When you watch a movie at the theater, sound comes from all directions. That’s the kind of experience you can recreate at home with a surround sound system.
To choose the right one for your home, consider your media consumption and room size. Then, learn about the types of surround sound systems available.
1. Immersive Sound
Immersive sound formats, like Dolby Atmos and DTS: X, offer multiple audio channels positioned around the listener that enable sounds to be precisely placed and moved in three dimensions. The resulting spatial effects can create a sense of realism that increases the audience’s immersion in the film or television show, enhancing their viewing experience.
Unlike standard stereo, immersive surround audio provides a wider range of options for audio engineers. This allows more nuanced audio cues to be used to build atmosphere, add suspense, or help the viewer focus on a specific element of a scene.
Unlike previous surround formats that required separate mixes for each potential playback format, immersive audio can be delivered in a single bitstream with metadata that is decoded on the fly and used to adjust the mix to the listening system’s configuration. This can significantly reduce the amount of time and resources needed to produce a surround mix while maintaining a high level of quality.
2. Realism
Imagine yourself sitting in a movie theater and watching an action scene. Cars whizz by in front of you, jets roar overhead, and sirens wail in the distance. All of this is made possible by surround sound, which uses speakers strategically positioned around the room to project audio in different directions and heights.
In addition to making movies and TV shows feel more realistic, surround sound can also add depth and texture to music. Artists like Bjork have used the technology to create immersive, three-dimensional listening experiences.
The most common surround sound setup is a five-channel configuration, sometimes called 5.1. This setup includes speakers in the front, back, and sides of the room as well as a subwoofer to handle low-frequency sounds. The added speaker in the back allows surround sound systems to be more accurate when determining where sounds are coming from, which increases the level of realism. This is a major advantage over traditional stereo sound formats.
3. Multi-Channel Audio
In addition to the left, center, and right speakers of a traditional stereo system, a multichannel audio setup features several other speakers that encircle the listener at ear height. This creates a sense of sound that is realistically immersive.
In a 5.1 system, five speakers are placed around the listener: left, center, right, and two surrounds (left and right rear). An alternative approach adds another two “side” channels to create 7.1 channel audio.
Some recordings are encoded in surround, but most home music releases remain in stereo. This is largely because of the expense associated with the additional channels required for a true surround decoding.
Many newer receivers support a variety of audio formats, including Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. Experiment with the audio settings on your receiver to fine-tune your system to suit your listening preferences and room acoustics. This will improve your experience with movies, TV shows, and music. You can also use a surround processor to convert stereo content into surround.
4. Subwoofers
Whether you are watching a blockbuster or enjoying some classical music a subwoofer can transform the audio quality of your system. The reason is simple – a subwoofer can deliver low level, deep bass tones that you can feel and hear.
A subwoofer produces sound by creating air pressure waves in a large enclosure. These pressure waves are transmitted through the non-resonant materials that the speaker is built from, producing a rich, full low tone.
To avoid distorting the main speakers a subwoofer is often equipped with a low pass filter to remove the higher frequencies from the signal it is fed. The same type of filter can also be used on your receiver to prevent the main speakers from having to reproduce frequencies that they are not designed for.
It is important to ensure that the subwoofers are all level matched as closely as possible (even within a couple of dB) in order to minimize modal peaks that bloat bass and make it unnaturally loud. Experimenting with subwoofer and seat placement to achieve this is well worth the time it takes to do.