Saturday, June 23, 2012

Instructions For Installing Your Home Theater System

By Helen Schreiner


Do you want to avoid the cost of having your new home theater system or your speakers set up by a professional? An installer will typically charge at least several hundred dollars for a simple install. There are several problems that are commonly made. I will give some pointers to help make installing a set of 2-channel speakers or wireless surround sound system models a snap.

After unpacking your new home theater system, you will usually find one central component as well as 5 or 7 speakers. The central component is going to provide the audio for all of your speakers which you are going to set up. This central component is also known as surround sound receiver or amplifier. It is the central hub of your home theater system.

Make sure that you put this receiver in a location that is fairly centrally located to minimize the amount of speaker wire that you need to run. You don't necessarily need to put the receiver right next to your TV. Just make sure it is in a dry and safe place. Also, be sure that you can easily reach the receiver from your TV or DVD/Blue-ray player because you will need to connect these.

Connecting the receiver to power and to your TV or DVD is fairly straightforward. Most modern TVs have an optical output which connects directly to your receiver via a fiberoptical cable. This cable may not be included with your system but it is available at any electronics store. However, setting up your speakers may be a bit more tricky.

If you have wireless rear speakers you will not need as much speaker cable and the setup will be somewhat easier. First of all, measure how much speaker cable you will need. Make sure to add some extra cable to take into account those bends and corners. Pick the gauge of the speaker cable depending on how much power you intend to drive your speakers with. The higher the power the thicker the speaker cable. Your subwoofer will usually have a built-in amp and connect to your receiver via RCA cable.

The satellite speakers each connect via a speaker terminal which is usually color coded to help ensure proper polarity. Most speaker cable will show one strand in a different color. This is essential since it will help ensure the correct polarity of the speaker terminal connection. Simply attach the different-color strand to the speaker terminal which is colored. Similarly, each speaker output of your surround receiver is color coded. When attaching the cable to your receiver, observe the right polarity once again. This will keep all of your speakers in phase.

Wireless rear speakers will typically incur an audio delay during transmission. This delay is also called latency. Typically the latency ranges between 1 and 20 ms. For optimum effect, it is best if all of the speakers are in sync. If you have a system that uses wireless rears and wired front speakers, i.e. you have a mix of wireless and wired speakers, you should try to delay the audio going to the wired speakers by the latency of the wireless speakers.

Check the user manual to find out how to set a delay on specific channels. Usually home theater systems that were designed for wireless speakers or come with a wireless transmitter will have this capability and allow your speakers to be in phase.




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