Speaker Positioning

Home Theater TV Speaker Positioning

The speaker positioning of your home theater is crucial. You’ll have a right front, a center front, a left front, a right rear, and a left rear home speaker. You’ll want to be sure to match these speakers up to the correct wiring into the receiver of your home theater system. In addition, you’ll have a subwoofer that will be placed in front of you in a location that can’t be seen.

Home theater speaker positioning is hugely important. Most home theaters consist of five satellite speakers and a powered subwoofer. This configuration is commonly referred to as a 5.1 channel surround sound. This setup is used by Dolby Digital, DTS, and Dolby Pro Logic signals to re-create soundtracks in your home theater. The five speakers of a 5.1 channel setup physically surround the listening area.

Position Surround Sound Speaker

Each home theater room is unique and compromises must be made based on space and appearance. For instance, some rooms may not have a rear wall on both sides of the listening area. A situation like this requires using either a single wall-mounted speaker and a speaker on a stand, or two speakers on stands. Although it is optimal to have a rear or side wall to mount the rear speakers, you can still achieve great sound by using other placement options.

When you shop for speakers, you should keep in mind that each person has different hearing and preferences. Different people prefer different speakers. However, there are characteristics to look for and certain quality-related specifications of speakers that can be scientifically measured and compared.

Speaker Calibration Position

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind when conducting your speaker positioning is to make sure that your speakers are voice matched. Voice matching means that the left, center, and right speakers are all exhibiting the same tonal characteristics. This becomes important because of the panning effects that are commonly used in movies. Perhaps there is a scene that shows a Jaguar moving from the left to the center to the right side of the television. If your speakers are not properly voice-matched, the Jaguar may sound like a Jaguar when it is on the left side, then it may sound more like a Geo Tracker when it moves into the center. If you do voice matching, you’ll make sure that the car sounds the same no matter where it is on the screen.