Step by step - a check list to get off on the right foot !
By Patrice CONGARD
INTRODUCTION
You’ve finally decided to make your dream come true! You’re about to invest in a Home Theater system.
In reality, you’re just about to get on a highway leading to… deception!
The first thing you will most probably do is to go out and buy all the specialized magazines to take a look at all the equipment actually available in the market in order to be “perfectly” informed. Wrong! Take the first exit off the highway, but I hear you ask : “but why…?”.
OK then, let’s take the “highway to deception” together for a while, and you’ll see exactly why. And don’t take out your checkbook yet either! Your initial reaction was doubly wrong : Your selection of components was most likely not what you will ultimately need, but the worst mistake is to make your choice of equipment before everything else. Well, we’ll come back to this later…
The best equipment of all !
Using the specialized mags, you’ve made a very “in-depth” comparison on the performance of all the video projectors, loudspeakers, amplifiers, subwoofers, and, most of all, their prices. You’ve come to the conclusion that you absolutely must get the Kikaïsui TXZZXQ-3218 WL amplifier, which is said to be as good as the competition’s products, but costs 5 or 10 times less.
It is also “clear” from the documentation that the best video projector fitting your budget is the Optophot VLP 800. Unless it is the Horizon Superlite XLL 650, but this one costs 120 bucks more than what you had planned. But it’s slightly more difficult to choose the loudspeakers. As you didn’t have time to read all the articles (some of the back issues were hard to find...), you’ve selected 12 different packs in the same price range, but none of them includes a subwoofer. For this, your mind's clearly set on the Earthshaker Superkick 2000-SW.
Well, nothing much left to do except check out various auditoriums to compare the speakers in action. I hope you don’t live way out in the wilderness like me...!
After a long ride to the nearest civilized town, you're finally get inside your first auditorium, armed with your carefully documentated list of loudspeaker systems you wish to compare. The salesman reads it with a compassionate look and suddenly bursts out: “Hey, man, you didn’t get it at all! First, what’s your amplifier like? How big is your dedicated room? What kind of music do you listen to? How old is your little sister?”
At that point, I must admit he’s partially right. At least with his first question, in any case... as the others are about as pertinent as the last one. Are you starting to follow me…?
A little shaken, you follow the guy into an auditorium where he proudly presents you a pack of Altus Transbuster speakers, which, he assures you, are the current "Must" and available for a "most" affordable price… Although three times more advanced than any of the packs featured in your selection, their price only exceeds 10% the budget you had set for loudspeakers. And the salesman promises on top of that “we’ll find an arrangement…”
Inside a small dark room, packed full with equipment, proudly stands a 16/9 plasma screen, surrounded by a system of speakers with an elegant glossy finish, strategically "positioned" in front of the rest. You discover the Altus Transbuster 3000 MKII pack. In order to have you appreciate the quality of these speakers, the salesman treats you to five minutes of a baroque string quartet, followed by an original piece featuring Peruvian flutes, a set of Japanese gongs, a jazz trio with an obviously drunk singer, recorded in the historical year of 1946 (and, well, in mono sound too), an excerpt from Beethoven’s Ninth (you know, the good old “Ode To Joy”), and if this scene is taking place in the south, you may be lucky enough to enjoy an short piece from Garth Brooks repertoire, or two.
Before you can express a word, the salesman decides it’s time for a real “Home Theater demonstration”. Indeed, it’s about time! While the DVD’s legal warnings are playing, the guy tells you that what you’re about to "experience" is the finest, most powerful and dazzling sound you’ve ever heard. He looks for a particular scene, searches a bit and finally finds it. Before your very eyes appears the most unexpected slaughtering: Blood spurting, people being dismembered, and tasteless close-ups are creating the most nauseous-worthy spectacle of all time.
The sound is, of course, unbearably loud, composed by a mix of explosions and distortions; all delivered by an amplifier and a loudspeakers system both asking for mercy. And since you’re in the dark, the salesman probably hasn’t noticed your face has just turned white. He finally puts an end to your suffering by turning the lights on, and then starring at you he gasps, “didn’t that kick ass?”, with a smug grin on his face. That’s when you rush out, wondering what your visit to the next auditorium will be like. The thing is, it probably won't be much differnent than this one….
