Aliens Behind the Couch or How to Set Up Your Surround Sound System

Few things enhance home movie viewing like a new home theater surround sound system. Watching sci-fi and horror movies becomes much more of an experience when you can hear creatures sound like they are sneaking up from behind you or a laser blast zips from one side of the room to the other!

But how to do you set up your system to achieve these great effects? It all comes down to speaker placement. Most home theater systems will have five speakers and a sub woofer and many will have seven speakers and a subwoofer. These are a called 5.1 and 7.1 systems respectively. Fortunately, a little bit of information on setup goes a long way.

With most systems there will be three speakers at the front near the television or screen. The center channel speaker is situated directly above or below and centered on the screen. The front of the speaker should be flush with the edge of the screen. Be sure the speaker is on top of or very close to the screen otherwise the sound can appear detached from the action.

Next are the left and right front speakers. Typically, these will be placed at about 45 degrees from the listeners ears and flush with the front of the screen as well. They should be roughly the same distance off the ground as your listeners ears when seated and watching a movie. Make sure each speaker is the same distance from the center of the screen.

With a 5.1 system you have two speakers remaining - the surround speakers. These should be placed to each side of the listener or a bit behind them and few inches higher than ear level. Aim the speakers directly at each other.

If you have 7.1 system you will have back speakers to install as well. These should be placed directly behind the listeners at the same height as the surround speakers.

The final speaker for any system is the subwoofer. It can be placed almost anywhere in the room since the human ear can't generally localize the sound frequencies it produces. Basically, this means people won't be able to tell where the sound is coming from and will simply be bathed in the bass sounds. Locating it somewhere near the front of the room should be sufficient.

Of course, there are many more subtleties to setting up a surround system but these concepts will allow you to set you a decent sounding system without getting hyper technical. Is that an alien I hear behind your couch? Enjoy!

Many websites provide additional information on the topic of speakers. One such site worth visiting is http://www.MidwestSpeaker.com.