There are two ways to skin a cat...
Home audio is no different. There are so many different ways to hook up your home audio system and there's no "right" answer. I'll try to help you come to your own conclusions with this article.
First of all Home Theater and Background Music Systems are DIFFERENT. You CAN combine them with current home audio receivers, but I'm going to offer a solution that will be easier to work with for all the people in your household (and you'll be the hero for that!)
A Home Theater receiver mostly is either a 5.1 or 7.1 type. This type of receiver uses some form of surround decoding like Digital Dolby, THX, DTS, etc. If you don't know what those mean, it's simply a way that a movie producer makes his/her soundtrack so that your speakers know what to do with what sounds and makes the movie very lifelike, enhancing your viewing experience (maybe you'll like it and rent/buy more movies....ah ha!).
This type of receiver has speaker outputs for a front left, center, front right speakers, rear left, rear right speakers and a low frequency output for a subwoofer. If it's a 7.1 it will have an additional mid-right and mid-left channel to put speakers on the same plane as your sitting area. This can help tie the front and the rear channels together a bit so there's no gap in surround sound from front to back. Many newer receivers have the option called "multi-zone" or "multi-room" settings if you don't plan on utilizing a 7.1 set up. Those "mid-sides" can now be used for other rooms in the house for a different source of audio. So the TV could have the game on and in other areas you could play something off your iPod.
In most cases you, the picker of technology, will be the only one who will know how to operate this type of system!
I submit a more user friendly set up. Use both a Home Theater Receiver and a standard Stereo Receiver.
While having one receiver do everything is sexy and all, it doesn't help Grandma when she comes over to watch junior and wants to put on some Spongebob and the rest of the house is playing your Barry White from the night before! Brown Chicken, Brown Cow...ouch.
Just spring for that other Stereo Receiver and now you can label the receivers so all will know what each of them is for. You can share all your sources (like CD Players, Sat, Cable, etc.) to both of your receivers via a few RCA Y-adapters.
Home audio is no different. There are so many different ways to hook up your home audio system and there's no "right" answer. I'll try to help you come to your own conclusions with this article.
First of all Home Theater and Background Music Systems are DIFFERENT. You CAN combine them with current home audio receivers, but I'm going to offer a solution that will be easier to work with for all the people in your household (and you'll be the hero for that!)
A Home Theater receiver mostly is either a 5.1 or 7.1 type. This type of receiver uses some form of surround decoding like Digital Dolby, THX, DTS, etc. If you don't know what those mean, it's simply a way that a movie producer makes his/her soundtrack so that your speakers know what to do with what sounds and makes the movie very lifelike, enhancing your viewing experience (maybe you'll like it and rent/buy more movies....ah ha!).
This type of receiver has speaker outputs for a front left, center, front right speakers, rear left, rear right speakers and a low frequency output for a subwoofer. If it's a 7.1 it will have an additional mid-right and mid-left channel to put speakers on the same plane as your sitting area. This can help tie the front and the rear channels together a bit so there's no gap in surround sound from front to back. Many newer receivers have the option called "multi-zone" or "multi-room" settings if you don't plan on utilizing a 7.1 set up. Those "mid-sides" can now be used for other rooms in the house for a different source of audio. So the TV could have the game on and in other areas you could play something off your iPod.
In most cases you, the picker of technology, will be the only one who will know how to operate this type of system!
I submit a more user friendly set up. Use both a Home Theater Receiver and a standard Stereo Receiver.
While having one receiver do everything is sexy and all, it doesn't help Grandma when she comes over to watch junior and wants to put on some Spongebob and the rest of the house is playing your Barry White from the night before! Brown Chicken, Brown Cow...ouch.
Just spring for that other Stereo Receiver and now you can label the receivers so all will know what each of them is for. You can share all your sources (like CD Players, Sat, Cable, etc.) to both of your receivers via a few RCA Y-adapters.
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