The best price
At this point, you may decide, like many others, on a different approach all together. Once you’ve established a list of all the components of your future Home Theater system, you’re just going to compare prices. The majority of tests in magazines only indicate a reference price given by the manufacturers, but most ads claim to offer “discounted, smashed, mind-blowing and insane prices”. Many long lists will follow, and you’ll only have to dig in and compare.
You’re bound to discover that some prices correspond to components with similar names and references to those you’ve selected, except for one or two numbers or letters... Effectively, these prices will be more tempting than the one indicated by the manufacturers. But is this the exact same product? After closer examination, you’ll find out it’s actually the previous model of the same product, which, by the way, is now out of production since three weeks. Furthermore, the one in the test you just read is not available yet… In your search for a copy of the magazine where you had read the article about this product, you discover another one available for almost the same price, but even more powerful, according to this test which you hadn’t read before… Doubtful and panicked, you’re now searching for each and every issue of every Home Theater magazine published in the last two years. You then spend sleepless nights browsing the Home Theater forums on the Internet, searching for users’ reviews and foreign publications.
The weeks go by, and you’re now only a baggy-eyed and ill-looking version of your old self, and you really have no idea what to do next. A few months later, you’ve finally done a full “shopping list” to place an order online or on the phone, in order to have the precious equipment delivered to your home. This might take a little while, since a large part of the online retailers don’t actually have the products they are selling in stock.
D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself)
A while later… You have finally received all the equipment needed for your Home Theater system. You have, of course, reserved a whole weekend to set it up. Roll your sleeves up and here we go…
All right, you’re about to be confronted by “Murphy’s Law”, a custom also known as “the law of maximum s---”. You start off by deciding what will go where in your dedicated room. And that’s the part where you should use a lot of diplomacy with the Missus. Time to go to the basement in order to find every single tool you think you will need. Start drilling, place the bolts, dig cavities for the cabling, then… as you can see, it doesn’t all go as planned. You need to improvise, bypass numerous obstacles, but nothing you really can’t do. But things are now taking much longer than expected…
The end of the weekend nears, and not a single one of your new equipment components has been unwrapped. The living room looks like hell, the Missus is clearly not pleased, and is even rather straight talking when she orders you to clean up your d--- tools, at least until next weekend.
The next days pass slowly before you can resume your favourite activity again. You may have used the time in between to purchase all the necessary cables for your equipment. But the ground now gives way beneath your feet. You make the shocking discovery that the numerous audio and video standards all have their respective kinds of plugs. It is time to make final decisions on which standards and cables to use, without even really understanding what those choices imply.
You now go back to reading your magazines, but this time you pay more attention to the technical information rather than learning the tests by heart. Just when you think you have approximately understood most of it, it’s already Sunday afternoon and no store selling cables is open. And that’s when the lady of the house announces she has been very patient regarding the state of the living room... Until now!
Another week goes by… Saturday morning: you run up to the closest audio/video store open, without forgetting your detailed list of the necessary cables. The salesman welcomes you with a sceptical eye: “30 feet of YUV cable? And 30 feet of S-Video cable? My dear man, there won’t be much left of your video signal after 30 feet! I never sell cables longer than 10 feet”.
Two choices: A] This salesperson doesn’t know anything about video. B] He only has 10 feet-long cables in stock and is only looking out for his best interest…
Still, destabilized by the guy’s boldness, you start to question the location of your system. You can’t relocate the video projector; therefore, you can bring the amplifier closer and its sources (DVD, satellite receiver, VCR, etc…). This change in plans, however, implies placing all your equipment in the middle of the wall, where no furniture will fit.
