Home Theater Setup Guides

The definitive guide to surround speaker placement: 5.1 channel, 7.1 channel, Dolby atmos, height channels, side channels, rear effects channels . . . What's the optimal location for these speakers?

If you watched any of our speaker setup videos that talk about placement in regular rooms, in odd-shaped rooms, toe-in, and all those other aspects of setting up your speakers, you’ve heard me refer to using certain setup or test tracks. One thing that I haven’t done is gone through some of the albums that I use when I’m setting up a pair of speakers in a new room. It’s a wide variety of different types of music.

Amid the multi-channel world of Dolby Digital 7.1 surround speakers and surround sound, we don't often stop to question what is it we're seeking? (For this discussion, let's ignore the video aspect of home entertainment, for without the audio portion, there would be little or no enjoyment of most events, musical or otherwise.