Home Theater Installation - Selecting Speakers
Hi, this is Keith Harman again, and we’re here to talk about how to install a high definition home theater. Now, we’re gonna be talking about speakers, lot of different speakers to choose from here. We see some of the old school tower speakers like this one, the newer models like this, you’ll see a lot, a lot thinner than this, but still sometimes the same height. This tend to be really good at producing the bass, which is good, although, we’re gonna talk about subwoofers next, so that will, that will cover some of those low bass notes. Speakers come in a lot of different shapes and sizes, so you know, down here, we got, we get progressively smaller, we get smaller, even smaller with this, this little indoor outdoor KLH. Boss makes some very small jewel cube speakers that can go in your, that can go on the wall, and we even have in wall speakers, which we’ll, we maybe be talking about later. The key here is two things, one, how does it look, and two, how does it sound. How does it look is pretty easy, you can look at that, you can look at pictures in the internet, you can look at pictures here, you can start to look at different models for you center speakers, where we see, you know, a larger center speaker or a much smaller center speaker. Really what it boils down to is what does it look like, how does it gonna fit in your home and how does that sound. Gotta listen to them, you know, bring some of your favorite CDs, bring your favorite DVD, listen to how that sounds. The big thing with speakers is gonna be your front three speakers. Your center speaker is gonna carry 90 percent of the sound track, it’s gonna come through that center speaker so, if you’re trying to look at where you might wanna cut corners, the center speaker and the right left speaker are probably not where you want to do that. The center speaker is gonna carry all that dialogue, all the sound tracks, your right and left speaker, anytime you listen to music, which, you know, we’re talking about home theater here, but, music is a part of that. The right and the left channels are gonna carry, carry the burden for those. Your rear surround sound, whether it’s 5, dot, or 7 dot, where you got two or four at the back, those are gonna be mostly sound effects. So if you wanna, if you’re not looking at a prepackage system, where you buy them all together and you wanna upgrade some, maybe you wanna upgrade in your front ones, maybe cut a few corners on your back ones. So that’s, that’s what you’re looking at for your surround sound, either 5 or 6 or 7 part. And now we’re gonna move on to the dot one part, the subwoofers. So now we’re moving, look at subwoofers to go with our system, those again maybe a part of a prepackage one, where you can buy a set of 5.1 speakers or a set of 7.1 speakers, or you maybe selecting those separately. So, there’s two major kinds of subwoofers, what we call a passive or unamplified subwoofer or an active or amplified subwoofer. So here's an example of kind of the old school of a passive subwoofer, 15 inch speaker, barreling downwards, so, the sound comes out of the sides here. Bit bulky, bit bulky, designed to look, you know, try and fit in with the décor, try and make it look like an end table. Here is something, it’s a little more, little more up to date, also in the active side, the big thing about the active is that you're also worried about getting it powered. If it’s gonna be, has an amplifier in it, it’s gotta have power. So, when we look at this one, this is a little bit, this is a 10 inch instead of the 15 inch, so it’s a bit smaller. Boss makes them even smaller with their acousdemas module, it’s just a matter of what fits with, with your décor. Now, even, you can even go, there are also several brands that make an in wall or in ceiling or under the floor subwoofers, where it has a little vent that looks like, looks kinda like a heating/air conditioning vent in the floor or the ceiling, and that could provide that sound and hide that away. But, that’s a little bit more advance than this, than what we’re gonna cover in this video, but that is available as an option. So, when we look at speakers, we again, 5.1, how does it sound, how does it look in your décor and in if you don’t like the way it looks in your décor, you can even start getting in the in walls speakers and putting them, putting them in the walls so that, so that you can barely see them or just see a little grill and it’s all about your taste. How does it look, how does it sound.