How to Build a Home Surround Sound System
- 1). Buy equally rated speakers in pairs if building your surround sound system with individual components. The two front speakers should be evenly matched, as well as the two rear surround sound speakers. The center speaker delivers most of the dialog in movies, so look for a quality two-way speaker with a responsive tweeter for high frequencies and a mid-range for natural sounding dialog. Pre-packaged surround sound systems come with evenly matched speakers.
- 2). Choose a home theater receiver with enough power to drive your speaker system without taxing the internal amplifiers. This information will be listed on the product fact sheet for each receiver you are considering. The receiver should also have all the connection jacks you'll need to hook up your components. At minimum, you will need jacks for connecting a DVD or Blu-Ray player, plus two extra sets of audio-video jacks to connect gaming systems and a VCR or other video device, such as a camcorder. Ports for docking an iPod or MP3 player will let you listen to music in surround sound on these devices.
- 3). Set up the front speakers on either side of your TV, ideally 10 feet apart for the best stereo separation.
- 4). Place the center speaker above or below the television where movie dialog from this speaker will be close to the video.
- 5). Set up the two rear surround speakers behind and slightly above your main seating area. Turn the speakers inward at a 45 degree angle. These can be wall mounted, installed on speaker stands or placed on bookshelves at the desired height.
- 6). Place the subwoofer anywhere in the room. The sub delivers a heavy bass signal that is omnidirectional, meaning it sounds the same regardless of location.
- 7). Connect each speaker to the corresponding jacks on the back of your home theater receiver by stripping 1/2 inch of insulation from the ends of the speaker wires. Insert each wire into the hole beneath the spring clip on the back of your speakers and receiver, or wrap the wires around posts and tighten them if your receiver uses post connections. Always connect the speaker wires to the same polarity. For example, connect the red wire to the red jack and the black or silver wire to the black connection jack.
- 8). Plug an RCA audio cable into the back of the subwoofer and connect the other end to the subwoofer jack on the receiver.
- 9). Connect the DVD or Blu-Ray cable to the back of the receiver. DVD players typically use RCA audio-video cables that are red, white and yellow (right and left audio, and video, respectively). Blu-Ray players use an HDMI connection, which is a single plug shaped like a trapezoid. It only inserts one way, so don't attempt to force the plug.
- 10
Connect a video cable from the TV to the Video Out jack on the back of the receiver. - 11
Connect the power cords for all equipment into a surge protector power strip, which can then be plugged into the wall outlet.
Source...