Taking the aesthetic details of your room into account and tweaking your systems for maximum performance will ultimately make your home theater more efficient. Instead of installing a system and simply pushing play, consider the following tips for maximizing your home theater’s audio/video output.
Be conscious of room acoustics
If you’ve ever moved into an unfurnished house or apartment, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that the interior sound is thin and tends to echo. That’s because furnishings have a dramatic effect on the nature of sound. The same principle applies to home theaters—a large part of what you hear depends on the room itself. While mastering room acoustics is a complicated discipline, there are simple things you can do to improve your theater’s audio output.
First, consider the types of surfaces in your room. Are there a lot of hard, reflective materials, such as wood floors, mirrors and windows? If so, sound will bounce all around the room and diminish audio playback quality. Conversely, if you have a carpeted room filled with sofas, heavy drapes and other soft materials, the sound will be absorbed. To get the best audio, you need to strike a balance between the two.
Generally, the front of the room should have more absorbent materials—especially between the front speakers and the seating area where first reflections (high frequency sounds) occur. If first reflections aren’t stopped by acoustic damping materials, they’ll continue to bounce around the room and cause distortion. Start by carpeting hardwood, tile or concrete floors. Add some window treatments to dampen sound (and also keep ambient light at bay). Opt for upholstered furniture over wood or leather.
The back of the room needs acoustically “live” materials to add life to the audio and help break up sound. Consider having an audio/visual professional install an acoustic diffuser and fine-tune your room’s acoustics with a combination of treatments, including bass traps and panels.
Choose a dark color palette
Bright room colors can actually hurt the image being displayed on your TV or projector screen. If you paint your walls bright red, for example, the picture will have a reddish cast, because light from the screen will reflect onto the sidewalls and bounce back. For this reason, many high-end theaters are dressed in brown, grey, black or other dark colors. These deeper hues absorb light rather than reflect it back onto the screen.
Buy the right size screen and sit at the appropriate distance
While it’s tempting to make the entire front wall of your theater one gigantic screen, that isn’t always the best option. It’s important to consider your viewing distance relative to screen size. If you sit too close or if the screen is too large for the room, you’ll start to see the display’s pixel structure. If you sit too far away or if the screen is too small for the room, you’ll lose the overall impact of a big screen, which defeats the purpose of having a home theater in the first place. Luckily, high-definition displays let you sit closer to the screen than ever before, which means you can put a larger screen in a smaller theater.
Professional opinions are divided on appropriate viewing distances. THX recommends you divide your diagonal screen size by 0.84 for 1080p displays, while others recommend multiplying diagonal screen size by 1.5. For a 120-inch screen, the latter calculations produce a recommended viewing distance of 15 feet.
Take control
Each home theater device comes with its own remote control, so consider purchasing a high-quality universal remote to save space and simplify operations. Make sure you purchase a backlit device, too—it’ll help you locate buttons in the dark.
