HOME THEATER
It had long been the practice of stereo buffs to connect their television to the stereo system. The advantage was the use of the larger speakers and more powerful amplifier of the stereo system. Even though the sound was greatly improved, it was still mono and limited by the broadcast signal.
In the late 1970's and early ‘80's two new home movie formats became widely available to the public: VCR and laser disc. At the same time video screen sizes began increasing.
By 1985, both formats had developed into very high qual- ity audio/video sources. In fact, the sonic performance of some video formats exceeded
Fortunately, "Dolby" and "DTS" encoded material (which include almost all movies) have the same surround sound information encoded on home releases as the theater films. All that is required to retrieve this information is a decoder, additional speakers, subwoofer(s) and amps to reproduce it.
Home theater is a complex purchase and we recommend that you consult your local MartinLogan dealer, who is well versed in this subject.
Each piece of a surround system can be purchased sepa- rately. Take your time and buy quality. No one has ever complained that the movie was too real. The following list and descriptions will only give you a brief outline of the responsibilities and demands placed on each speaker.
Front Left and Front Right
If these speakers will also be the same two used for your stereo playback then they should be of very high quality and able to play loud (over 102 dB) and reproduce bass below 80 Hz.
Center Channel
Many experts believe this to be the most important speaker in a home theater system, as almost all of the dialogue and a large portion of the front speaker information is repro- duced by the center channel. It is important that the same manufacturer of the front speakers design the center speaker and that it is recommended for use as a center speaker. This is not the place to cut corners.
Surround Speakers
The surround, or effect speakers contain critical informa- tion. In films, sound effects are vital to the director in delivering a complete experience and the rapid technical increase in the discreet capacity of these effects channels has made their quality vital. This is equally true in music play back because of the emerging high definition, multi- channel music only formats. Full range instruments, voices and ambient queues are being routed to the effects chan- nel. In the past, some may have suggested that this was the place to save money by purchasing small inexpensive speakers. If you choose to do so, be prepared to upgrade in the future.
Subwoofer
With any good surround system you will need one or more high quality subwoofers (the .1, in a 5.1 channel surround system). Most movie soundtracks contain large amounts of bass as part of the special effects. Good subwoofers will provide a foundation for the rest of the system.
Figure 19. Summit speakers as front channels, the Stage as the center channel, Script i speakers as side surround (effects) channels, and Descent i subwoofers as LFE (effects) channel.
Home Theater 19
