How To Desgin A Home Theater
♫ Friday, August 7th, 2009Are you an avid movie watcher or do you enjoy the HDTV sports packages so prevalent in today’s cable TV set ups ? What is the dimensions of your viewing room ? What materials are present in that room? Do you mainly listen to music and what kind of music? Every of the answers will help to determine what your home theater design will look like.
What you are trying to do is to simulate the surroundings you find at a real movie theater to make the most of your viewing and listening pleasure. You have a surround sound system that can have all kind of speaker settings. This is what distinguishes your home theater from a regular television viewing situation. In order to get the maximum enjoyment from these features, you have first decide where you want to place the wide screen TV and where you want to sit. As you do this, keep in mind that the speakers will have to be located in different places around the room. This will give you the feeling of actually being in the middle of the action .
Your home theater design should also take in consideration the acoustic characteristics of the materials in the room. Bare walls do not work well with sound quality, as the reverberations tend to muddy the sound. Some type of sound absorbing materials should be installed to help the acoustic balance. Ceiling panels, draperies, and rugs are all assisting in achieving this balance. The actual atmosphere should be planned so that the lights in the room are controllable and are adding to the atmosphere. A dimmer switch on some of the lights is probably the easiest method of controlling the lights , or you could put in buried lights to imitate the lighting in a movie theater.
The physical comfort of the viewers is of equal significance in home theater design. Temperature regulation keeps the room at a reasonable level and proper ventilation will offer air movement for a pleasurable atmosphere.
The following step is to locate the speakers in the optimum configuration which will increase the listening experience. Surround sound speaker systems come in different arrangements with the basic one being the 5.1 channel set-up, made up of three front speakers, two side speakers, and a sub-woofer. The 6.1 channel set-up adds a channel (a rear speaker) to the 5.1 configuration, while the 7.1 adds yet another sub-woofer for increased bass. Your ideal home theater configuration will take into consideration the necessity for best location of these loudspeakers in terms of the physical separation required and optimum separation of sound . Putting the loudspeakers on the floor is not the best way to place them , as the floor picks up the vibrations and distorts the sound. Arrangements must be made to raise the speakers so that nothing comes between your ears and the speakers. This will enlarge your experience in the best home theater design possible.
