sound reflecting and diffracting off the TV's cabinet.
| CENTER |
LEFT | RIGHT |
= | = |
| |
| C |
A | B |
A = B = C
Figure 2. Front Speaker Placement
If possible, the height of the center channel speakers should be as high as your ears in a sitting position, as illustrated above in Figure 2.
FRONT LEFT & RIGHT SPEAKERS PLACEMENT
In a home theater system, front speakers are responsible for movies’ sound tracks and dynamic actions. The front speakers need to sync the video event with the audio. For instance, when there is a moving vehicle from the left to the right of the screen, the sound should travel from the left front speaker to the right front speaker.
In a two channel stereo system, the front speakers are responsible for producing all of the sound: staging, imaging, and depth of field. Placing the speakers too close to each other will compromise the stage, while placing them too far from each other will break the images.
Front speakers should be placed at an equal distance from the TV and the primary listening spot (sweet spot). Together with the center channel speaker, they should form a slight arc with all three speakers at exactly the same distance from where you sit, as illustrated in Figure 2.
To make life even easier, the distance between the front center channel speaker to the primary seat should be equal to the distance between the two front left and right speakers.
SPEAKER ELEVATION
The tweeters from all three front speakers should have the same elevation as your ears while seated. Any deviation will work but it may reduce the performance.
Make sure that there are no solid objects (like furniture) blocking the pathway of the sound traveling to your listening location.
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