"Good Home Theater System starts with Good Audio Speakers":

Getting the best audio quality from a good home theater system is one of the most important aspects of the Theater experience.

Bad audio = a distracting presentation.

Why Audio Makes a Difference:

Without good audio the movie or music will not draw you and your guests into the action.

Home Theater design is a balancing act...

Home theater systems performance can be measured in several ways. The most important tool for this measuring are your senses.

Does the movie experience pull you into the action?

Do you forget about the worries of the day when watching with your family?

Do the voices, action, and explosions sound realistic and dynamic?

A good Home Theater will easily perform all of these tasks and it does so because it is overbuilt for the task. Home Audio / Video - The items you need to enhance your home audio and video experience

A Home Theater audio system should be overbuilt so that it can easily perform the task you will ask it to do.

If your system struggles - this will be heard as distortion, muffled voices, one note bass, and so on...

Projectors Home Theater and HDTV sets; Important?

Interestingly enough, the video is the easiest factor to get 'right' in a good home theater. Many of the displays and projectors are now state of the art.

Home Theater Calibration for video can easily be made to determine a units performance. And most of the latest projectors home theater and HDTV models do in fact perform very well.

However, there are factors to consider such as wall paint color (can influence on screen color), and lighting but the video is pretty simple.

The projector unit or HDTV set will do most of the work for you.

Home Theater Audio Performance; "Acoustic Accuracy" Is Not So Easy!

Audio performance is a different matter because each room that a stereo speakers or surround sound speakers system is installed in will sound different.

Each system will perform different because of the parts and materials used in the design and from the room in which they are installed.

This article is meant to help us get the best audio performance and a good home theater experience.

This is a technical article about speaker design. So it may or may not help you if you are only a plug and play Home Theater enthusiast.

Looking for other Good Home Theater articles? click here!

Speaker Drivers and Distortion:

It is possible to use a speaker driver with poor distortion figures if those figures are in a range that the driver is not being used. Many good home theater speakers are built in this way.

For example: I regularly use a tweeter that has high distortion figures below 2200 Hz. (Vifa XT25) But, otherwise this is an excellent tweeter so I cross this tweeter over to the mid driver around 3500 Hz. with an LR4 slope.

I also use a fairly steep slope crossover with this driver of 24db per octave or (4th order) And usually a smaller mid-range driver like a 4.5in or 5.5in. This, to minimize lobeing.

This keeps the distortion from the tweeter low enough in level below 3000 Hz as to not be audible. The mid-range driver then carries the signal up to 3500 Hz where it has better distortion readings than the tweeter.

The same theory is applied to the bass drivers. But there are a few things about the lows that must be understood for good bass/mid-range driver integration.

Bass below 100Hz is almost completely omni-directional. But if you place the crossover point above 100Hz you will need to pay close attention to driver spacing and integration.

Bass Speaker Box Design:

The correct speaker drivers must be chosen to get the result that you seek.

The Qes, Fs, and Qts measurements will help you to determine the resonant frequency of the completed system. Here is the link to plug in that data. You will need to Specifications from the driver manufacturer.

These measurements will tell how the speaker driver you are considering will respond in your box configuration.

This would allow you to calculate the F3 and F10 of the box design.

These measurements indicate the -3db and -10db points of the closed box system.

A sealed box may not have as high a level of F3, its F10 may be much higher because of the more gradual 6db per octave roll off of a sealed box system.

If you are planning to use a high excursion bass driver you may be surprised that some of these drivers simply can not play a clean signal above 100Hz. Some of these large, high excursion drivers are best crossed over even lower than that.

Also, you will need to make sure that the driver you are considering will give you the in room extension you are looking for. The negative 3db point for sealed box speakers can be substantially higher than a ported enclosure.

Ported box designs tend to roll off much quicker than sealed box. This is another advantage to a sealed system.

Speaker Box Types:

In my opinion acoustic suspension or sealed box systems offer the superior engineering advantage over other box types.

Sealed box speakers make very good home theater speakers because they produce the best transient response of any speaker type.

I am also a proponent of some dipole speakers. Dipoles can be incredible! More on this below.

Or no box at all- Dipolar Speakers:

Dipole speakers have advantages in bass reproduction because they create a cancellation front to back. A null is formed to the sides of each speaker.

This null will minimize room reflections from the side walls. And, because bass causes the most severe problems in the playback response this can be a clear advantage.

On the downside it will take an extreme amount of power and excursion to achieve the same SPL compared to a sealed box. This is a component of the front to back cancellation.

Crossover slopes:

Slopes must be considered while choosing the drivers. You will need to have a fairly good idea of the angle of slope you intend to use when choosing the drivers for the system.

Time coherence:

Time coherence is also very difficult to achieve in a passive crossover schematic.

Our idea is use digital crossover slopes and make time correction and time coherence easily obtainable within the digital domain. (Within the computer)

Crossover:

These speakers are usually plagued when the signal is sent through a passive crossover network.

So what is our suggestion? Don’t use a passive crossover network. It’s almost funny how few the numbers of companies that have figured this out.

Why keep doing something if it doesn’t work well and a better way has come into play? Use a digital speaker crossover -they are vastly superior. No useful argument exists that can prove otherwise. For a 3 way stereo digital crossover example: The Behringer DCX2496 Ultradrive Pro (pictured above) is a great device with a great reputation.

The Behringer unit is another way -other than the HTPC crossover, to experience digital filter slopes.

Explain your experience with both Active and Passive Crossovers and why you think Yours Is Best!

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