Purchasing an Audio Receiver

You’ve just bought a brand new 70″ HDTV after months and months of saving. You’ve cancelled the vacation, fought the wife, and it’s obvious your oldest child will now have to work their way through college. You’ve settled into your easy chair and the big moment comes as you turn on your monster and you hear-a peep. The sound just does not match the gargantuan proportions of the screen. Now what? You should have looked into an audio receiver. Don’t worry, I’m going to help ya.

The purpose of the audio receiver is to amplify sound and separate channels for your movies. These days 5.1 home theaters have become the norm, though there are some 6.1, 7.1 and even 7.2 systems out there. Let me define this for you: the “5″ in 5.1 is the number of smaller speakers–your high to mid-range speakers. The “.1″ part of 5.1 is the subwoofer, which is your bass. If arranged and hooked up properly, you will have achieved (angel’s singing in the back ground) surround sound. Or to put it more simply, the bullets on the screen will “whizz past your head” in “3D audio” and you can go back to grinning.

Let’s talk speaker wattage now. The tendency is to look at the big red numbers on the box and go bigger. Bigger is always better-right? That’s not always the case. Sorry man, you have to actually read the box a little. Do the 500 watts refer to the speakers or the receiver? Speakers have no wattage themselves, but instead have a watt rating (how many watts they can handle). So you could have speakers rated at 1500 Watts, but if you buy a receiver with only 200 watts per channel, it’s really like putting a lawnmower engine in a Jaguar. Why would you do such a thing?

So how much power do you need for your speakers? If you have 200 watt speakers, having a too powerful of a receiver will leave you buying new speakers after you “blow” your old ones. While having, say, a 100 watt audio receiver will make getting a home theater a moot point anyway. There must be a hard and fast rule for picking speakers and receivers. It just so happens that you are about to read a simplistic solution, with very little math involved. Take for example 200 watt speakers and multiply by .75 (150 watts). Then add back in now add 25 watts (175 Watts). 175 Watts would be the very rough recommended WPC (Watt Per Channel) you would be looking for from a receiver. Why? With all the different manufacturers’ there is some cushion they provide themselves. Basically, 200 watt speakers can handle more than 200 watts. For warranty reasons they aren’t going to tell you that, or tell you how much they can handle at “peak performance.” Audio amplifiers will generally have a peak output above their specifications as well. That is as so if there is a sound louder than the “loud sound,” it can be differentiated from the initial sound. It’s like they can crank it to 11 if they need to. By keeping more or less to these specs you can eliminate under-powering without worrying about distortion at high output.

The layout, furnishing, and even what your home media room is built out of will have an impact on your sound quality. Sound waves bounce around in all different directions. That’s greats because you don’t have to be in the room to hear what’s going on, but the detractor would be the echo. Echo is the enemy in this case. Room acoustics can be broken down into two different room descriptions: warm and cold.

Warm rooms are the most acoustically-friendly. These are rooms that generally have carpeting, nicely covered walls (bookshelves and wall hangings), and cloth furniture. In all actuality, the best warm rooms are one that you would find in a recording studio. Cold rooms are not generally considered ideal for acoustics. A cold room will generally have a wooden or tile floor, sparse furnishing and bare walls- and an echo that takes you back to some of the 60′s hits. In fact, some songs in the 60′s were vocally recorded in a bath room just because of the natural echo of the tiles. Unless you’re Linda Ronstadt, I’d figure out a way to fix this.

Fixing a cold room is easy. Throw down some rugs, hang some pictures or tapestries, and possibly move some furniture against the wall. Fixing a warm room is harder. Usually, the biggest problem is muffled bass. Try raising you subwoofer off the floor a little; that might give the sound a little more room to permeate the area. Recording studios spend thousands of dollars to have someone “tune” their rooms. So if you don’t have a perfect acoustic setting, don’t feel bad if it takes you several tries with speaker placement and room acoustics.

There is a sense of accomplishment that comes with installing your audio receiver. However if you get stuck, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and call for help. A knowledgeable and trusted friend is a good idea for that phone call. The cable company is a bad idea. Cable companies generally will not help you beyond the cable plugged into their own boxes, but the guys at the local electronics shop are usually a fountain of information. You all share that same common bond: the quest to achieve that nice theater where the popcorn is way cheaper!

Zeeman Haus enjoys writing articles online on a variety of subjects. You can check out his latest website on HDMI Review which discusses how you can get low prices on HDMI Cables, Splitters, Extenders, Boxes, and Adaptors.