A home theater doesn’t have to be complicated. While the term might conjure up images of laser projectors and a ridiculous number of satellite speakers, consumer tech has advanced far enough that really, a large TV, a decent soundbar, and comfy seating are all you need to qualify. In fact if money were no object, I’d still buy a soundbar instead of a 9.1.2-channel Dolby Atmos system. You can still get great audio that way, and I’d rather not spend hours wiring speakers instead of a few minutes.
Nevertheless, it’s possible to run into problems in any scenario. In this piece I’m going to cover some of the ones you might run into if you’re new to the home theater world, and which may not be obvious until they create problems on movie night.
Placing speakers too close to walls or other surfaces
The surprise sound killer
Given the costs of renting in a big city — never mind owning property — space is often at a premium in home theaters. And when it isn’t, it can still be tempting to place speakers against walls or corners for a setup that preserves square footage.
The problem is that you can’t fight the laws of physics. If you bring a speaker too close to a wall, it can produce an effect known as boundary gain. This inflates low-end frequencies, drowning out the high end, the ultimate result being muddy output. A corner may make things even worse, since you’ve got an extra surface to bounce sound off of. You can also run into related issues like room gain and boundary interference, but you get the idea.
As a rule, assume your speakers should be at least 6 to 12 inches (about 5cm to 30cm) from any wall, the further the better. Some speakers are equipped to compensate for boundary gain, but you can’t necessarily count on it.
Whatever you do, don’t jam your speakers inside a cabinet or other entertainment center. Essentially, it’s an environment that’s nothing but corners, and you may additionally sabotage any spatial audio effects your system is capable of. If you shove an Atmos-capable soundbar in a cabinet, you might as well have bought a pair of cheap stereo speakers.
Ignoring the importance of passthrough
Your TV may not know what it’s doing
One way of visualizing your home theater is as a series of pipelines. Data is constantly being shuttled back and forth to what your gear decides is the proper destination, and decoded when necessary.
In some instances, though, this data isn’t being processed in the ideal way, the most likely culprit being your TV. If its audio is set to PCM, or even Auto, there’s a chance your TV may be taking an otherwise complex Atmos or DTS:X mix and converting it into basic stereo. Indeed, if your TV can handle that decoding, it may not be able to do it as well as your soundbar or receiver can.
The solution to this is enabling Bitstream or Passthrough in your TV’s audio options. This passes along the raw audio data, letting whatever’s on the other end take charge of decoding. Depending on your setup, you may need to enable passthrough on other devices as well — some add-on media streamers can’t decode any form of Dolby audio, let alone Atmos, in which case it’ll be the audio gear itself that has to assume responsibility.
More rarely, you may need to turn on video passthrough for some devices. The main use of this is you’re connecting something like a Blu-ray player to a soundbar or receiver instead of directly to your TV. The audio is extracted, but the video forwarded to your TV, in theory getting you the best of both worlds. Don’t connect PCs or game consoles this way, though, since it’s introducing unnecessary lag into those pipes.
Connecting the right devices to HDMI 2.1 (or 2.2)
Don’t kneecap your best hardware
On a podcast I follow, one of the hosts recently complained that the group that oversees the HDMI standard does a terrible job of identifying versions and differences between them. I have to agree, because superficially, HDMI 2.1 might sound like a minor revision of 2.0. The truth is that 2.1 was a major overhaul, and you can seriously hamper the performance of consoles, computers, and even some speakers by plugging them into a 2.0 port.
The central concern is refresh rates. At 4K resolution, 2.0 tops at 60Hz. That might be fine for watching movies and TV shows, but devices like consoles and PCs are frequently running faster than 60 frames per second, which means your TV’s 120 or 144Hz refresh rates are going to go unexploited. More significantly, a mismatch between frame and refresh rates can result in visual artifacts like screen tearing. This is why HDMI 2.1 also incorporates a feature called VRR, which much like AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync on a PC, adjusts refresh rates on the fly.
It doesn’t stop there. 2.1 is also better suited to dynamic HDR standards like Dolby Vision and HDR10+, and it’s the minimum version with support for eARC speakers. Without eARC, you can’t get lossless audio. I do feel that lossless is overrated, and you probably won’t be hearing it beyond Blu-ray discs, but its absence is going to sting if you just bought high-end speakers.
What about HDMI 2.2, you’re saying? Don’t worry too much about that yet. While it’s worth buying 2.2 cables as futureproofing, there’s no TV or peripheral that can make use of the standard’s whopping 96Gbps of bandwidth.
Using any other picture mode than Filmmaker Mode
Cut out the middleman
I’m being slightly disingenuous here. Different TV makers have different picture modes available, and occasionally, they can look quite good. You’ll also find people who hate Filmmaker Mode, since they think it makes content look too dim or flat.
The trouble with other modes is that they all apply post-processing, and can sometimes go overboard. The worst culprits tend to be Dynamic or Vivid modes. These ramp up settings for contrast, saturation, noise reduction, and/or sharpness, which may catch your eye in a store, but wreck detail when you sit down to watch something at home. They’re liable to produce inaccurate colors too, or worse, apply motion smoothing. It’s bad motion smoothing that results in the “soap opera effect,” making it look like a $200M blockbuster was shot on a TV camera from the ’90s.
Filmmaker Mode disables almost all post-processing and sets your TV to the D65 white point. It might initially be disappointing that you’re not making full use of your TV’s abilities, but what you get in return is the closest representation of a filmmaker’s intent, with accurate colors and detail. It’s not like you lose access to your TV’s most important tech, either. You’ll still get things like HDR10+ — it’s just that you won’t be assaulted by the junk food version of it.
If you feel like the mode is too dim, it may be that you need to change your TV’s HDR settings. Dolby Vision, for instance, may have a “Bright” incarnation on your TV. Be patient if you can’t immediately find something similar — TV makers love to rename common features, and the options you have are going to be dependent on your TV’s specs. Samsung TVs lack any Vision compatibility, so you’re going to be tweaking HDR10 or HDR10+.
5/5
