Before you go to the store and buy a surround set at random, it’s a good idea to delve into surround systems and how you can best organize your room to get the most out of a new audio set-up. This is the best way to place your surround sound speakers.
A surround set is great; especially when watching a movie on your HD television, the story really comes to life with cinema sound through multiple speakers. In the past, such a system cost just a few thousand euros, but nowadays you can enjoy three-dimensional sound much more cheaply.
It is advisable to dive into the material for a while, because the difference between nice sound and super sound is often easy to realize yourself by purchasing the right equipment and placing the speakers in the right place in your living room.
Why surround?
Let’s start from the beginning: what is a surround set anyway? In principle, with a surround set we talk about multiple speakers that are distributed throughout your living room. This is in contrast to a stereo set, which consists of only two speakers: one channel for the left and one channel for the right.
One of the speakers in a surround system is the subwoofer. This large speaker only reproduces low frequencies and therefore provides the so-called “oomph” in the sound. Big explosion in a movie? The subwoofer ensures that your neighbors can enjoy. Well, theoretically, because if you set up and position the subwoofer properly, you can still get along well with your neighbors in the coming years.
In addition to speakers, a surround set also needs a surround receiver. That is the device to which you connect all speakers. You also connect the sources to this; this can be, for example, an HD television, but also a game computer, a CD player or a blu-ray device. You can buy all parts separately and combine brands, but it is also possible to purchase an all-in-one solution.
Receiver
The AV receiver, also known as the audio-video receiver, is the focal point of your surround system. It is important that you choose a good receiver for your set-up, because if the receiver has too little power, it cannot control your speakers optimally. Conversely, it is also not convenient to buy a very powerful receiver if your speakers cannot handle that power at all.
When choosing a receiver you always have to look at the total picture: what kind of speakers do I have, what do I want to spend on the entire system, what do I want to be able to connect to it, et cetera.
A receiver is sometimes incorrectly called an amplifier, but that is only partially correct. A receiver is always an amplifier, but an amplifier is not always a receiver. A receiver is more than just an amplifier of the audio signals that come in; a receiver can also handle digital connections, such as HDMI signals from your television, or offer integrated streaming options.
The latter is especially interesting if, for example, you have a Spotify subscription. The power of the amplifier component is important if you want to know how “loud” the sound can be reproduced. That in quotation marks, because just like with megapixels on a camera, the power of one amplifier cannot be compared one-to-one with that of the other amplifier. Much more important is the quality of the components.
That is why it is smarter to test a receiver in a hi-fi store than simply relying on the dry specifications of a device. You need a special surround receiver for a surround setup. There are also normal stereo receivers on the market, but they are only suitable for connecting two speakers: left and right.
Speakers
Then on to the speakers. You need more than two speakers for a surround setup. How much? That differs. The most traditional surround system is called 5.1, where the 5 stands for five speakers, the .1 means that the system has one subwoofer. In total, a 5.1 setup therefore has six speakers and we are talking about a six-channel system. A subwoofer is also referred to as an LFE speaker, which stands for Low Frequency Effects. In that case the normal speakers are called Full Range Channels.
There are many more surround setups. A well-known other system is 7.1, seven speakers and one subwoofer. More expensive systems can even have multiple subwoofers; there are 10.2 systems and even 22.2 systems. Systems like that are overkill for the standard living room, but if you want to convert a separate room into a home cinema you can of course consider a system with 24 speakers. In a standard 5.1 system, all speakers have their own name and color coding on the receiver. Most manufacturers adhere to that color scheme, but not all.
The two speakers that you traditionally see next to the television are referred to as Front Left (white) and Front Right (red). In a 5.1 setup you also have a speaker in the middle under the television; this is called Center and has a green connector on the receiver. The channel of the subwoofer is indicated by the color purple. The last two speakers in a 5.1 setup are the Rear Left (blue) and Rear Right (gray). These are smaller speakers and are also referred to as the surround speakers.
Placement of the speakers
One of the most important elements of setting up a surround set is that you think carefully about the placement of the speakers. Let’s assume that you mainly use your surround set when you watch TV. The first thing to do is to ensure an optimal position in relation to your television. The television must in any case be placed at eye level, the distance is a bit trickier. The optimum distance depends on the size of your television. The Consumers’ Association has done a test and indicates that the ideal viewing distance is about 2.4 times the screen diagonal of your television. For a 50-inch TV, that’s 120 inches (roughly 3 meters). That is not an exact value, so experiment primarily on what works best for you.
If you know where you are and where your TV is, it’s time for the Front Left and Front Right speakers. The two speakers and you must form a triangle. If you are sitting in front of the TV at your listening position and with your head to the left, you must be able to look exactly into the speaker. Not literally of course, but turn the speaker a little so that the sound is sent directly to your head, not to the wall next to you.
The Center speaker is easy; put this in the middle of your television. You prefer to place the rear speakers a little further apart than the front speakers. A position about 20 to 50 centimeters behind your head is recommended. If possible, also set the rear speakers slightly higher than the front speakers.
The hardest part is the subwoofer. In contrast to higher frequencies, low frequencies from a subwoofer cannot be located. So it doesn’t matter where you put the subwoofer, you will think. Nothing is less true, unfortunately. The big problem with a subwoofer is the standing waves that the device creates. This is because the sound is chained from wall to wall, generating much more bass in different places in your living room than in other places. You have to listen carefully to where your subwoofer sounds best.
In general: don’t place the subwoofer too close to a wall, place it relatively close to one of the front speakers and try not to place it in front of you.
Connect and set
You usually connect the speakers to the receiver using an analog speaker cable. Make sure you connect the cables correctly. Each speaker cable always has a plus and a minus pole. It is essential that you connect the plus of the receiver to the plus of the speaker. If you do not, the speaker is “out of phase”. Your loudspeaker will not be destroyed, but the sound will be worse, without you being able to perceive it initially. Sound may come from the speaker, but if you listen to it carefully, you will hear that the sound does not really have a direction, that low frequencies are often missing and that certain sounds are lost.
You usually connect the subwoofer to the “subwoofer” or “lfe” output. In most cases this is a tulip output. If you buy a 5.1 set, a subwoofer cable is almost always included. This connection also applies to active subwoofers, or models with an integrated amplifier. You can find this in almost all high-end 5.1 speaker systems that are sold without a receiver.
If you have a passive subwoofer, it must be connected to the receiver with normal speaker cables and the receiver controls the gain. You must have a receiver that can handle a subwoofer.
Other devices
A good surround set of course not only consists of a TV and speakers. If you want to be able to watch a movie or play a CD from time to time, then a blu-ray player is necessary. With this device you can not only play Blu-ray discs, but also DVDs and CDs. Please note that the blu-ray player must be suitable to play ultra hd (also known as 4K) via the hdmi connection. It would be a shame that a new 4K bluray is only transmitted to your ultra-HD television in normal HD quality.
Another device that you can connect to a receiver is, for example, a game console. You connect a modern game console like the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox One to your receiver via a digital audio cable. The output on the game console is often referred to as Digital Out and the connection to your receiver is usually called Digital In or Optical In.
Finally, you may want to play content from your smartphone directly over the speakers. If that is the case, it is useful if your receiver has a Wi-Fi module on board, so that you can stream audio directly from your phone.
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