The procedure of installing multi-channel audio speakers in home theater systems is rather tedious and vendors have invented new products and technologies like wireless surround sound speakers or surround sound wireless headphones lately to help simplify the installation. I am going to look at a few of the newest technologies which were developed to make setting up home theater systems a snap. I will highlight what to look out for when making your buying decision.
As in the past setting up a TV has been relatively easy, the emergence of multi-channel audio has made installing home theater systems a great deal more complex by requiring a number of external speakers to create surround sound. In case of 5.1 surround, 6 speakers are used: center, left and right front, left and right rear and a subwoofer. More recent 7.1 systems require a total quantity of 8 speakers by adding 2 extra side speakers.
Therefore, home theater setups have become relatively complex. Running cables to remote speakers also is often undesirable due to aesthetic reasons. Vendors have lately launched new products and technologies. These products were designed to help simplify the installation of home theater products. The first option is named virtual surround sound. This solution will take the audio components which would typically be broadcast by the remote loudspeakers. It then uses signal processing to those components and inserts special cues and phase delays. Next these components are mixed with the front speaker sound. As the signal processing is based on how the human hearing detects the origin of audio, the audio components which underwent signal processing can be mixed with the front speaker components and sent by the front speakers. The signal processing has an effect that will trick the listener into assuming that the sound is coming from a different location.
The advantage of this technology is that only a couple of speakers are required and no long speaker cord has to be run throughout the viewing environment. The drawback however is that each human will process sound differently because of the dissimilar shape of each human ear. The signal processing of these virtual surround systems is based on a standard model which was calculated with a standard ear. However, virtual surround will not function equally well for each human.
An alternative approach for simplifying home theater setups and eliminating long speaker cord runs is to use wireless surround sound kits or wireless speakers. A wireless solution will typically incorporate a transmitter component that connects to the TV or source in addition to wireless amplifiers that will be connected to the remote speakers. The transmitter will normally have amplified speaker inputs along with line-level inputs and have a volume control to adjust it to the source audio level.
Whereas a number of wireless speaker devices come with a wireless amplifier that connects to two speakers, other products offer separate wireless amplifiers for each speaker. The most basic wireless kits employ FM transmission. FM broadcast is susceptible to noise and audio distortion. More advanced products employ digital audio transmission to completely preserve the original audio. To be certain that all speakers are in sync in a multi-channel application, make sure that you choose a wireless system which has an audio latency of just a few milliseconds at most. If the latency is higher than 10 ms then there will be an echo effect which will deteriorate the surround sound. Most wireless gadgets work in the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands. A number of products utilize the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band and as a result have less competition from other wireless products.
Another method, which is often referred to as sound bars utilizes side-reflecting loudspeakers. There are extra loudspeakers located at the front which broadcast the audio for the remote speakers from the front at an angle. The sound is then reflected by walls and appears to be coming from besides or behind the viewer. The result largely is determined by the shape of the room and interior design and not function well in a lot of real-world scenarios due to different room shapes and obstacles in the room.
As in the past setting up a TV has been relatively easy, the emergence of multi-channel audio has made installing home theater systems a great deal more complex by requiring a number of external speakers to create surround sound. In case of 5.1 surround, 6 speakers are used: center, left and right front, left and right rear and a subwoofer. More recent 7.1 systems require a total quantity of 8 speakers by adding 2 extra side speakers.
Therefore, home theater setups have become relatively complex. Running cables to remote speakers also is often undesirable due to aesthetic reasons. Vendors have lately launched new products and technologies. These products were designed to help simplify the installation of home theater products. The first option is named virtual surround sound. This solution will take the audio components which would typically be broadcast by the remote loudspeakers. It then uses signal processing to those components and inserts special cues and phase delays. Next these components are mixed with the front speaker sound. As the signal processing is based on how the human hearing detects the origin of audio, the audio components which underwent signal processing can be mixed with the front speaker components and sent by the front speakers. The signal processing has an effect that will trick the listener into assuming that the sound is coming from a different location.
The advantage of this technology is that only a couple of speakers are required and no long speaker cord has to be run throughout the viewing environment. The drawback however is that each human will process sound differently because of the dissimilar shape of each human ear. The signal processing of these virtual surround systems is based on a standard model which was calculated with a standard ear. However, virtual surround will not function equally well for each human.
An alternative approach for simplifying home theater setups and eliminating long speaker cord runs is to use wireless surround sound kits or wireless speakers. A wireless solution will typically incorporate a transmitter component that connects to the TV or source in addition to wireless amplifiers that will be connected to the remote speakers. The transmitter will normally have amplified speaker inputs along with line-level inputs and have a volume control to adjust it to the source audio level.
Whereas a number of wireless speaker devices come with a wireless amplifier that connects to two speakers, other products offer separate wireless amplifiers for each speaker. The most basic wireless kits employ FM transmission. FM broadcast is susceptible to noise and audio distortion. More advanced products employ digital audio transmission to completely preserve the original audio. To be certain that all speakers are in sync in a multi-channel application, make sure that you choose a wireless system which has an audio latency of just a few milliseconds at most. If the latency is higher than 10 ms then there will be an echo effect which will deteriorate the surround sound. Most wireless gadgets work in the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands. A number of products utilize the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band and as a result have less competition from other wireless products.
Another method, which is often referred to as sound bars utilizes side-reflecting loudspeakers. There are extra loudspeakers located at the front which broadcast the audio for the remote speakers from the front at an angle. The sound is then reflected by walls and appears to be coming from besides or behind the viewer. The result largely is determined by the shape of the room and interior design and not function well in a lot of real-world scenarios due to different room shapes and obstacles in the room.
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