You mentally picture this new setting in a rush. The kind salesman even proposes to help by pointing out that with this new setting of yours, the cables going from the amplifier to the loudspeakers will be too long, and might create excessive unwanted parasite resistance. Unless you use some Blue Golden Hawk MK 12 cables of course…
One small detail though: this cable costs 50 bucks a foot, and the distance between the amplifier and the front speakers in your new setting implies getting roughly 80 feet of this very expensive cable. This, added to the price of all the other cables, brings you to a total of $ 5,000, which literally drowns your budget. You tell the salesman that you’re going to think about it, and you leave the store with a dark and rainy cloud over your head…
It is now time to get informed about cables and audio, video, digital and analogue standards. One bright aspect, never the less: you may not know it yet, but you may have avoided the worst! Had you listened to the "nice" salesman, you would have spent an amount equal to a third of your Home Theater budget, to end up with a full rack of equipment set up in the wrong place in your living room, and at the same time causing unprecedented commotion in the family…
A few months later, your Home Theater system is set up, plugged in, and all the components work! Your wife is on the edge of a nervous breakdown, but she will get better eventually, and you’re happy again.
The main speakers surround the screen, a little afar from the edges in order to preserve the 60° listening angle. The centre speaker is placed below the screen, on a stand. The rear speakers are respectively on a shelf of your bookcase and on the telephone table, and the subwoofer is hidden behind the couch. Two small shelves have been installed in a recess near the fireplace in order to fit the amplifier and hide all the connections for the cable, satellite... You have been through your share of troubles to plug it all, as the rear panels were hardly accessible, but finally, everything is connected. Yes!
Just a few things to set up and you’ll finally have a Home Theater system that’s ready to go. The setting of the LCD video projector seems to be as simple as that of your old TV. Why not increase the contrast since you love a “flashy” image? And how about increasing the sharpness - no one likes a blurry image -, lower the saturation because you don’t want to saturate anything, turn off the Keystone since you don’t know what that is, then switch on to 16/9 mode. That’s it!
Then, you must set up the amplifier/processor to correspond to the speakers. The problem is that the user’s manual is written in a rather incomprehensible pseudo-English gibberish. So back to the magazines once again… But this time you don’t find a single line about the indications written on the back of your amplifier-processor-tuner. You only come up with commands allowing to select a subwoofer crossover frequency, a “Cinema Re-Eq” function, an “LFE-MIX” level control, and of course a “Speaker Set-up” function allowing the usual “Off / Large / Small” switch for each channel, as well as a distance indicator expressed in “ms” (but a distance from where to what, exactly..?)
This setting gets further complicated by the presence of other functions, like a source selection and an audio format selection setting for each of the sources; then another list of “DSP” modes carefully named as “Arena”, “Jazz Club”, “Concert Hall”, “Church”… Rather pertinent indeed, but where can you find any indication about which DSP mode you’re supposed to choose…?
Well, maybe you should put a DVD on and see what happens.
A few days later, you finally get an image of normal proportions (as you’ve finally discovered the 16/9 mode on your DVD player’s “Set-up” menu); you can hear some sound (not necessarily from all the speakers, but this depends on the DVD itself, doesn’t it?). Could this mean it’s time for a proud family demonstration on your big screen…?
From this point, don’t be too surprised if you happen to watch more TV than ever before…
The screen, or how the cheapest of all components (in most cases) is the key to your system...
Some Home Theater systems don’t even integrate a screen in the installation: the image is directly projected on a bare wall. The retailers sometimes offer a free screen with their video projectors. We even start to see quite large screens (2m, 2.40m) sold in supermarkets for very competitive prices.
Off course, you want a screen that can be rolled-up. Isn’t that obvious? When you were little and saw family projections of photo slides, or when grandpa held a movie show in 8mm, the screen was taken out of the closet before being unrolled, wasn’t it? So why do otherwise now…?And, naturally, it must have gain. Screens with gain now don’t cost more than others, so why deprive yourself? As for the size, you’ll have to make another decision, depending of your own taste (way too big, or ridiculously small), while the screen ratio chosen will likely be a 4/3, since the vast majority of what’s aired on TV is in 4/3. Let’s have a discreet laugh in honour of those who, fooled by adamant salesmen, have spent thousands of bucks on a simple screen.
