Introduction to Surround Sound
If you have a large screen TV you may want to create the atmosphere of a Cinema within your home and investing in a surround system is a good way to achieve this. With Surround Sound you are able to use the exact same digital soundtracks available in the cinema.
Speakers
To get the full experience of Surround Sound you'll need at least five speakers placed around your room and a processor box to decode the sound from your DVD Player or Set-top box. These can be bought individually, but are widely available as complete units as surround Sound Systems or Home Cinema Systems. The packaged systems usually work out a lot cheaper than buying individual speakers although these packages can vary quite significantly in quality.
Most Surround Systems (often called 5.1) have five main channels distributing the sound and require five speakers. The centre speaker is placed directly above your TV screen and the other four should be positioned in each corner of the room. A sixth sound channel is used to drive the subwoofer which is used to generate very deep bass sounds and rumblings. These are extremely effective when watching action or disaster movies, creating a terrific atmosphere. The subwoofers are usually a rather large box but because it's quite difficult to identify where deep bass sounds originate the placement of the speaker (box) isn't as important as the positioning of the other five speakers.
Sound Processor
The AV Receiver or sound processor is the bit that does all the hard work. It decodes the audio signal and then decides which signals should be distributed to which speakers. There are different types of audio signal that can decode into surround sound. Analogue stereo is the simplest form and can be turned into surround sound using Dolby Pro Logic or Pro Logic II decoding. Pro Logic will produce surround sound from any stereo signal, although it does work best with audio that was meant to be heard in surround like movie soundtracks, or movies on TV rather than CDs or radio.
Home Cinema Systems
Home cinema systems supply excellent surround sound and are available from major brands like Panasonic, Hitachi, Sony and others. They offer good value for money and if you want to recreate the digital surround sound created in your local cinema while sitting in the comfort of your own home, then you should seriously consider investing a few hundred pounds in a home cinema system.
