Home Theater Surround Sound System

If you have a theater system at home and you know a lot about speaker systems, then you probably know something about surround sound also. But if you do not have any inkling as to what it is about then you should know that it is what you experience in cinemas. The feeling that the audio is surrounding you – the literal meaning of the word “surround”, thus this is also called "Home Theater Surround Sound System".

Surround sound is a term for various techniques used for enriching and expanding the sound of playback on the audio. This is done through recording added sound channels which can be produced again on added speakers. Systems for surround sound are utilized for the sound systems of a cinema. These are also utilized for your home entertainment like the system for your home theater. Aside from improving the audio of viewing movies or films, it also improves the experience of gamers. The surround sound system is also used for computer games, video arcade games, technical theater. Soon there will be other kinds of application for this system. Formats of surround sound involves around 5.1 surround sound for audios of video players, quadraphonic, ambisonic, 5.1 Dolby surround sound and MP3 surround.

The hardware for surround sound is utilized mostly for sophisticated video gaming and for movie productions with big budget. There are also camcorders which can be bought in the market that has a capability of a surround sound. This capability can be availed as an add-on or built-in to the camcorder. Aside from camcorders, some electronic devices in the market have processors for digital signal or digital audio. This is built into the device to imitate the surround sound from the sources of the stereo.

By using several means, surround sound can be produced. The simplest way utilizes many speakers. The speakers are put around the room so that when the audio is played, the sound is produced in different directions of the room.
Another way is through audio processing. A sound localization whose kind is psychoacoustic is used to imitate a three-dimensional sound field on your headphones.

Another means of producing surround sound is based on the principle of Huygen. This is a kind of “audio hologram” wherein the recorded wavefronts of the sound field is tried to be reconstructed.

The synthesis of wave field is another kind of producing surround sound. This form creates a sound field which possesses an equivalent error field over the entire area. The commercial systems of this synthesis need a huge number of speakers which have loud audio and substantial amount of power to compute, because through these requirements, a successful result is produced.

The ambisonics is also based on the principle of Huygen. It gives out a precise reconstruction when you are at the central point. The reconstruction gets less precised as you turn away from the central point. There is a number of commercial and free software open for Ambisonics. It is focusing on a market, most especially for musicians who utilize computer and electronic music. This form is also common in the hardware of products with surround sound.

The specifications of surround sound distinguish the amount of separate channels built into the primary signal and the amount of reproduced channels for playback. The amount of reproduced channels for playback can be altered through the use of matrix decoding. There is also a distinction between the amount of reproduced channels for playback and the amount of speakers utilized to reproduce. Below are examples of analog matrixed systems.

A surround sound with 3.0 channels extracts three channels for the audio from a particularly encoded source with two channels.

A surround sound system with 4.0 channels extracts four channels for the audio from a particularly encoded source with two or four channels.

A surround sound with 4.1 channels extracts four audio channels and a channel that has a low frequency from a particularly encoded source with two channels.

A surround sound system with 5.1 channels extracts five audio channels and a channel with low frequency from a particularly encoded source with two channels. This can also be extracted from a stereo source.

The Dolby Digital surround sound system with 5.1 channels produces five audio channels and an LFE channel from a source with six channels.

There are three types of a surround sound system with 6.1 channels; the analog matrixed, the Dolby Digital and the DTS-ES. The analog matrixed 6.1 channel extracts six audio channels and one channel with a low frequency from a stereo source or a particularly encoded source with two channels. On the other hand, the digital discrete 6.1 channel produces five audio channels. These five audio channels have an LFE channel and an extracted channel for the audio from a source with six channels. While the DTS-ES 6.1 channel produces six channels for the audio and an LFE channel from a source with seven channels.

There is also a surround sound system which is a DTS-HD and, at the same time, a Dolby Digital. This is the 7.1 channel wherein it produces seven audio channels and an LFE channel from a source with eight channels.

The surround sound system with a format of 10.2 channels is developed by the creator of THX and a school of television and engineering.

The highest quality of them all is developed by a laboratory for technical research and science. This is the surround sound with 22.2 channels wherein it utilizes 24 speakers.