Of course, some people will tell you that the image takes shape on a screen, and therefore, this should be an important element. Others will say that low-budget screens that can be rolled-up are rarely totally flat or perfectly rectangular. Some others will even say that the size of a screen determines the position and the choice of the speakers.
You may even hear various aberrations like “A screen absolutely must have a black border” or worse: “You’ll have a better result with grey screens with a gain inferior to 1”. But to that comment you are convinced that the guy has just simply lost his marbles.
And the all-time worst joke is when your friend tells you that the very best result is obtained by using a perforated screen, with the speakers placed behind it, just like in a movie theater!
You say to yourself: I'm not setting up a movie theater in my home, but a Home Theater! They have nothing to do with each other. Happily you turn a deaf ear to all this nonsense, as, after all you have read, this can only be jealous people trying to have you doubt yourself, again.
The Hi-Fi heritage
Many Home Theater retailers were actually Hi-Fi retailers until recently, and the same goes for many specialized journalists.
Home Theater enthusiasts are often Hi-Fi enthusiasts who have just followed market developments. Not to mention manufacturers! There are only very few manufacturers of audio components for Home Theater use who didn’t start as producers of purely Hi-Fi products, and most of them haven’t ceased this activity either. After more than forty years of existence, High Fidelity has set its standards, its language, its rules, and also created a special bond between the different players on the market. The key words in Hi-Fi are: “Musicality” and “Micro-informations”. Translation for the Philistines: such terms evoke a highly mastered form of art, consisting of turning the listening of an audio CD into a most pleasurable and emotional experience as it can possibly be. But first of all isn't a CD a "product" rather than true a way to listen to "real" music.
The first rule for an audio CD is that it must be able to be played on a "ghetto blaster" in a car, or on any cheap “music centre” sold in a supermarket. This implies a merciless compression of the sound dynamics during the final mix, just before the production line. The second rule is a CD is created to "store" music. It must only include two channels, due to “technical-historical” reasons.The "raison d'être" of High Fidelity is to provide the techie the most pleasurable listening experience from the existing recorded support, i.e. the audio CD. We slowly drifted away from the initial objective of High Fidelity stereophony: Creating the "illusion" of a "real" concert "like you were there" as much as possible.
Therefore, Musicality should be the essential criteria when a 5.1 sound system, combined with an image, is meant to reproduce a hail of bullets… As for the arrival of a train, the focus should be on the micro-informations. And most of all, do not forget that the right and left speakers (in which no dialogue is ever directly produced, except in very rare and special cases) are the main speakers!
Now, try a purely audiophile approach to cabling and connections, on a Home Theater 7.1 system featuring 3 audio-video sources, and 3 different standards of video signals…
What’s funny is how the "trench" dug for the cables is now broader than the video-projector itself. What’s less funny is the total bill, which easily doubles the cost of your installation. That’s precisely why many hardcore Hi-Fi aficionados (The “if there’s only one last man standing, it will be me” type of guy) often openly despise the art of Home Theater. That’s simply because their magic recipe doesn’t apply there, and they just can't stand it.
But after all, like a journalist (whose name I have forgotten) once said: “The best way to start your Home Theater installation is to use your Hi-Fi system and add...”.
You see, I’m a nice guy. I’ll even pretend I don’t remember the name of the magazine I read this in.
The projector, centrepiece of attention
Video-projectors hold a very special part in the psychology of Home Theater enthusiasts: they symbolize a step-up in quality and quantity when you start considering big images. During High Fidelity & Home Theater shows, we often find a large part of the audience attending asking about video projectors and saying, “I’m here for the big picture”.
In most people’s minds, image equals video projector. Certain vital notions like the size of the image or the texture and quality of a screen are non-existent to them. In fact, things evolve really fast in the area of video projection. Their performance is going through the roof, as devices which weighted more than 200 pounds and priced at $ 25,000 three years ago now are outperformed by projectors that would fit in your pocket and only cost 4,000 bucks.
