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What to Look For in an Audio Receiver

Author: Zeeman Haus

You’ve just bought a brand new 70″ HDTV after months and months of saving. You’ve cancelled the vacation, fought the wife, and it’s obvious your oldest child will now have to work their way through college. You’ve settled into your easy chair and the big moment comes as you turn on your monster and you hear-a peep. The sound just does not match the gargantuan proportions of the screen. Now what? You should have looked into an audio receiver. Don’t worry, I’m going to help ya.

First we have to understand, in rough terms, what an audio receiver does for you. The job of the audio receiver is to amplify sound to your speakers. The 5.1 home theaters have become the average these days. Now before your eyes glaze-over, let me explain what the “5.1″ means. The first number (5) represents how many of the small speakers you have. Then second number (.1) is how many subwoofers you have. Like the name sounds, woofers are the ones that make the deep, resonating sounds for you. Mid-range speakers handle sounds in the range of the average human, as far as tone. High frequency: highs are, oddly enough, the higher range of noises. Good examples of that would be a whistle or something shrill, like the average mother-in-law. The second job of the receiver is to separate the channels. Channel separation is why you hear the guy on the left of your screen talking on the left side of your living room. Savvy?

Next we have speakers. Speakers are not what it’s all about, but they are definitely the first thing people ask about. Most guys reply, “Uhh…they’re 200 watts.” Just look impressed, because he probably doesn’t know what that means either. Speakers carry no wattage themselves; the wattage referred to is actually what the speakers are rated at, or how many watts the speaker can handle. So a 200 watt speaker system should go with a 200 watt amp, right? Basically, the answer is no.

So where does the power come from? You guessed it, Slick–the audio receiver. So back to our 200 Watt speakers: how much power do we need? Okay, this is where we have to establish some trust, because you can ask 30 different guys and probably get 31 different answers. There are actual mathematical formulas (formulae?) for this stuff, but I’m going to break it down into a rule of thumb that will give you closest to the best sound quality without blowing anything up.Take the speaker rating (ex: 200) and figure 3/4 of that (150) and add 25 watts. So for 200 watt speakers, go with a 175 Watt receiver. What’s the extra 25 for? It’s a cushion for “peak performance” from the audio receiver. So when something blows up on the screen, nothing blows up in your living room, or gets so distorted that you want to blow it up.

You hear all the time about people buying the same home theater system and getting drastically different results. Often it’s blamed on the manufacturer. The things you have to ask yourself are: Are the exact dimensions of the rooms the same? How about the speaker arrangement? Do you and your twin buddy both have the exact same taste in home furnishing? Believe it or not these are all factors in room “tuning,” and sometimes you have to look at the environment before you run off and buy a new audio receiver and speakers. Is your media room warm or cold?

Warm rooms are the most acoustically-friendly. These are rooms that generally have carpeting, nicely covered walls (bookshelves and wall hangings), and cloth furniture. In all actuality, the best warm rooms are one that you would find in a recording studio. Cold rooms are not generally considered ideal for acoustics. A cold room will generally have a wooden or tile floor, sparse furnishing and bare walls- and an echo that takes you back to some of the 60’s hits. In fact, some songs in the 60’s were vocally recorded in a bath room just because of the natural echo of the tiles. Unless you’re Linda Ronstadt, I’d figure out a way to fix this.

Fixing a cold room is easy. Throw down some rugs, hang some pictures or tapestries, and possibly move some furniture against the wall. Fixing a warm room is harder. Usually, the biggest problem is muffled bass. Try raising you subwoofer off the floor a little; that might give the sound a little more room to permeate the area. Recording studios spend thousands of dollars to have someone “tune” their rooms. So if you don’t have a perfect acoustic setting, don’t feel bad if it takes you several tries with speaker placement and room acoustics.

If you are reading this, chances are you are considering buying what you need online and being a bit of a do-it-yourselfer. I salute you wholeheartedly, and agree with your pioneer (no pun intended) spirit. The best advice I can give you is this: if you get stuck during your install, stop by your local audio/video dealer. Those guys are usually big enthusiasts and will give you way more information than you need. I mean, who doesn’t love jets flying through the living room? I know I do, Maverick!

Zeeman Haus enjoys writing articles online on a variety of subjects. You can check out his latest website on HDMI Review which discusses how you can get low prices on HDMI Cables, Splitters, Extenders, Boxes, and Adaptors.

Tags: acoustics, audio, audio receiver, cable, carpeting, electronics, Entertainment, flooring, furnishing, home, home theater, media room, speakers, subwoofers

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 2:05 AM and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.