Piecing out and building your home theater is the tough part, and while you can stop there, you might not be satisfied with how everything sounds. The good news is that it might not actually be your speakers or receiver that are giving you trouble. It might just be a matter of switching around some settings to fix some problems you overlooked.

In my experience, speakers are almost never an issue, so if you check for some loose wires and find none, there are still some fixes you can make. Most of these fixes require a bit of technical know-how to even know they could be a problem, but if you manage to put together an entire home theater, then I don’t think that’ll be an issue for you. In fact, some of these fixes might be something you’ll be kicking yourself for missing. If you follow these steps, your home theater will sound much better than before. The only thing you have to be afraid of is your neighbors coming over and telling you that you’re being too loud.

Make sure your energy-saving mode is turned off

Does it save any money?

My Denon receiver has a dedicated Eco mode that I can turn on by pressing a green button on my remote. This mode exists with the intention of shaving a few dollars off your monthly electricity bill, but my advice is to turn it off completely. If your TV has this setting, you should turn it off there as well.

For TVs, this makes your picture darker, just so your TV doesn’t have to output as much energy. I bought a Sony Bravia X90J a few years back just for its brightness since it sits opposite a window, so the last thing I want is for it is to be dark. For audio systems, it makes everything quieter. I noticed it the most with a subwoofer. If you have Eco mode turned on with a subwoofer, you get a muted experience. I have a subwoofer to blend in with the rest of my audio, not for it to just disappear into the background. Energy-saving modes are actually one of the biggest reasons your sound system doesn’t sound great, so make sure you turn that off. It’s nice to use it as a night mode when other people might be sleeping, but I don’t see much use for it elsewhere.

Use the correct HDMI port

It really matters

Modern TVs have quite a few HDMI ports, and it can be daunting figuring out what goes where. A good rule of thumb is to plug in your most modern devices into the 2.1 ports. If you’re lucky, that’s all your TV has, and if that’s the case, there’s nothing to worry about. Well, there’s one thing to worry about. Your TV likely has an ARC or eARC port, and that’s where you want to plug in your sound system. This port gives you the most bandwidth for your audio, so your soundbar or receiver benefits the most from being plugged in here. ARC stands for Audio Return Channel, while eARC stands for Enhanced Audio Return Channel. As you might gather by the name, it’s meant to transmit high-quality audio from your TV to your sound system.

Keep in mind that all your audio devices will work plugged into any HDMI port, but the ARC or eARC port is how you get the most performance. In terms of noticeable performance gains, this one is lower than the Eco mode tip, but it still adds up in the end. It’s also nice that this fix just takes a couple of seconds to double-check. My advice is to just avoid using your TV’s HDMI ports if you can, other than the eARC one. Plug your receiver into that, and then plug your remaining devices into your receiver. My Denon S760H has more than enough for all my devices, so there’s no extra trouble at all. Some of the ports even support 8K, but I don’t think I’ll be using those any time soon.

HDMI passthrough is important

Turn it on if you can

HDMI passthrough is a big part of a home theater. If you went through the trouble of buying a soundbar or audio receiver, you probably did so with the intention of having that device handle the audio. Well, that’s not possible if you don’t have HDMI passthrough enabled in your TV or streaming device. Fortunately, it’s easy to turn on, but you might find it buried in the settings. Just go through your TV’s audio settings until you find the ability to pass on the audio.

Annoyingly, you might have to do this on all your devices, but it’s worth the effort. My receiver handles all modern audio formats — Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, Dolby Digital, etc. — so it makes sense that I’d want to take that signal and output it in the best way it can. HDMI passthrough guarantees you’re not getting a degraded audio experience.

There is some bad news, however. For whatever reason, some of your devices don’t support audio passthrough, and the Apple TV 4K is the biggest culprit of this. This means if you are watching something on an Apple TV 4K, it handles all of the audio for you. This isn’t an issue if you’re watching something with Dolby Atmos since it supports that codec, but it’s trouble when you’re dealing with something unsupported — and there are a lot of them. Maybe Apple will add passthrough at some point, so keep your fingers crossed. The good news is that many streamers offer passthrough, so you can use the Roku Ultra as a high-end alternative and go from there. Your receiver will still play the audio if your device doesn’t have passthrough, but it just won’t be at the highest quality it can be.

Utilize your room correction software

Dial in those settings

Your receiver probably comes with some sort of room-correction software if it’s worth its salt. My Denon has Audyssey, and I have to plug in a mic and move it around my room as my receiver uses the software to get the correct settings. The mic comes bundled with the receiver, and the on-screen instructions on your TV guide you through the entire process. I’m not sure how it works with every brand, but mine just made me move the mic around to three different viewing areas, and from there, it played audio out of every speaker and dialed in the settings. It is a time-consuming step, I won’t lie, but it’s well worth the time.

The downside to this is that every time you move a speaker to a different spot or add another set of speakers to your system, you’ll need to run the software again. I was happy to do it to make sure my two Dolby Atmos speakers sounded good, because it was a lot of trouble mounting them high up on my wall.

I also had to test several spots for my subwoofer, and each time I moved it around, I ran the software again just to make sure it blended in with my speakers. Unfortunately, this might not be an option for you if you hit the used market. I have a used Yamaha receiver that I picked up from Goodwill, and since it didn’t come with a bundled mic or remote, I don’t have access to the software. I’m sure I could find a way around that, but since I only use that receiver for a stereo sound system, it’s not a huge deal.