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Latest Technologies Make Installing Surround Sound Systems A Breeze

Multi-channel audio has become mainstream and manufacturers have come up with many types of basic and more advanced technologies such as wireless”>http://www.amphony.com/products/wireless-surround-sound.htm”>wireless surround sound speakers, virtual surround sound to simplify the installation of home theater systems. I will have a look at some of the products and technologies which have appeared and give some pointers about choosing proper components for a hassle-free installation.

As previously setting up a TV has been pretty straightforward, the appearance of multi-channel audio has made setting up home theater systems much more complex by requiring a number of external speakers to create surround sound. The most commonly used 5.1 surround sound format requires installing a total of 6 loudspeakers. These are one center speaker, two front side speakers, two rear speakers and a subwoofer. The newer 7.1 standard raises this number to 8 by adding two additional side speakers.

Consequently, home theater installations have turn out to be relatively difficult. Running cables to remote speakers also is often undesirable because of aesthetic reasons. Component manufacturers have designed a number of technologies to simplify the installation.

One solution is minimizing the quantity of loudspeakers by building virtual loudspeakers. This approach applies signal processing to the sound and adds phase shifts and cues to the audio which would ordinarily be broadcast through the remote loudspeaker. Because the signal processing is based on how the human hearing detects the origin of sound, the audio components which underwent signal processing can be mixed with the front speaker components and sent by the front loudspeakers. The signal processing has an effect that will deceive the listener into presuming that the sound is coming from a different position.

This technology reduces the number of required speakers and eliminates long speaker cables but each person will process sound somewhat differently due to the shape of the ear. The signal processing of these virtual surround systems is based on a standard model which was measured with a standard ear. However, virtual surround will not function equally well for every human.

One more solution for eliminating long speaker cord runs is to make use of wireless surround sound kits or wireless speakers. A wireless product consists of a transmitter and one or a number of wireless amplifiers. The transmitter connects to the source. The wireless amplifiers connect to the remote speakers. This transmitter will typically come with line-level along with amplified loudspeaker inputs. Ideally it should come with a volume control to adjust it to the audio source.

Whilst some wireless speaker devices have a wireless amplifier that connects to two speakers, other products offer individual wireless amplifiers for each speaker. Entry-level wireless devices employ FM broadcast or audio compression which will deteriorate the sound quality to some extent. More advanced wireless systems use uncompressed digital audio transmission. In multi-channel audio products, it is important to choose a wireless solution with a latency of merely a few milliseconds. This will make sure that the sound of all speakers is in perfect sync. If the latency is more than 10 ms then there will be an echo effect which will deteriorate the surround sound. A few wireless devices work at 5.8 GHz which offers the benefit of less competition from other wireless products than products using the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band.

A third technology uses side-reflecting speakers. This method is called sound bars. The audio that would normally be sent by the remote loudspeakers is instead sent by loudspeakers at the front. These front loudspeakers broadcast the sound at an angle. Then the sound is reflected by the side and rear walls and appears to be coming from besides or behind the viewer. This solution works best in a square room with minimum interior design and obstacles. It will not function well in a lot of real-world scenarios with different room shapes though.

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