Mechanics Hate Us

Multi-channel audio has become mainstream and manufacturers have come up with many types of basic and more advanced technologies like wireless surround speakers, virtual surround sound to simplify the installation of home theater products. I will review the latest trends to understand which devices really work. I will also give some guidance for choosing the best components.

Historically, setting up a TV would be speedy since they would already provide built-in stereo speakers. This, though, has all changed with multi-channel sound. These days external speakers are used to create a surround sound effect. The most commonly used 5.1 surround sound format requires installing a total of 6 loudspeakers. These are one center speaker, two front side speakers, two rear speakers and a subwoofer. The more recent 7.1 standard increases this number to 8 by adding two extra side speakers.

As a result, home theater setups have turn out to be fairly complicated. Running cables to remote loudspeakers also is often undesirable because of aesthetic reasons. A number of technologies have emerged to simplify this procedure.

The first approach is building so-called virtual speakers by applying signal-processing to the audio and introducing phase shifts and special cues to those audio components that would ordinarily be broadcast by the remote loudspeakers. The signal processing is engineered based on how the human hearing determines the location of a sound. The audio signal is then broadcast by the front loudspeakers. Due to the signal processing, the viewer is deceived into thinking the sound is originating from virtual remote surround speakers.

Virtual surround eliminates the remote speakers and simplifies the setup and also avoids long speaker cord runs. On the other hand, it also has a drawback. The form of each human’s ear is slightly dissimilar. For that reason everybody processes sound in a different way. The signal processing is based on measurements which are done using a standard human ear model. If the shape of the ear changes, sound will travel differently. For that reason virtual surround will not function equally well for every person.

One more method for simplifying home theater setups and avoiding long speaker cord runs is to employ wireless surround sound devices or wireless speakers. A wireless solution will normally incorporate a transmitter module that connects to the TV or source and wireless amplifiers that will be connected to the remote loudspeakers. The transmitter will normally have amplified speaker inputs as well as line-level inputs and come with a volume control to adjust it to the source audio level.

Some wireless speaker products are designed to connect 2 loudspeakers per wireless amplifier. A better solution would provide a wireless amplifier for each remote speaker to avoid the cord runs between each of the 2 remote loudspeakers. The most basic wireless systems utilize FM transmission. FM transmission is susceptible to noise and audio distortion. More sophisticated devices make use of digital audio transmission to completely preserve the original audio. To make certain that all speakers are in sync in a multi-channel application, make certain that you pick a wireless system that has an audio latency of just a few milliseconds at most. If the latency is higher than 10 ms then there will be an echo effect which will deteriorate the surround sound. Wireless kits frequently use the 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band. Some products also use the 5.8 GHz band. These products have less competition from other wireless gadgets than products utilizing the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz bands.

Another solution are side-reflecting speakers. These kits are also known as sound bars. There are additional loudspeakers positioned at the front which broadcast the sound for the remote loudspeakers from the front at an angle. The audio is then reflected by walls and seems to be coming from besides or behind the viewer. The effect by and large depends on the shape of the room and interior design and not work well in a lot of real-world scenarios due to different room shapes and obstacles in the room.

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Tags: wireless amplifier, wireless audio, wireless headphones, wireless surround sound

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