What do i need to set up surround sound?

Question

OK, i have never had surround sound before, and wanted to see how much it would cost to hook my xbox up like that. What things will i need? I have heard something about a reciever...is this expenive? do i need to buy an "optical cable"? and does surround sound work if i am sitting near to the rear speakers, because i sit against the back wall...?

any help would be appreciated

Answer 1

The cheapest way to get surround is to get what is called a "home theater in the box". It comes with a DVD player, 6 speakers, and usually includes an AM/FM player.
Make sure it has at least one AUX digital audio input, so you can connect your xbox. It needs to be optical as well unless your xbox has both optical and coax.

Otherwise, buy a cheap AV Receiver and 6 speakers (with cables), and you still need that optical cable. This is better, but far more expensive.

In most surround systems you can program the delay between front and back speakers so that it matches your room and your sitting position.

Answer 2

There are surround systems for less, but a good price point to start would be around $500. For that (since you already have the DVD player in the Xbox system) you would need a surround receiver and 5-speakers. Or you could invest in a higher quality 2-channel stereo system. I'll give you two recommendations -one for each application...

SURROUND SOUND SYSTEM
Receiver: Onkyo TX-SR505 (about $300)
Speakers: Dayton HTS-1200B (about $100)
Powered Sub: AudioSource PSW100 (about $100)

Depending upon what connections your Xbox has, you can use a coaxial digital cable (to decode dolby digital or dts if your Xbox has these capabilities), an optical cable, or the regular audio/video cables.

Your receiver will have audio level balancing features (i.e. so you can turn up the fronts and center speakers), so when you're sitting along the back wall in parallel with your rear surround speakers, it will still sound balanced.

This should get you started. If you have a higher budget available, you might want to step up your speakers to some Hsu Research surround sound systems.

Answer 3

Are you making use of a committed centre speaker for the actors' discussion? If you're, might be there'sa challenge with the centre channel lodspeaker. One solution to examine possibly to unplug the centre speaker and check out surroundings your processor to phantom centre (if it has this sort of surroundings). This will break up the centre channel among the 2 entrance important audio system. If the fuzziness disappears, you can also discover that one of the crucial speaker drivers to your centre speaker is faulty and can want exchanging. As the opposite answer mentioned too, make certain all yourconnections are well as good. If you play your method at prime quantity phases (now not a well notion, because it would good rationale everlasting listening to harm) you can also discover you are overloading your centre speaker.

Answer 4

Here's an outline (with pictures) of what you might need in a Home Theater system...Click here: http://www.avtruths.com/bangforbuck.html