[Samurai]

How to buy a low-end but decent Home Theatre System

This article is addressed to people who want to have a good home theatre system in a low budget, say within a $1000, excluding the TV. This is not for audiophiles or people with bigger budgets. I am only trying to address people who don't want to get into technical details, yet like to have a good home theatre system.

First let me deal with the Bose issue. With desis, Bose is a big attraction, don't know why, but it is considered a prestige to have a Bose Home Theatre system. Even if you have a 10 times better HT system, your desi visitors and friends will still say "Hmm, not a Bose". No matter how much you defend your system, you won't convince them. That's the power of brand name.

If prestige factor is important, you would want a Bose HTS, and your choice is simple. Pick a dollar figure for your budget, and then look for the most expensive system within that budget. You are done.

Now for people who are not merely swayed by brand name, you guys need to learn a little more and make more decisions. And for that extra effort and prestige sacrifice, you will get a better system for less money.

A Home theatre system is essentially a surround sound system. It was discovered in the 70s (by lots of experimenting) that the minimum number of speakers required to provide a true surround sound effect is five, which includes LeftFront, Center, RightFront, LeftRear and RightRear. The woofer provides the bass effect and is non-directional, it has no role to play in surround sound. Therefore, if somebody tries to sell you a 2-channel, 3-channel or even 4-channel surround sound, it is not true surround sound. Hence the name 5.1, five mid/full-range speakers and a woofer. You can better the effect by going to 6.1, 7.1, 8.1 or even 9.1 systems. Also, HT systems are mainly aimed at movie effects rather than music. If your fancy is mostly towards to music, a HTS is not your cup of tea. For once you may be better off buying a Bose stereo music system, afterall Bose created their brand by selling great stereo music systems.

There are 4 major components in a Home Theatre System.

1) Source component: These are equipments that provide the video and audio signals. For example, VCR, DVD player, Cable Box, Dish Receiver, CD player etc. You can have many source components in a single Home theatre setup, most have three namely VCR, DVD player and Cable/Dish Receiver box.

2) A/V Receiver: This equipment has three major functions. (a) Multiplexer: The receiver can take many audio/video inputs and will selectively give out only one video/audio output. For example, you can connect VCR, DVD Player and Cable to the receiver input and then connect the single output to the TV and the speakers. And the receiver will let you select any one of the inputs to be played at a given time. (b) Decoder: The receiver will decode the digitally encoded music like Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS or matrix encoded Prologic surround sound signals into separate channels as designed by the sound engineers of the original sound tracks. (c) Amplifier: The reciever will amplify each channel signals to provide high current so that it can directly drive the speakers.

3) Speakers: This one is obvious, you need to hear the sound, therefore you need speakers. As explained before, you need minimum five speakers for a true surround sound experience. There are different types of speakers, full range, tweeters, mid-range, woofers. The drivers or the cones that play high frequencies are called tweeters, the drivers that play mid-frequencies are called mid-range, and the drivers that play low-frequencies or bass are called woofers. Many speakers have mutliple drivers or cones. Lower the frequencies, bigger the cone the driver needs. If you fancy compact satellite speakers as main speakers, you will need a separate woofer to play the low frequencies. The speakers that have all three types of drivers are called full range speakers. If all your speakers are full-range speakers, you can pretty much leave out the separate woofer.

4) Television: This is one item where most people don't need much advice or at least think they don't need any advice. If you like the picture quality and the screen size, and one can safely buy it. Still, I would like to give some advice. If you are buying Plasma, DLP or HDTV, you can't go wrong buying based on size and picture quality. However, my advice is for people buying normal TV. Please make sure it has progressive scan with 3:2 pulldown correction. It makes a huge difference in picture quality. Go to circuit city and compare a TV with and without progressive scan with 3:2 pulldown correction. One will be smooth and have no visible horizontal lines, guess which one.

Most aspiring HTS owners already own TVs and DVD players and VCRs. Therefore, let's keep them out of the scope of this discussion. So we have entire $1000 or less towards the A/V Receivers and Speakers.

If you are really on a shoe string budget which is below $500, then are you not going get a good HT system. That's really very low. If you still want to have a HT system, you could buy one of those Home Theatre in Box kind of deals. However, most of them fall short of producing good surround sound. But hey, you may get lucky and land a good system in some sale, you never know.

The segment I am addressing here not techie enough to study every aspect of HT and design a good system. Therefore, let me make it simple.

A/V Receiver:

1) It should at least decode Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS and Prologic II.

2) It should drive at least 100W of power in each separate channel.

3) It should accept both Optical and Coax digital inputs. Some DVD players have only Optical output and some have only Coax. If you change your DVD player, you don't have to end up buying a new receiver. This did happen to me once.

4) Look for speaker output rated at 8 Ohms since that will match most speakers.

5) Try to pick from companies well known for their HT audio hardware like Yamaha, Onkyo, etc.

6) Know this, you can't easily spoil the speakers by sending more power than they are rated. However, you can easily spoil the speakers if the Receiver maxes out and sends distorted signal. Therefore, always try to have a Receiver whose power is rated higher than the speakers.

Speakers:

1) If you don't know much about speaker selection, you are better off with speaker packages that have 5 speakers and one subwoofer. And they are cheaper than buying individual speakers. Plus, you don't have to worry about speaker matching.

2) Make sure each speaker can handle at least 80W max rms. Don't be fooled by PMPO (Peak Music Power output) power specification. Divide the PMPO by 1.414 to get the real RMS power value.

3) Make sure impedence rating of speakers match the rating of the A/V Receiver. Usually 8 Ohms is a safe bet.

4) Go listen to the speakers at a showroom. Remember, you don't measure speakers by their loudness. Look for lack of noise, crispness, timbre. Pick the kind of movie with lots of sound effect and play it through that. Look for clarity if you can't make out anything else.

Speaker wire: Many speaker packages do provide speaker wires, although most are rated between 18 to 24 guage, lower the better. However, if you have to buy it, go with 16 guage. You can buy 100 ft of 16 guage for 20-30 bucks. Don't worry about monster cable, it's very good, but that's one more overpriced brand.

Home theatre systems are not primarily designed for music, although it could be a decent stereo system. Recently many music tracks are encoded in Dolby Digital, which are very good. The songs of Hindi movie Taal on the DVD sounds heavenly on the HTS, and sounds flat if played from a CD on the same HTS. The difference is that DVD version is encoded in 5.1 and the CD version is 2-channel stereo.

If you want to play music files on the computer via the HTS, it can be easily done. Connect the Line-out of the computer sound card to one of the audio CD input of the A/V receiver using a Y cable. However, that music will only be 2-channel stereo.

Now, if you still want a Bose and want to have a good HT system, you can strike a compromise, a good one. Buy a Bose speaker package that only has 5+1 speakers and none of their DVD/CD/Tuner modules. Get a A/V Receiver from a different company and set it up. Then, you will have a Bose Home Theatre that actually sound good. Your Bose-happy friends will only see the speakers and not the Receiver, that will keep them happy or should I say envious...