By Martina Swagger


The procedure of installing multi-channel audio speakers in home theater systems is fairly tedious and manufacturers have invented new products and technologies including wireless surround sound speakers or surround sound wireless headphones recently to help simplify the installation. I will look at a few of the most recent technologies which were developed to make setting up home theater systems a breeze. I will illustrate what to look out for when making your buying decision.

For that reason, home theater installations have become relatively difficult. Running wires to remote loudspeakers also is often undesirable because of aesthetic reasons. A number of technologies have appeared to simplify this process.

One approach is reducing the quantity of loudspeakers by building virtual speakers. This method applies signal processing to the sound and adds phase shifts and cues to the audio that would ordinarily be sent by the remote loudspeaker. The signal processing is engineered according to how the human hearing determines the location of a sound. The audio signal is then sent through the front loudspeakers. The signal processing has an effect that will trick the listener into presuming that the audio is coming from an alternate location.

The benefit of this technology is that only a couple of speakers are required and no long speaker cable has to be run all through the viewing environment. The disadvantage though is that each human will process sound differently as a result of the different shape of each human ear. The signal processing of these virtual surround systems is based on a standard model which was measured with a standard ear. However, virtual surround will not function equally well for every human.

Virtual surround eliminates the remote speakers and simplifies the installation and also eliminates long speaker cord runs. However, it also has a downside. The shape of each human's ear is slightly different. Thus everybody processes sound in a different way. 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. One more approach for eliminating long speaker cord runs is to use wireless surround sound systems or wireless loudspeakers. A wireless product contains a transmitter and one or several wireless amplifiers. The transmitter connects to the source. The wireless amplifiers connect to the remote speakers. This transmitter will generally come with line-level and also amplified speaker inputs. Ideally it should have a volume control to adjust it to the audio source.

A number of wireless speaker products are designed to connect 2 loudspeakers per wireless amplifier. A superior solution would have a wireless amplifier for each remote loudspeaker to get rid of the wire runs between each of the 2 remote speakers. The most advanced wireless products use digital transmission to eliminate signal degradation. In multi-channel audio devices, it is important to pick a wireless solution with a latency of merely several milliseconds. This will make certain that the audio of all loudspeakers is in perfect sync. A high latency would lead to an echo effect. This effect would degrade the surround effect. Some wireless systems operate at 5.8 GHz which offers the advantage of less competition from other wireless products than devices utilizing the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band.

Another method, which is often named sound bars utilizes side-reflecting speakers. The sound that would normally be broadcast by the remote speakers is instead sent by speakers at the front. These front speakers send the audio at an angle. Then the sound is reflected by the side and rear walls and appears to be originating from besides or behind the viewer. This solution works best in a square room with minimal interior design and obstacles. It will not work well in a lot of real-world scenarios with diverse room shapes however.




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