Pioneer VSX-41 manual minute guide, Introduction to home theater

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Introduction to home theater

You are probably used to using stereo equipment to listen to music, but may not be used to home theater systems that give you many more options (such as surround sound) when listening to soundtracks.

Home theater refers to the use of multiple audio channels to create a surround sound effect, making you feel like you're in the middle of the action or concert. The surround sound you get from a home theater system depends not only on the speakers you have set up in your room, but also on the source and the sound settings of the receiver.

DVD-Video has become the basic source material for home theater due to its size, quality, and ease of use. Depending on the DVD, you can have up to seven different audio channels coming from one disc, all of them being sent to different speakers in your system. This is what creates a surround sound effect and gives you the feeling of ‘being there’.

This receiver will automatically decode Dolby Digital, DTS, or Dolby Surround DVD-Video discs, according to your speaker setup. In most cases, you won’t have to make changes for realistic surround sound, but other possibilities (like listening to a CD with multichannel surround sound) are explained in Playing sources, starting on page 30.

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