Tips To Improve The Acoustics In Your Home Theater

Posted on: 7 April 2016

If you've established a special room in your house as your home theater to enjoy music, movies, or gaming, then you're going to want to get the most out of your sound system. To replicate a cinematic-like sound experience, you will need to make some acoustical adjustments to parts of the room.

The floor, the walls, plus windows and doors, can steal the thunder from your home theater sound system. Here are some quick tips to fix acoustic problems in these parts of the room to enhance your sound quality.

The Floor

You might not think that the floors in your home theater room are all that important, but they truly are. While sound does emanate throughout the room, reflecting off walls and other structures, a hard floor that reflects sound waves will create a sound vibration and an unnatural echo.

If your room is already carpeted, great. But, consider that even a thin, short shag type of carpet is not much better than a hardwood floor. To truly enhance the acoustics in your home theater room, install a thick, heavy shag carpet over the whole room, or at the least put a similar type of thick rug in front of your home theater system.

This will prevent the sound waves coming from your speakers from vibrating off the floor before they even reach your ears.  A good echo absorbing surface will help keep deep basses true, plus prevent trebles from becoming too sharp.

The Walls

While professionally designed acoustical wall panels are the best choice, they are not the only way to improve the acoustics in your home theater. There are do-it-yourself options to help you save some money by building your own.

The bottom line is how much exposed wall is left after you install whatever type of acoustic panel you choose. Professionals who design home theater systems suggest that roughly three quarters of the empty wall space in your room needs to have some type of fiberglass based acoustic panels. These need to be placed around the room to divide up the empty spaces as evenly as possible.

Windows & Doors

Having only a few windows and limited doors is ideal for home theaters. But, many rooms have a number of windows and more than one doorway to consider.

First of all, if you have hollow-core doors, then you must either replace them with solid doors, or cover them completely with an acoustic panel. Sound waves will find their way to doors with poor acoustic qualities and compromise the sound.

Taking care of the doors is a first priority, but windows – large or small – can drain the quality of your sound. While you may need to upgrade the quality of your doors, or attach panels, your windows can actually be an easy fix. For more information, contact a home theater company like http://www.atechels.com.

Heavy blinds are one choice and you can actually improve the visual appeal of your room with the right blind. Vertical blinds are the best for sound enhancement, and an imitation wood that is actually fiberglass, will perform better than real wood.

If blinds are not an appealing option, heavy curtains are an excellent alternative. Both options will tackle any light issues in your home theater, but most of all, dramatically enhance the acoustical performance the sound system.

So, to get the most out of the sound experience in your home theater, cover your floors, use acoustic panels strategically placed on your walls, and reduce the effects of windows and doors. With the right adjustments, in your room can make you feel like you're sitting in the middle of a cinematic theater.  

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