When in mixed company people sometimes ask me "What IS Home Theatre, anyway?" The simplest answer is "Big Picture, Big Sound" When pressed further, my next sentence is something like "What we try to accomplish with Home Theatre is to re-create, in your living room (or dedicated room) a movie environment remindful of the best commercial theatre you can recall. A few years ago that would be a tall order. Today, it's a slam dunk on a reasonable budget! In other words, we want to envelop you in the presentation, in both a visual and an aural sense to create that magical ‘suspension of disbelief' ".  It's those exchanges that remind me of the important role audio plays in the overall movie experience. If it isn't 50% of the impact, it's very close to it - yet with the aforementioned recent focus on video, it's easy to neglect the audio side if you (or your installer) are not careful.

A recent installation in Southern California, coupled with a request from Sencore to review one of their new sound analyzers gave me an opportunity to spend "extra time" on the audio side, and provides the inspiration for this column. It should be said at the top that the whole topic of room acoustics is an interesting, but somewhat complex discussion that deserves far more ink than is allocated here. The issues of speaker boundary gain, axial and tangential room modes, comb filtering, precedence effect, ETG (echograms) and proper application of absorbsion and diffusion panels should all be understood before attempting to try this at home. Even armed with the theoretical knowledge, one needs the right equipment in order to get useful data. For those installers reading this, or just enthusiasts who want to dig deeper, I highly recommend Gerry Lemay's class on this topic put on by the Home Acoustic Alliance. Contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for more details.