200 pounds on the left, 6 pounds on the right…
The writing of product tests in the specialized press also leaves me puzzled. Technological progress is always welcomed with great enthusiasm by the testers, and when "novelties" are offered by various brands, one is said to be just more mind-blowing than the next (except for a brief note to mention of the different number of available connection slots). I even remember once two identical video-projectors, built by the same manufacturer but sold under two different brands, being tested by the same journalist in the same issue, but nowhere was there mention of their common origin...
But going back to the article written by this journalist whose name I don’t remember (cf. previous paragraph), “The best way to start your Home Theater is to use your Hi-Fi system and add a video-projector…”. And maybe we’ll consider getting equipped in 5.1 next year, who knows? Or maybe plug a Home Theater pack into your TV, and use the video projector with the Hi-Fi stereo? But this will only make you constantly plug and unplug the DVD player every time you switch from one to the other. Well, if you don't agree with all this "advice" then you win the right to read to the end of this article, and the ones to follow…!
After all, I’m not dumber than anyone else!
That's certainly true! After several weeks (months...) of sweat and tears, after having greatly exceeded your original budget, after wasting so many weekends, after almost getting divorced, you finally have a Home Theater. Your Home Theater. Your very own Home Theater. Your … “preciouuuus”.
Congratulations.
You now get a misty eye when watching your DVDs, you’re floating in air, you’re starting to grasp what Nirvana is about (no, not the band, the place in Indian mythology). Then, as the weeks pass by, life and its daily routine take over. You sometimes now don’t find the time to plug-in your system at night. Furthermore, it’s not always easy to clean off the table in the dark. Maybe that’s why you watch more and more TV?
And concerning the centre speaker, your lovely wife gently whispers that it isn’t very conveniently placed, and maybe you could put it away for a while: “We’ll just bring it back out when we want to watch a movie…”
Then one day, you over hear one of your co-workers bragging about his Home Theatre set-up. So you brag about yours too. You’re intrigued, so much so that you accept his invitation to check out his system. But once there, there seems to be nothing to see, except a few small elements half hidden in the bookcase, and a large sized remote control on his living room table. Your host touches the remote two times and then, suddenly, the lights gently dim and a curtain opens to reveals a 16/9 screen about 8 feet wide.
He goes to the bookcase, puts a DVD in the player, and touches the remote control panel once again. A video projector neatly hidden in the ceiling is switched on. After the usual legal warnings, the movie begins. And there, you’re "stricken". The image is clean, sharp, contrasted, fluid and perfectly framed. The sound is powerful yet precise; it truly surrounds you and is perfectly in phase with the image. The dialogue actually seems to be coming from an actor’s mouth when he delivers his lines (and not from his ears...). But by the way, where on earth are the loudspeakers? You can’t see any of them. After this quick demonstration, you’re simply green with envy. You truly have been "inside" the action during these few minutes, and that’s something you’ve never felt with your own Home Theater system.
Now, more curious than ever, you wonder how much your host paid for this wonder? About $ 18,000, he answers. That’s the last straw: your system costed you over $ 20,000... While talking, you learn that his system was installed and set up in only a few days by a professional specialized in audiovisual equipment, while your host was away on holiday…
CONCLUSION
Home Theater more complex to create and install than Hi-Fi, which is why it suffers from those who insist on applying the same "ole" principles. If we really want to draw on the experience of a similar technology to Home Cinema, why not simply chose that of Cinema?
Home Theater just doesn’t work. Except, well, some do. And then, when they do, they really do! You really don’t need black magic or secret tricks: you just need to acquire the necessary knowledge and experience. With a logical approach, you can make it all work well. But, if you don’t have this knowledge, or don't have the time, it's not a "real" saving to try to "bypass" those true specialists who have spent sometimes years to acquire this expertise. In the end, that's only simple good sense. You will enjoy your Home Theater system all the same, and maybe even more!
If you missed Part 1, click HERE
Coming up soon : Part three… of seven