Music is a massive bunch of these squiggles all thrown in together, but it can be represented for our purposes as a single squiggle line. Now picture this squiggle line, and let’s mentally cut it in half horizontally. The upper half is just the tips of the wave, and the lower half is just the troughs. Because of the time element and the way the wave is shaped, the tips never line up vertically with the troughs.

Balanced cables, also known as XLR cables by the typical connectors used at the ends, take advantage of this fact to pull off something special: “common mode noise rejection.”

Picture sound-canceling headphones for a moment. They use microphones to listen to surrounding noise, and they inject that noise into your music, delayed half a wave. So they change a tip into a trough, and the tips and troughs of the surrounding noise align vertically.

When this happens, sound cancels out. That’s why they’re called noise-cancelling headphones instead of noise-reducing headphones — they really do nix that business right out.

By DUNCAN TAYLOR

See Full Story at www.coloradodaily.com

This 5-Step supplemental article assumes you already have a home theatre system and simply want to improve the bass response for better impact and accuracy. This article also assumes you’ve properly set up the bass management in your AV receiver or processor and made all of the necessary connections to your speakers and subwoofers.

If you’re running only one subwoofer, it may be time to upgrade and get a second matching sub. Dual subwoofers are ALWAYS better than a single subwoofer for distributing uniform bass across a wider listening area and also coupling very low frequencies for greater depth and dynamic range.

Here are the 5 Steps Towards Better Bass in Your Home Theater Room:

1. Subwoofer Location (preferably multiple subs) – Follow our pictorial guidelines in our Subwoofer Setup Article for suggestive placements or our Subwoofer Crawl. There are multiple locations that can work in your room so finding the right spots is worth the effort to greatly improve sound quality and depth.  Positional EQ(Listening seat location) – where you place your listening seats also determines sound quality NOT just in bass but for the overall home theatre surround envelop. Keep your seating away from back and side walls if possible. Backwall placement is a maximum pressure zone where you will hear very loud but not accurate bass. If you can move the couches at least 1/4L of the room away from the backwall, you will ensure more accurate bass reproduction. 
2. Positional EQ – Believe it or not you can equalize the sound of your speaker/sub system simply by moving your theater chairs or couches. Proper seating location can have a huge impact in the quality of  bass you hear. You generally want to avoid placing your seats up against a back or side wall. We recommend locating the seats at least 1/4L (L = length of the room) away from the back wall to reduce excessive bass energies caused by build up of standing waves. Locating a seat to a sidewall will shift the balance of the sound towards the closest surround speaker while also severely impacting stereo imaging of the front left/right speakers. Instead, apply symmetry and line of sight principles when locating your couches so that every seating location has a direct unobstructed path of sound to each speaker and the front left/right speakers are equidistant for true stereo imaging.

by Gene DellaSala

See Full Story at www.audioholics.com

Here are five important tips to help you achieve outstanding results:

1. Ask the Right Qualification Questions

The first step in designing an outdoor theater system is to assess the area and the homeowner’s needs. Some of the key questions to ask are:

• How large is the space you have to fill?
• How many viewers does the system need to accommodate?
• Is the area hardscape (paved)?
• What kind of programming is the customer most interested in: TV sports only, TV news, rom-com movies, action movies, or some combination of all?
• What are the customer’s performance aspirations?

Someone with a high-ticket custom indoor home theater will likely have higher performance expectations than someone with only a soundbar indoors. These considerations will influence the type, number, and mounting locations of the speakers as well as amplifier choice.

For example, let’s assume the homeowner wants to watch mostly TV sports outdoors and the seating area is small with room for just a few seats on a paved patio.

In this case, a two-channel system with 5.25-inch two-way speakers, possibly with an on-ground subwoofer or an outdoor rated soundbar, would be adequate.

But be cautious of two-channel systems. Listeners seated well outside of the center “sweet spot” will lose the illusion that centered dialog is anchored to the screen.

2. Distance Determines Loudness

The outdoors is big. With no room surfaces to contain the sound and with the high ambient noise typically found outdoors, a critical issue in outdoor theaters is the amount of sound.

How much sound is enough? Sound outdoors follows the Inverse Square Law, where each doubling of distance between speaker and listener drops the output by an audibly significant 6dB.

If a speaker is playing at, let’s say, 70dB at 1 meter (~3 ft.), at 2 meters (~6 ft.) the sound pressure will be 64dB, and so on.

3. Use Omnidirectional Speakers

I have long been a proponent of omnidirectional speakers for outdoor listening, but not for the front channels of outdoor theaters.

For front stage (LCR) speakers, I’ve found that low to medium dispersion (60- to 120-degree) speakers best focus the mids and highs in the listening area and deliver maximum sound pressure where it’s needed.

Most speakers with forward-facing driver arrays are low to medium dispersion designs. Omnidirectional speakers are most appropriate as side and rear channel speakers in surround systems.

By Bill Kieltyka

See Full Story at www.cepro.com