Useful Tips For Installing Home Theater Speakers

Modern home theater systems have become fairly complex. Many people don't know how to properly set up some speakers let alone a modern home theater receiver. If you don't want to spend money to contract the installation out to a professional, then you'll have to learn some of the basics regarding the installation of home theater systems. In this article I will focus on setting up home theater speakers. I'm also going to explain some of the latest gadgets that help you install speakers without running speaker cable.

The process of setting up surround speakers involves several steps. The first step is to find the proper position for each speaker. Home theater systems come in different versions. The most commonly used version which is called "5.1 surround" uses a total number of six speakers. However, the more recent 7.1 surround version uses a total number of eight speakers. These speakers are located throughout your room. The center speaker would be located in front of your sitting area, the front speakers are located in each corner in the front of your room while the two rear speakers are located in the left and right corner in the back of your room. Setting up the speakers in the right spot is the first step of setting up your home theater system.

The next step is to unpack and configure your AV receiver. The AV receiver is the core of your home theater system. It not only reads your movies from a DVD or from a home network but also decodes all of the information such as video and audio and amplifies the audio to be able to drive your surround speakers. As such, modern home theater receivers are fairly complex. First of all, make the connection between your television and your AV receiver. This connection can be made via analog video cable or by using HDMI cable. The majority of modern TVs accept HDMI cable connections. This standard offers the highest resolution and best picture quality. However, if you still own an older TV then you will need to use analog video cable.

The next step in setting up your system is to make the connections between your surround speakers and your receiver. If you are using a modern wireless surround kit for your rear speakers or for all of your speakers then the amount of speaker wire is a lot less than if you are hard wiring all of your speakers to your AV receiver. When calculating the amount of speaker wiring, keep in mind that you are not going to run the wires in a straight line but around bends and corners in your room and as such you'll need to purchase a sufficient amount of speaker cable in order to run the wires accordingly.

A wireless surround sound system can be an elegant alternative to running long speaker wires. These models either work directly with the AV receiver or come as a combination including a transmitter and a wireless amplifier where the transmitter connects with your AV receiver. Units which are made by third party manufacturers usually come with a transmitter that can connect to both line-level audio outputs as well as speaker-level audio outputs. This ensures that regardless of whether your AV receiver has unamplified audio outputs for your rear speakers, you'll always be able to use the wireless set for your rear speakers.

The calibration of your surround speakers is the final step in your setup. If you have an AV receiver that supports auto calibration then all you need to do is to connect a test microphone with your receiver and then while holding the microphone next to your sitting area run the auto calibration process. That will balance the sound level of all speakers and also double check that the phase of your speakers is accurate.