Are you excited to build your home theater? Then maybe you shouldn't rush into putting it together because it's possible to make these mistakes if you don't know what you're doing.
Putting The Speakers In The Wall
Everyone loves the look of speakers that are hidden away, but it is going to give you worse sound quality than if the speakers are out and pointing in the right direction. When you put a speaker in the wall with a mesh cover over it, the speakers are now pointing straight outward. They are not angling down toward your seating position.
Even though the speakers have a sleek look with them being hidden, that poor speaker position is going to cause your home theater to sound bad. Your front three speakers should be at the same height as your ear level, which means getting stands for the speakers and adjusting the height.
Blocking The Sound Path
Chances are that you are not going to have the ideal room size to set up a home theater perfectly. You'll need to work with the space that you have, which means avoiding any furniture that is blocking the path of your speakers. You could have a very tight room where the side of a couch is blocking the sound path, which is not good for the overall quality of the sound.
A good way to think about it is to think of the speakers as a flashlight. If you were to point the speaker towards your seating position is the path of the light blocked at all? If so, you need to move that speaker.
Forgetting To Level The Speakers
Your audio receiver is going to come with all the settings at the defaults with delays. Delays are necessary to adjust for the distance of the speakers from the seating position so that they all arrive at the listener at the same time. There are a few ways to calculate delay settings, one uses an old fashion tape measure and the other uses an SPL meter to measure sound pressure. Those slight changes to the delay of each speaker can make a big difference.
Forgetting To Adjust The EQ
While a sound receiver will come with several settings for EQ based on the type of media that you're listening to, it's worth taking the time to adjust the manual settings. Balancing out the EQ will really depend on the type of speakers that you have, and adjusting the subwoofer settings for your room size. Take the time to play with the settings to discover what sounds best for you.
