1 - Making a choice
Sound projectors
Less imposing than large home-cinema surround systems, sound projectors can be fixed at the back of your TV or placed underneath. Some are even built-in to a TV cabinet and it can be cheaper to buy one of these. Using the walls of the room to give sound to the side and back, sound projectors are designed for small rooms only.
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£330 - £347
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£445 - £445
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£800 - £800
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Home cinema systems
Sold as an amp + speaker system, all in a common style, home cinema systems are often easy to set up in any room. Most of the time they come with all necessary accessories, including all the wires you’ll need. They’re also very easy to install and use.
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£260 - £419
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£150 - £249
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£370 - £520
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Customized kits
Watch out here, setting up your own kit requires a minimum of experience. Here, you choose according to your tastes and needs. You can go for an amp, a subwoofer and speakers all from different places. Sometimes you might even want to get your surround or rear channel speakers from a different manufacturer. Remember that these products are sold without wiring, which means you’ll have to pay extra for that. Make sure you take this into account when you’re budgeting.
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£60 - £60
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£391 - £391
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£800 - £800
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Multimedia kits
Although entry-level multimedia kits are a good way off a home cinema kit, the best of them are on a par with some of the cheaper home cinema kits. In a small flat, a room, as a back-up or for your computer, they’ll do fine.
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£165 - £177
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£80 - £80
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£254 - £645
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2 - The Science
The really important aspects of the spec
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- HDMI ins/outs :
HDMI sockets have become ever more present in our living rooms over the last few years. They’re found on TVs and DVD/Blu-Ray players, as well as video projectors and even the graphics cards in our computers. There’s nothing more annoying than having to fiddle around at the back of an amp to unplug one wire and plug in another, depending on which sound source you’re using/watching. Imagine if you’re a real home cinema and high tech enthusiast: one DVD player, a Blu-Ray, a games console (or two?), a multimedia hard drive, a computer, a TV and of course a video projector. You’re going to need no less than 6 HDMI ins and 2 outs for your amp.
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- Different sound options :
the houses and flats we live in weren’t designed for optimal sound. Amps are however equipped with specially designed chips that allow you to adjust the sound to improve your listening experience. Most often, the procedure is automatic, helped with the placement of a mic in various listening positions. Here we don’t recommend you go for all the latest technology. Home cinema equipment comes covered in stickers highlighting HDMI 1.3 or 1.4 compatibility, Dolby Prologic IIx, IIy and IIz but you’re better off with a 5.1 HDMI 1.1 compatible amp that’s correctly equipped than an 11.1 HDMI 1.4 Dolby Prologic IIz, that you won’t use up to capacity (imagine 11 speakers in your living room!) and which won’t suit your room.
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- Size and speaker stands :
Ok! You’ve seen a home cinema system you like! It looks the business, will suit the style of your room and has the spec you’re looking for. When you try and set it up however, disaster! It won’t fit into your shelving, the front channel speakers are on stands but you don’t have anywhere to put them and the subwoofer is too big to go behind your couch. These are all considerations you need to think about prior to making your purchase if you don’t want to have to take everything back to the shop.
While we’re on the subject of speaker positioning, we should say that so called “surround” speakers in a 5.1 kit shouldn’t be positioned at the back of the listening area but on the side, like at the cinema. You only do this with 7.1 kits, which have surround and rear channel speakers that are, as their name suggests, positioned behind the listener.
What you’ll need to go a bit further
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- Multi-room systems :
you’re looking for a home cinema system for the living room but you’d like to extend quality sound to the bedroom and kitchen as well. Some of today’s amps can handle different listening areas, with several different sources. Of course, they cost more but can also save money and take up less space than three different set-ups.
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- Analogue wiring :
there tends to be quite a bit of contradictory advice when it comes to wiring. Home cinema enthusiasts do however seem to have more or less reached a consensus on the right balance to go for. To more or less measure up to the system that’s installed, you should spend around a tenth of the price of your equipment on the wiring. Whatever you do, don’t go for so-called exceptional wires that supposedly revolutionise your listening experience. They’re expensive and rarely give much better quality.
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- Digital wiring :
here, things are worse than on the analogue side. You need to know that any signal is affected by interference it meets on its way. Analogue signals deteriorate bit by bit and this can be clearly heard/seen. Digital signals either arrive at the receiver in a good enough state to be processed, in which case there’s no problem, or they arrive in a damaged state that the receiver can do next to nothing with. No point investing thousands in wiring here. As long as the signal gets through, the results are the same. This is also valid for HDMI and, particularly, S/P DIF wiring.
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- Facade :
so you’re having a few people over tonight and one of your friends wants to play you her latest recording or a song she’s into at the moment. The problem is your computer is in the bedroom and there’s only one mini-jack at the front of the amp.
Don’t forget that you’ll be using your home cinema system for other things apart from watching films. Having extra mini-jack, RCA and USB ins and even an iPod dock is always a good idea.
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- Internet connectivity :
web radios are now extremely common and often broadcast nice audio quality. Having an amp you can connect to the internet and your personal network, via Ethernet or WiFi is a great idea. Especially if your amp can access music stored on your computer.
3 - Accessories
Headphones
It’s nice to have 5, 7, 9 or even 11 speakers and 1 or 2 subwoofers in the living room but at times your neighbours and family may want some peace and quiet. In which case, a good set of headphones is indispensable. Budget headphones which give acceptable sound start at between €50 and €80 and the higher end goes up to €300 to €500 or even more. A fine complement to your audio set-up.
Audio/video network players
These have just started to appear in manufacturer catalogues and are the perfect link between your audio/video set-up and your computer and the internet. They can play the audio and video files stored on your computer, hard drive or on the internet. Very practical to avoid having to burn onto CD all the music you’ve bought online.
Multifunction remotes
Having separate remotes for your Blu-Ray player, amp, TV, games console etc is too much. You can now buy programmable remotes that usually come with an LCD screen on which you can configure various different uses. Once you’ve learned how to use the remote, you’ll be able, for example, to select “Music” to turn on the amp and CD player or “Film” for the amp, Blu-Ray and video projector.
4 - Going further
