13 Tips To Improve Your Home Theater Experience (Guide 101)

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Cost and time consumption that it takes to set up a home theater.  After that, every home theatre owner thinks about how to get the most out of the theater system.  There is always room for improvement but when it comes to the quality of home theater we miss very small opportunities to improve the quality.

Like!!! I connected my home theater TV through VGA and I was pleased with its quality but I came across my friend who told me to try HDMI cables.  Those HDMI connections truly transformed my TV picture quality. I was loving it more than before.

When it comes to home theater improving tips, There are a variety of tips that will improve the quality of your home theatre but I want to put the steps into two categories for you.

These categories will help you to better understand it and better implement it.

One category of tips will improve the quality of your home theater without any extra cost and the other category of tips will improve it at the cost of a few to some dollars.

Tips To Improve Your Home Theater Experience. At A Glance:

  1. Improve Your Surround Sound System Speakers Layout
  2. Give The Role Of The Bass To Subwoofers
  3. Place The Home Theater Seating In The Middle Of The Speakers
  4. Shut The Door Of Your Theater Room
  5. Adjust the brightness and black levels of the screen
  6. Make The Theater Room Darker For a Better The Experience
  7. Add A Subwoofer To The System, If You Don’t Have one, Or Add Another If You Have One Already
  8. Use HDMI Cables For The Connection
  9. Install Acoustic Panels To Reduce Reverberation Of The Sound
  10. Get The Best Quality Of Receiver
  11. Go For The Best Quality Of The Center Channel Speakers
  12. Install Blackout Curtains In The Room
  13. Go For A Bigger Projector/TV Screen

6 Tips To Improve Home Theater System Without Extra Money

Improve Your Surround Sound System Speakers Layout

Why does the movie sound more tremendous in professional cinema halls than in the home theatres? Because they know the secret sauce of positioning the speaker in the areas where they boost the quality of sound to the fullest.

 This secret sauce can be implemented in your home to enjoy the movie sound the same as in professional cinema halls.

 in this secret sauce, you must arrange the main center and subwoofers speakers ahead of you and the surround sound speakers should be somewhere behind you.

 Now continuously tweak the angles of the surround sound speakers until you feel the best quality of the audio.

Now to enhance the audio experience, even more,   try to place the subwoofer in the corner or against the wall but the subwoofer face should be at you.

In case you have more than two surround sound speakers, then install the other two on the left and right sides of your sofa.

Improve Your Surround Sound System

Without surround sound the whole home theater experience is dead. That’s why read my this review on the best home theater speakers under $1000

Give The Role Of The Bass To Subwoofers

Audio experience comes from a set of speakers. That set of speakers is a combination of main, center, and subwoofer speakers.  They all are connected to the AV receiver.

 For the best experience, we should leave subwoofers for the base only.

Set all other speakers to “small” in the audio settings. In this way, the base will come out through the subwoofers.

Are you looking for affordable deep bass? Then read my this article about the best subwoofer under $300.

Place The Home Theater Seating In The Middle Of The Speakers

As we have discussed before that the surround sound speaker should be placed behind you.

 For the best experience, you should not have anything between your home theatre seating and the surround sound speakers.

 In this way, you will get clear sound from the surround speakers to your ears without it colliding with an obstacle before reaching you.

 It is very important because sound is an energy and it can be disturbing and deflected easily by any obstacle.

If you need a nice theater seating platform then follow my this guide on how to build a seating platform. All calculations are provided with a special formula.

You can find the perfect place for the platform by following my this guide on how far to sit from the screen. You can easily calculate the distance for the size of the screen by following it.

Shut The Door Of Your Theater Room

You should always keep the door of the theatre room closed.  because it stop the outside sound coming in. This outside sound will suppress the quality of the theater system sound. 

You should also think of the light coming in through the door.  It will affect the video experience of your home theatre.

To make your theatre room door soundproof go and read my this guide. When you make it soundproof the light will also not come in through it.

