Home cinema Theatre

[doctor]

Does anyone have experience in setting up a home Theatre?
I would like to learn and set up one; Could someone advise me with their recommendations?

[Alex]

I'm afraid you'll have to be a bit more specific than that - different people mean different things by home cinema. Specific questions:

What exactly do you want? Surround sound, plasma screen, projector?

How much do you want to spend?

What do you want advice on? What to buy or how to set it up?

[unrealrocks]

Actually setting one up. Theres just a few basic rules to follow to get more from a system ...

The front speakers need to form an equliateral triangle with your listenening position.

The centre speaker needs to be as close to the centre of the screen as possible.

Don't put any speakers in corners.

Depending on what you want to use the system for - using the system for music the speakers should face in on axis, or for movies at 60 degrees facing in or down the room depending on preferance.

Getting a simple SPL meter is useful unless your decoder has an auto setup feature. Nearly all decoders have a test tone, setting the SPL meter to dBC and then adjust all the channels (from listening point) to 75dB

[99Flake]

Not meaning to contradict the above but any front ported speakers should be fine in a corner. It is mainly rear ported speakers that suffer due to the boom and reflections you get. Any decent speakers worth having should be firing their sound forward enough to not need the walls. Also a new Denon amp has a little mike that you put in the middle of the room and it listens to your speakers and sets them up accordingly.

[unrealrocks]

All speakers responses are affected by being put in a corner. Try it for yourself - start talking and walk backwards into a corner, your voice will become much more boomy! And humans are front ported (LOL).

[99Flake]

I would agree with that yes but my main reason for saying it is that a living room is no way near a good area for listening. Sofas tables etc all lead to bad sound, therefore a decent set of front ports will quite happily live in the corner. I will concede yes they would be better not but you will get away with it and under normal listening conditions won't notice it. Also what you say about voice is true but again the human mouth hasn't been designed to provide very directional sound. Most speakers use their front baffles to stop sound escaping behind them, huge amounts of data is collected and the cabinets are purpose designed to prevent this.

[ThinkSta]

Sorry to drop in on a conversation to make some corrections, but:

Sofas: Tend to be good for acoustics as they soak up a lot of unwanted reflected sound.

Corners: All speakers will tend to increase their bass response in a corner.

Human Mouth: Has evolved to provide directional sound in order that we can direct communications in the most energy efficient manner.

Speaker ports: Only effect the cabinet resonance and therefore low frequencies and are entirely non-directional (apart from 'chuffing' sounds you get when they're VERY loud)

Front baffle design: Designed to stop refraction of very high frequencies to the sides of the speaker. Nearly all speakers are only directional at the highest frequencies - plenty of noise comes out the sides and back.