5.1 Speakers and 7.1 Speakers
Nowadays, most of the home theater reviews talk about the wonderful speaker configurations that different theater systems have. The reviews discuss about the 5.1 speakers or 7.1 speakers without giving much explanation of the technical jargon used. In this article, I will try to explain these technical terms so that you have better understanding of the speaker technology.
Before going into the details of speaker configuration, lets first talk about how sound is represented. As we all know sound can be recorded using a microphone onto an audio track. This audio track can then be played on any media player and heard with the help of speakers. Initially, sound was recorded on a single track or a channel. As the technology enhanced, two channel recording was made possible. In a two channel sound recording, sometimes also known as stereo recording, sound can be played on two speakers on either side, enhancing the listening experience.
The next technological advance came through multi-channel recording of sound so that it can be heard from many speakers kept at various angles around the listener. This setup of multiple speakers is also known as “surround sound”. This term initially referred to the multi channel audio system developed by Dolby Laboratories. But over a period of time Dolby digital sound became the standard in millions of home theaters & cinema halls, making the term “surround sound” a general definition of multi channel sound systems.
As the surround sound became popular various formats were used to record and play it. Today, most of the home theater systems or Cinema halls uses surround sound formats either from Dolby laboratories or from DTS. The DTS format does have more clarity in the sound since it uses less compression in sound encoding, but Dolby format is more widely accepted as coding standard in DVDs and television broadcasts.
All surround sound systems are characterized by the number of speakers used in the setup. Typically, a sub woofer is also used in surround sound setup to create the rumbling effect. These speakers are used to reproduce bass frequencies and complement the surround sound effects. The subwoofers produce frequencies which are difficult to localize. Therefore one subwoofer can be used with multiple sound channels and it can be placed off-center without any sound quality degradation. The listener is not able to localize the origin of the sound produced.
The home theater systems available in the market support variety of surround sound configurations. The most commonly used surround sound configurations are known as 5.1 speaker systems. In these systems, exactly five speakers, supporting 5 channels are placed in the room to give a surround sound (multi-channel) effect. The “.1” stands for the single subwoofer used with the 5 speaker setup. In this configuration, two speakers are situated in the front of the listener and one speaker is in the center, between the front two speakers. The remaining two are at the rear of the listener. Subwoofer can be placed anywhere in the room.
Another commonly used surround sound configuration is known as the 7.1 speaker configuration. As the name suggests it has seven speakers and 1 subwoofer to support the multi-channel sound production. As compared to 5.1 surround sound speakers, 7.1 speakers have two additional channels which provide additional surround sound experience to the listener.
Hopefully, the information given above would now help you in making a better choice of the speaker system when buying a home theater.
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