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Newest Technologies Make Building Multi-Channel Audio Systems A Breeze

August 17, 2010

Multi-channel audio has become mainstream and manufacturers have come up with many types of basic and more advanced technologies like wireless surround sound speakers, virtual surround sound to simplify the setup of home theater systems. I will look at a number of of the products and technologies that have appeared and give some advice about selecting appropriate components for a hassle-free setup.

Traditionally, setting up a TV would be speedy because they would already provide built-in stereo speakers. This, though, has all changed with multi-channel audio. Today external speakers are utilized to create a surround sound effect. In case of 5.1 surround, 6 speakers are utilized: center, left and right front, left and right rear and a subwoofer. Newer 7.1 systems need a total number of 8 speakers by adding 2 additional side speakers.

As a result, home theater installations have turn out to be rather complicated. Running cables to remote loudspeakers also is often undesirable because of aesthetic reasons. Suppliers have lately launched new products and technologies. These products were created to help simplify the setup of home theater systems.

The first solution is generating so-called virtual speakers by applying signal-processing to the audio and introducing phase shifts and special cues to those audio parts that would ordinarily be sent by the remote loudspeakers. The sound is then broadcast by the front loudspeakers together with the front speaker audio components. The signal processing is modeled after the human hearing. It uses the knowledge about how the human ear can determine the source of sound. The viewer is in effect tricked into assuming the sound is originating from a location other than the front speakers.

Virtual surround avoids the remote speakers and simplifies the setup and also avoids long speaker wire runs. On the other hand, it also has a drawback. The shape of each human’s ear is somewhat dissimilar. Therefore 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 person.

Wireless surround sound devices are another solution for simplifying home speaker installations and normally come with a transmitter module which connects to the source as well as wireless amplifiers which will connect to the remote speakers. The transmitter will normally come with amplified speaker inputs along with line-level inputs and come with a volume control to adjust it to the source audio level.

Some wireless speaker kits are designed to connect 2 loudspeakers per wireless amplifier. A superior option would provide a wireless amplifier for every remote speaker to eliminate the cord runs between each of the 2 remote loudspeakers. The most basic wireless kits use FM transmission. FM broadcast is susceptible to noise and sound distortion. More advanced products make use of digital audio transmission to completely maintain the original audio. Be certain that you choose a wireless system with a low audio latency, at most a few milliseconds. This will make certain that the sound from all speakers, including the non-wireless speakers, is in sync. Low latency is also important for good sync with the video. If the latency is higher than 10 ms then there will be an echo effect which will deteriorate the surround sound. Wireless kits frequently utilize the 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band. A number of products also utilize the 5.8 GHz band. These devices have less competition from other wireless devices than products utilizing the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz bands.

Another method, which is often named sound bars uses side-reflecting loudspeakers. In this case the audio for the remote loudspeakers will be broadcast by individual speakers positioned at the front at an angle and reflected by walls as to appear to be coming from besides or behind the viewer. The result by and large will depend on the shape of the room and interior design and not work well in a lot of real-world scenarios because of different room shapes and obstacles in the room.

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