Setting Up Your Home Theater

Room acoustics can affect your sound almost as much as your component choices  can, and the decor  of the room you choose for a home theater affects the acoustics.

Optimizing the Room

Test the acoustics by clapping your hands. Do you hear "ringing" afterward? That means your room reflects too much sound.

You can do a few things to help:

If you have hardwood floors, try some area rugs.

Place area rugs directly in front of the speakers.

Pull the drapes when you’re watching or listening.

Use bookshelves—with books—to help tame reflections.

Set up a clear line of sight from speakers to listening seats.

Have some people over. Physically speaking, we’re great absorbers.

If you’re lucky enough to have a room dedicated to your home theater, you have a lot more control.

Balance hard and soft surfaces: for example, compensate for a hard ceiling with a carpeted floor.

Pull your front speakers further into the room than your TV.

Experiment further with speaker placement.

Consider specialized room-tuning components, such as wall diffusers and bass absorbers. Although most are not visually attractive, they can work wonders for your sound.

These include all the cables you use to connect one component to another. Look for:

High-quality physical construction

Good-quality connectors that fit together solidly but not so tightly that they have to be forced

Ethernet cables that are at least Category 5 (Cat5)

HDMI cables that are officially labeled “High Speed.” 

Be aware that video cables and audio interconnects are not interchangeable, even though they may look alike.

Speaker Cables

Speaker cable is essentially the same type of wire used for lamps, toasters, and other appliances. Your home theater retailer typically will have several choices.

Here are some things to keep in mind when you buy:

Wire gauge (AWG): a smaller number indicates a thicker wire.

Room-friendly: choose flat or colored cable, which may be easier to hide.

Connectors that work with your components: spade lugs and banana connectors are the most common.

Expensive Cables

Some interconnects and speaker cables cost many dollars per foot. Others are inexpensive: 12 AWG lamp cord, which is plenty thick, sells for pennies a foot.

Is expensive cabling worth the cost? Use common sense. You don’t need a $275 HDMI cable to connect a $150 Blu-ray player and a $900 HDTV.

The same goes for your other connections.

HDMI Cables

HDMI 1.4, the latest version, adds 3D and other capabilities too. But you likely won’t need new cables. If the cable specification says High-Speed HDMI, it will work with HDMI 1.4.

One exception: HDMI 1.4 supports Ethernet. If you want to use this capability and have equipment that supports it, you’ll need a cable that specifies High-Speed HDMI with Ethernet. The physical connector will look the same as for the non-Ethernet cable.

Although any good set of sturdy shelves may do, using furniture designed for A/V equipment has some advantages:

Hiding the wires: A/V furniture often includes channels to route and conceal wires.

Convenience: pullout shelves in A/V furniture can make hookup vastly easier.

Ventilation: extra space in A/V furniture can help dissipate heat from receivers.

Media storage: keep your discs and other physical media together.

Speaker Stands

We do not recommend placing speakers on any furniture that also holds any of your home theater components. The vibrations can affect the sound and shorten component life.

Sometimes this placement is unavoidable, particularly with the center-channel speaker. Placing your speakers on stands is a good alternative.

Here are some guidelines for choosing speaker stands:

Sturdy, both for sound and aesthetics

Stable, for maximum resistance to children and pets

Able to situate your speakers at roughly ear level when you’re seated

Designed to hide speaker wires

See the Speaker Setup Guidelines for best placement of surround speakers.

Wall Mounting

This is an excellent alternative to buying furniture for your TV display—if your room can accommodate it. Many center channel speakers can also be mounted on a wall.

Wall mounts are frequently an ideal solution for placing the surround speakers, particularly if you have a 7.1-channel system, with speakers behind the seating area.

Remote Control

To avoid having a table full of remote controls, consider using a universal remote. Play with it in a store, if possible, to make sure it really is easy to use. Designs differ.

Surge Protection

Use surge protection . Be sure the surge protector is rated for the wattage of your components.

Better yet, look at a power conditioner, which includes surge protection. These units also include filtering to reduce or eliminate electrical interference. Interference sources include:

Fluorescent tubes and lightbulbs

Dimmers

Computers

Appliances

All of these can add “noise” to your power line and affect your sound and picture.

Power conditioner prices range from slightly more than the cost of a surge protector to thousands of dollars, with (usually) corresponding filtration power and control features.

Note that a conditioner may not eliminate all electrical problems.

Wireless Headphones

Headphones can be very useful if you’re watching or listening while someone else is reading, for instance. Only a few models have real hi-fi performance, so shop carefully.

If the headphones have Dolby Headphone technology, you can get the full surround experience.
Browse Headphones > 

The better-quality wired headphones will have superior sound, but the cord is inconvenient for home listening.