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In today’s world of immersive home theater, you may have seen number sequences like 7.1.4 or 5.2 or 3.0. It helps to understand these abbreviations as you are going to see them pop up when you start researching home theater receivers. Decoding this sequence is very easy once you know the key! The first digit is the number of speakers in the room that are not Dolby Atmos speakers. Dolby Atmos speakers either go in the ceiling or on top of your main speakers to fire up and bounce off of the ceiling. So for example, if the first digit is a 5, this means there is a left, center, right, and a pair of surround speakers. The next digit is the number of subwoofers. You will normally see most configurations call for one subwoofer, but we highly recommend at least 2 for a serious home theater room. The third digit is the number of Dolby Atmos speakers. So for example, if you have a home theater setup that is 5.2.4, this means you have 5 main speakers, 2 subwoofers, and 4 dolby atmos speakers.

Most home theater receivers max out at 11 channels, which enables a 7.1.4 setup with 11 powered and non-powered sub channel. There are a few on the very top end of the price scale that allow you to do 9.1.4 and even 11.1.6. For the purposes of this help guide, we will stop at 7.1.4 as for most rooms that is more than enough for an amazing experience!
As you go through these different configurations, bear in mind you’ll have choices on what type of speaker to use. For the main speakers, surround speakers, and rear speakers you can use an in-room tower or bookshelf speaker, an on-wall speaker or an in-wall speaker. The Dolby Atmos speakers can be either an in-ceiling speaker or an elevation speaker that would sit on top of your tower or bookshelf speaker. We are even starting to see some tower speakers with the elevation speaker built into the top which is pretty cool.

You may wind up laying out the perfect room only to find that the way your room is constructed doesn’t allow you to put speakers exactly where they should go. This is especially true for in-ceiling and in-wall speakers. A common problem with placing these speakers is the placement of the studs. If there is a stud in the way of where you need to put an in-ceiling atmos speaker, we find it better to move them to the left or right rather than front to back to find the spot where they can fit in the ceiling between the studs. For side speakers, we will usually suggest you move them slightly backwards, and for rears, move them further apart rather than closer together. If you have more detailed questions, jump over to AudioAdvice.com and chat or give us a call.

Once you’ve decided what setup is best for you, you’ve picked out your gear, and you’ve wired everything up… now it’s time for arguably the most important step in the process: calibration. Home theater calibration is a huge topic, but don’t be intimidated. With a little reading, you’ll be getting out the tape measure and setting levels like a pro. We have multiple articles at audioadvice.com on home theater calibration that will go through some of the different software options as well as how to properly run them. We can’t stress enough how much of a difference this will make to the sound of your theater.

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