You want a home theater. You have some of the right stuff. How do you build it? Dave Letterman said, “You need huge home theater stuff. Can’t live without it. But first, you gotta have a hundred and fifty-foot living room.”
People with 15×17 living rooms, like me, might pile them full of enough sound equipment to do justice to a moderate amphitheater. My husband and I, always game for the latest technology, started in that direction.
We gathered good speakers we had throughout the house. We set them all up in the middle of the living room and were about to begin stringing wire. Dan, my husband, who worked in the audio industry for years, said maybe we should think about this.
If some sound is good, huge is not better
First, speakers produce heat. If we loaded our living room with a mass of huge speakers, we’d tax our air conditioning system. We live in the sunny south. Our living room, and likely yours, is rated as a small space when considering sound. Most churches are rated medium – think about that.
The human ear, especially untrained (and mine are incredibly untrained) can’t discern sound quality differences above certain points. We wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between fantastic sound and phenomenal sound.
So, resurrecting a drawing from his days with Pacific Stereo, Dan showed me how sound emanations cross over (little triangle lines on paper) at an apex where the sound is theoretically best. You’re supposed to put your chairs there. Using mega-speakers, ours was in the middle of our driveway.
Buying new theater stuff
We put our dollars where we needed new equipment. We made do with stuff we had or could get reasonably at online auctions. Buying used speakers can be a great idea. If treated well, speakers last a lifetime. There are bargains to be had on 1970s and 1980s gems.
We bought a new sub-woofer and center channel. The Sony subwoofer, good quality, 200 watts, provided darkly weighted sound to counter-balance highs. Like explosions on 24 – ya gotta hear those, right?
Our center channel was Boston Acoustic’s CRC7D, relatively small, but clear and perfect for our room. It enhances mid-tones – where speech comes across. Dan bid online for two Advent 3Cs, vintage beauties — our satellite speakers. The ones behind the listener.
Our splurge was a high-end Panasonic plasma HD TV. The old saying is “garbage in, garbage out”. Without good origin, you don’t get good results. If the picture is lousy, sound doesn’t matter.
The Sound of Sound
We hooked it all up with new cables. Meanwhile, a friend was acquiring mega-wattage speakers and no less than 10 preamps, tuners and switches. He built a steel shelf above his TV to hold a 10-foot center channel speaker. His satellites are as tall as I am. That kinda stuff tickles him.
His living room décor doesn’t appeal to me now, but his sound level keeps the neighborhood clear of small rodents. If you want that experience, tune in to the Home Theater Forum to hook up with soul mates.
To deepen your movie and television watching experience and enjoy intimate, theater- quality sound without climbing over speakers to get to your recliner, read up at sites like Shavano music. Talk to an audio expert at your retail store — one who’s been around and knows it isn’t always about size.
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