Adjust the brightness and black levels of the screen

As we know the brightest picture TV sells well.  When we step into the shopping mall our eyes automatically stick to the brightest TV in the mall. This is by default the psychology of humans.

 That’s why TVs come in the box from the factory with this default image setting.  This bright picture property of the TV is not suitable for the home theatre experience.

 Go to the setting and choose a cinema mode.  If there is no cinema mode in your TV then adjust the brightness according to your taste. 

 But remember brighter pictures flash away from the grey and black colors of the screen.  It is very important that blacks should be defined on the screen for better image quality.

Make The Theater Room Darker For a Better The Experience

One of the purposes of home theatre is that it enhances the overall experience of the movie so you can feel like you are in the movie.  but the more light in the room the more it will make it difficult for you to experience the realism of the movie.

You should make the room as dark as possible,  cover all the  Windows and many more possible passages of light.

Turn off all the lights so you can really feel like you are in the movie.

7 Tips That Will Cost You A Few Or Some Dollars

Add A Subwoofer To The System, If You Don’t Have one, Or Add Another If You Have One Already

Many of us believe that the main and Centre speakers are enough for the best theatre experience but this is not true.

 You need the best quality subwoofer,  that will be responsible for the lower base in the audio.

 we don’t notice that we are missing a good base but once you add the subwoofer you will feel the difference.

Now you will feel the realistic impacts of an action movie audio better than before. All those bangs and woofs of the movie will feel more realistic.

Are you a fan of a fantastic deep bass? Then read my this review on the best subwoofer under $1000.

Use HDMI Cables For The Connection

You don’t need HDMI cables for good sound quality. Use the basic quality wire for speaker connectivity.  In fact, the wires that come in the box with the speakers are suitable for connectivity.

But to get the best video quality,  you should invest in good HDMI cables or the latest technology of HDMI cables.

These cables will enhance the picture quality of your theatre system even more.

But for 5.1 surround sound speakers, use only HDMI cables otherwise for good-quality sound normal cables will do the work.

Install Acoustic Panels To Reduce Reverberation Of The Sound

Speakers throw out sound rays in all directions.  One collection of rays comes straight to you and here dialogues are clear for you.  while all other collections of sound, go and collide with the wall and then reflect. These reflect several times across the room and then hit your ears again.

 Now you will hear the same dialogue twice and it will confuse your brain. 

 This affects the movie experience as you experience an echo in the sound of the movie.

To erase this echo you should install acoustic panels on the walls of your theatre. Read my This Guide for that.

Get The Best Quality Of Receiver

You get the best in the world speakers but if your receiver is not of the best quality you will still not get 100% quality out of your speakers.

The data of sound comes from the TV to the receiver.  The receiver processes it and then shifts it to the speakers for the output.

Now if your processor is not good then automatically the quality of the sound will not be good.  That’s why you need the best quality receiver.

If you have the best quality receiver and your speakers are not of the best quality,  you will still get a nice sound quality.  Your receiver this much affects the sound experience.

I have reviewed the best receivers under $1000, you will be amazed by how many features brands are offering in this price range.

Go For The Best Quality Of The Center Channel Speakers

The base task is for the subwoofers but a lot of sound output tasks are fulfilled by the center channel speakers.

At least 86% of the sound is created for center channel speakers. 

With the best center speakers, you will experience the best quality dialogues.

Make sure that you have speakers from the same manufacturer:

If you are having speakers from different manufacturers in your home theatre system, then you will not get the best quality of sound that you are looking for.

 because every manufacturer is having its own unique sound signature.  due to the difference in sound signature among the speakers.  the speakers will not sync well and the sound signature will keep on changing from one speaker to another.

There will be different variations of one single dialogue because of the speakers’ mismatch.

You might think that this error is not significant but your brain can spot the variations of the same dialogue.

I have reviewed the best center channel speakers, there are few that provide top-of-notch dialogue clarity.

Install Blackout Curtains In The Room

We had a discussion about light in the theatre room before.  but that was a free way to stop the light from coming in.

