Man Cave Must Haves

Have you ever been over to a buddies house and wondered how he has speakers half the size of yours yet it seems to sound 100 times better? It’s time to do something about it! It’s time to talk about how you can get the best sound for your Man Cave while still keeping within your budget.

The first thing you need is a surround sound system. Now for those of you that are new to the surround sound arena let me give you a few tips.

1. You don’t need to buy the most expensive system to get great sound! (although it is good to have some high quality speakers.)
2. Know what you want! Do you want Dolby Digital® 5.1, Dolby TrueHD® 7.1, or DTS®
3. What is the size of your room? Do you know if you are going to go wireless or not? (this is technically one question. Based on the room size and shape you may opt to go wireless.)
4. You need to know how much you can spend before going out and setting up a system. Do your research to know exactly how much it will cost for what you want so there are no surprises.
5. Get ready to live!

Now that you have figured out exactly what you want how do you go about choosing? Well you could take your friend who has the great sounding surround already… Or you can jump online and see what others have gotten and how they rate the things in your price range. You will come to find out that like I said earlier, it’s not always how much you spend to get great surround. Click the read link to find out how to setup your new surround system.

Now that you have bought the best components that you can find for your budget it’s time to set things up and get ready to rock! A common mistake that many people make when setting up their home theater equipment is placement. They give you a little layout picture for a reason when you buy a new receiver and 9 times out of 10 people decide not to follow it! If your wondering what one of these sweet little things looks like take a peek at this.

5.1 Setup Both Dolby Digital and DTS are 5.1 channel formats. 5.1 surround sound is a multichannel sound technology that produces five channels of sound in the left, right, center, left-surround and right-surround positions. These five channels are the minimum required to produce 5.1 surround sound. The .1 represents the channel for LFE (low frequency effects), which is usually sent to a sub-woofer.

6.1 Setup While 5.1 surround sound has been the standard for some time now, newer A/V receivers are capable of delivering6.1 surround sound. 6.1 multichannel sound technology uses the same set-up as a 5.1 system, but it has the addition of a sixth speaker that takes the rear-center surround position (or back surround position) to provide a more 3-D sound. 6.1 surround sound uses extended surround sound formats, such as THX Surround EX and DTS-ES.

7.1 Setup Moving forward, we now also have 7.1 surround sound, which splits the single rear-center speaker into individual left- and right-rear surround. In a true discrete 7.1 surround system, the back center surround position is separate from the surround left and surround right positions. A 7.1 channel system uses matrixed extended surround where the left-back and right-back (rear-center surround) multichannel are blended together and stored, or a true discrete surround where each channel is assigned a separate audio track.

Now can you figure out what the one major thing these little pictures have in common? Well if you can’t I’ll tell you. It’s that dot on the center of the couch. That is where you are going to get the optimal sound from your speaker system. Now a few things to keep in mind is not all rooms are made to be a perfect square, that’s where the wireless speakers come into effect. Unless you are willing to take the time to hide all the cables around your room! When you setup your surround you want to follow these pictures as close as possible while tweaking the receiver for the distance that the speakers are away from the dot(again that is the spot in the middle of the couches above). The next thing you want to do for optimal sound is make sure that all of your speakers are at ear level. You really do lose out when the speakers are hanging from the ceiling instead of directly at your ears! Once you have taken the time to setup your Man Caves Surround sound, get ready to be the center of attention for all your Man Cave’s Friends. Need some more help or have some questions, just leave a comment!