There are two main types of speakers to choose from when considering a home theater. The first is a traditional floor standing or wall mounting speaker. The second type is an architectural speaker that can be installed and flush mounted in either the wall or ceiling. These speakers often have directional components that can be aimed toward the listening area without sacrificing sound quality, even though they are hidden in the wall or ceiling. The type of room you have as well as the architectural elements will determine the best type of speaker for you to use.
Speaker Roles – What Do They All Do?
Each speaker in your home theater plays a specific role in bringing the sound track of your movies to life. The two most common speaker layouts are 5.1 and 7.1 configurations. The first number denotes the number of full range speakers in the room and the number after the decimal denotes the number of subwoofers. For example, a 5.1 configuration consists of a center channel speaker, left and right front speakers, left and right surround speakers, and a subwoofer. A 7.1 configuration is the same as a 5.1 with the addition of one pair of speakers located to the rear of the room. There are also configurations coming on the horizon consisting of 9.1 and 13.1, however at this time, no blu-ray content is encoded above a 7.1 configuration
If you get one thing right in your home theater, make sure to buy the best center channel speaker that you can afford and be sure to place it in the right location. Think of the center channel as the anchor of the home theater speaker system. It is the speaker that produces the entire dialog and centers your attention on the screen. This is important to understand because if you can’t understand the dialog, you can’t enjoy the movie! As things happen on screen, your center, front, and surround sound speakers come to life and play specific tracks written especially for each speaker thus surrounding you in sound.
Another very important speaker in the system is your subwoofer. The subwoofer is responsible for filling out the low-end frequencies and deep bass effects that the full range speakers are not capable of producing. These are less important in a dialog based film than they are for an action film. Every film has a specific audio track written for the subwoofer to help bring the movie to life just the way the director intended it. Imagine you are watching your favorite action film and there are lots of loud fiery explosions. Without a subwoofer, these explosions would literally be less impactful and quite frankly a little anti-climactic. Subwoofers should never be placed in the middle of the room or high up on a shelf. By design, subwoofers perform best in a corner and a subwoofer in each corner is best.
Trusted Brands
Asking what speaker is the “best” is subjective because everyone’s ears are different so no one person hears the information the same as the next. For this reason it’s recommended to research and listen to different brands and types of speakers and choose what sounds the best to you. At Infinite Media Design, we carry many different brands and types of speaker to ensure that we can find the right fit for your ear and your budget. We sell and highly recommend the following brands:
