Home Theater Advice:

My simple HT that gets the job done.
ACI Emerald Center, home build "pointy head" Seas, ACI Sub-1s (Passive Titan I)
Yamaha HT with room correction, Bryston 3b subs power amp,

Sony DVD
CRT 36" HD

I have been meeting a number of folks at Costco and the like looking for advice on home theaters (HT). If this is you, here is some basic unsolicited advice:

1. You get what you pay for. HT ranges from $299 for a complete setup to $10,000 or more just for front speakers. If you are in Best Buy, Circuit City or the like you can do better. These guys are good for mass market units but really don't spend much time on better, slower selling equipment. One trick is it find the high end store in your area and take some of your own CDs in. Listen to a $10,000 system for a half an hour and then compare it to the systems you are looking at. If you cannot tell the difference then save your money and go for a lower cost system. Spend the savings on a big screen TV.

2. Technology has not reduced the prices of good sound equipment to $299 or $499 for the complete setup. A decent starter rig will set you back $1,500. The teen salesperson has been in "the business" for a short time and is telling you what he/she read in a brochure and is basing his/her analysis on loudness. Do not seek advice from these people.

3. Size does matter. You will not get long term satisfaction out of a speaker box the size of a brick. Or two bricks. Or three bricks. If you like the sound of brick style speakers then you don't need this advice. Again, they are your ears and buy what sounds good to you. You do not need monster speakers, just start at something that could hold two or three gallons and see what you like. A sub woofer should hold at least five-ten gallons. Let your ears to the walking.

4. Never buy a speaker from a company that makes electronics: Sony, Yamaha, Pioneer, Philips, Kenwood. You will be disappointed in the long run.

5. If you are over 35, every company name you lusted after when you were young now makes junk. This is of course not totally true, but the message is to do the research and some listening. Companies have changed a lot and have had at least three new owners since you were in college. Examples are JBL, KLH, AR, Cerwin Vega, Pioneer, Kenwood and a host of others.

6. A sub woofer is key to these new systems and will be the first big disappointment if you don't get a good one. This is where the fun is and a cheap one will take all the ooomph out of the new toy. Bring your own music to the store for testing and and use a piece with defined bass, not explosions. Can you hear strings on the low notes or is there just a rumble? Listen to the cheap one first. Hear that Grrrrr rumble? That is the sound of a sub saying "this is all those notes below 50hz mushed together" sometimes called a "one note wonder". Find a unit that sounds the *least* like that Grrrrrr unit. You really only need a unit that goes down to 40Hz. That last 10Hz gets expensive and the boxes get larger. Get a clean 40Hz and it will be fine. Those who drive giant 4x4 SUVs and rush to the car wash when they go through a mud puddle can ignore this advice.

7. If you are running out of money then cut back on the rear speakers. There is not much coming out of them anyway and you can live with a small set of $50 units (or none) for a year or two. Your spouse will appreciate having small speakers in the back. Another idea for cutting back is to temporarily use your existing stereo front speakers, assuming you like them. Then upgrade later. If you are adding a subwoofer, the receiver will direct the lows from your old speakers to the sub and they may sound better. This will not work if your old speakers are not that great.

8. Don't underestimate the importance of the center speaker in economy systems. This is where most of the sound comes from in a HT system. The number of speaker drivers, the color of the cones, the material in the cone, the slanted fronts; all do not add up to good sound. Many of the really expensive speakers still use black paper cone material and use one smallish woofer and one tweeter. Listen carefully to speech on these units. Make sure you can hear clearly from off center to the speaker. Take the speaker IQ test: speakerIQtest

9. Don't discount selling your current system. I was in a store giving unsolicited advice and the guy described upgrading a vintage system that would bring something like $1,500 on ebay. He was taking it to the basement. And his current budget was $800. He could do a lot with $2,300.

10. Don't get hung up on watts. Most of the measurements are bogus. The watt number on speakers is only so you will not blow the speaker *if* you crank it up and has no bearing on the sound quality. The wattage on amps are lies and are the highest random number the company can print without getting sued. Remember, the amp company made up the test to test their own amps. RMS, "peak power" and "total power" are not a legal terms. A "real" 60 watts per channel is plenty to power 99% of HT systems. And it takes twice the wattage to gain just 3 db in loudness. Those who drive Corvettes and Hummers tend to ignore this advice.

11. When you check out systems in the stores, bring in your own CDs. It will help a lot to know the music and have some frame of reference. Everyone is a little embarassed to bring in CDs, we all think we are being judged. If you are new to this, understand that our brains are wired to learn to like whatever we have. So if you have a boom box with very bright highs and rumbly undefined lows, you will be inclined toward "that sound" in a new system. So listening takes a lot of thinking.

Find a good quality CD. Many popular CDs are mixed for cars stereos and are not full range. Find a couple of CDs that have been recorded (not remixed) in the past five years and that have clear sections of music in three ranges: lows, like a string bass; mids, like a female voice; and highs like a top hat or cymbal. Jazz is popular for testing speakers. Ask yourself these questions: Can I really hear the bass strings or is it a mushy rumble? Does the female singer sound smooth up and down her range? Are the highs defined and can I tell which instrument is playing? Here is a scoring sheet:

Watch for speaker placement, even at home. Placement can really change the way a speaker sounds. Try moving your current speakers to see if you get better sound. Placing an expensive speaker in the same place as your current speakers may not improve things much if your room or speaker placement is funky. In the store, having speakers lined up in a room is cool but positioning will make a sonic differences. You have to overcome this obstacle. Check Part5 and Part6 of the audio FAQ.

Watch for loudness. Every speaker has an "efficiency", that is, how well it converts electrical input into sound. When you compare speakers next to each other (called AB testing) there may be some fluctuation in loudness. It may be too small to notice, but our brains are wired to think louder sounds better. So in AB testing the louder speaker will always sound a little better even if you cannot tell it is louder. Salesmen know this and some salespeople will move the volume control up slightly on the speaker with the better profit margin. The only work around for this is to use a sound pressure level (SPL) meter, $35 at radio shack (get the analog, not digital). Buy it now because you will need it for HT setup later anyway.

You will also need a setup DVD. The best HT setup DVD is by AVIA.

Good luck!

Copyright Peter Jay Smith 2005 Return to helarc.com