Home Theatre or Surround Sound

Here goes another post that could be misconstrued as complaining, but it's not. My point is to help set reasonable expectations for those spending time and money on this very popular entertainment. One reason for even thinking of doing this is the number of calls we get from people who have gone down the home theatre path, only to have all sorts of problems with the sound. It is always harder and more expensive to rectify after the fact and often impossible to make the system live up to the original expectation. My job isn't being a psychologist trying to reset peoples expectations and make them happy but that's what I end up doing. In effect I am cleaning up after sales people who mislead, either consciously or not, to get a sale. A bit of honesty and education on their part would go a long way to making happier customers who will more likely be return customers. Not to mention the simple human decency of being honest.

The first thing to remember is how the sound for home theatre is made. It is done in an acoustically treated room with speakers set up like this.



They are full range speakers and the sub is not used as such. All the bass comes from the 5 identical speakers. The sub is called LFE and is only used to add extra emphasis to Low Frequency Effects.

Every departure from this setup is a departure from how it is meant to sound. Of course very few people can have such a dedicated setup and so compromises are reasonable to expect. The average home theatre is so far from this setup though, that it has slim chance of creating the intended sound. In fact it becomes more "surround sound" than home theatre - hence the title of this post. In other words there will be plenty of sound everywhere and some level of effects. It won't however be the intended experience. This of course is fine and most people will be happy with it. It is certainly an improvement over just a TV.

It's not only the quality of overall sound effects that we get calls about though. Common complaints are that the bass is uneven around the room and boomy in places, dialogue and loud effects are so vastly different in level that constant volume adjustments are made, and listening at anything above moderate levels becomes tiring quickly. These kinds of problems are not experienced in a correctly setup and acoustically treated room.