Extra light coming into the theatre room will flush out the black portion of the screen, especially the projector screen. 

Brief throwback to that section: This drastically affects the movie experience.  it is very important that the pixel shows a difference between the white and black balance of the screen for optimal picture quality.  if the black portion is affected by the light then the picture quality will not be good.

 That’s why you should consider buying blackout curtains.  you can find it in a local store or online.

They are made up of microfibres that can stop the light from coming into the room.

Go For A Bigger Projector/TV Screen

If your home theatre system setup is in a normal small room then you can simply install a TV of 65 to 75 inches.  it will do the work.

But if your home theatre is set up in your basement or in a special room that has a fairly large area for your screen.

 Then you can go with a good quality projector because this projector can give you a screen size of up to 300 inches.

Did you get something out of this home theater tips guide? Hold On We Have Something Exciting To Share.

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FAQs

How Can I Improve The Sound Quality Of My Home Theater?

I have answered this query in the above article but let’s make it even more simple for you here.

 you can first rearrange the whole sound system of your theatre.  place the center and main channel speaker ahead of you that will be facing you and place the surround sound behind you. place the subwoofer somewhere at the corners.  make sure there are no extra obstacles between you and the speaker.

 you can even go for the upgrade of your Subwoofers, center, and main channel speakers.

If you don’t have subwoofers, first go and add a good-quality subwoofer to your system.

How Do I Get More Bass Out Of My Home Theater System?

The best thing you can do to get more bass out of your home theatre system is that you direct the bass to the subwoofers.

Go to your audio settings and choose subwoofers for the base.  in this way, the base will be directed to subwoofers.  Also, consider buying good quality subwoofers. For clear dialogues, you should get good quality main channel speakers.

How Can I Improve My Home Theater Treble?

If you really want to improve the treble then you have to spend a little more on this wish of yours.

Get a good quality tweeter box online and connect it to the receiver of your home theatre.

Now they will contribute to a better treble experience.

How Can I Improve My 5.1 Surround Sound?

For a normal audio experience, you can use a normal cable that comes with the box with speakers.

But to improve 5.1 surround sound and get even more quality from your surround sound then you should only go for HDMI cables.

 These HDMI cables are capable of giving you Dolby,  Dolby Digital Plus, or even atmos.

For the best picture quality and for the best 5.1 surrounds sound the HDMI cable is the one to go far.

How Do I Tune My Home Theater?

 We have discussed this already in the article above but to simplify it and focus it on this query, I will answer it again but briefly.

 you should have comfortable home theatre seating, good quality AV receiver,  good quality 4K TV or projector with HDR quality, and good quality audio system.

 this all will give a nice Foundation for a better experience.

But to tune it even more you should do all connections with HDMI cables.  play with the arrangements of your speakers for better quality.  We have discussed these arrangements in the above section of this article.

 you should also stop the outside noise and light coming into the theatre.

  This is the basic tuning of your home theatre for a top-notch experience. 

Helpful Resources For The FAQs To Read More

  1. Read more tips here to improve the sound. (Resource for the first answer)
  2. Read what Marantz is saying about it. (Resource for the second answer)

Home Theater Experience Improvement Checklist To Download

13 Tips To Improve Your Home Theater Experience checklist

This article was first posted on Homelytainment.com.
Ayaan Khan
Ayaan Khan

I'm Ayaan khan, a freelancer and a Computer Science degree holder from P.E.S. College. After my degree, I started an internship with my father in his home theater showroom. After working for a month I realized that this is the best job in the world for me and it could be turned into a passion. Fast forward to when my internship ended, I joined my father as a full-time home theater equipment tester. I test new equipment and approve it before it can be installed in the customer's house. I love to test equipment and sometimes love to install it by myself in the customer's theater room. I have the right experience and knowledge to learn from my articles. In my Free time I write & answer questions here on AVSFORUM. Every Article on Homelytainment is curated according to Homelytainment's Editorial Policy and Sponsorship Policy. If you have any questions for me. Reach out to my email (Support(AT)homelytainment.com)

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