10 Mistakes You Might Be Making When Installing Surround Sound Systems Or Soundbars

Immersive surround sound formats like DTS:X and Dolby Atmos elevate your audio experience beyond the simple stereo systems we know and love. With their directional elements, your movies and music can sound like they're coming at you from all around your listening space, adding to the sense of envelopment in a big way. However, to experience this added dimension at home, you'll need hardware that supports these formats.

How you choose to upgrade your home audio system will be driven by the space you have available, how much of that space you wish to dedicate to home entertainment, and — of course — your budget. If you want to go big, then adding a full blown multi-speaker array to your space is the way to go. Still, if you don't want to remodel or adopt a room full of black boxes, or simply want something that can be hooked up in a minute or two, then an all-in-one soundbar will do the job.

I've been a full-time reviewer in the consumer audio space for a number of years, and in that time I've seen a lot of mistakes that can trip up even experienced home theater enthusiasts when installing either of these types of systems. Here are 10 things to avoid or be aware of when setting up either a discrete surround system or a soundbar solution.

Each loudspeaker in a surround sound system serves a purpose in delivering the spatial audio experience. Most people understand that the front left and right speakers go at the front, and rear left and right go at the back, and so on. What's often overlooked though, is that for surround effects to work as the sound designer intended, each speaker needs to be located within a specified range of angles, relative to where you, the listener, are seated. 

If you want to make sure your setup is in the right ballpark, this handy guide from Dolby can help out. Also keep in mind that the speakers should all have their tweeter (the high frequency driver) as close to ear level as possible. In the case of the rear surrounds, make sure they're above the height of your couch. This ensures you'll be able to hear all the high frequency information, essential for appreciating the spatial soundscapes.

Connecting all the speakers to your home theater receiver or multichannel power amplifier may seem simple enough, but there are a couple of things to be aware of. Firstly, every speaker in the system needs to be connected in phase, otherwise the spatial sound illusions won't work as expected. 

This means when you're connecting the speaker cables, you need to make sure that the positive (red) terminal at the amplifier end is connected to the red at the speaker end, and that the negative (black) connects to the black. This ensures that all the speakers are working in unison, with their drivers moving in the same direction as each other, otherwise known as in phase. The speaker cable should either have color-coded conductors, or have an identifying feature along its length to help tell one side from the other when hooking it all up.

Secondly, on the subject of speaker cable, it's important to use something appropriate for the job, like this Amazon Basics 16-Gauge Speaker Wire Cable. Many home-theater-in-a-box solutions come with speaker cable included, but it's often poor quality with thin conductors, and should be upgraded. Keep in mind though, there's really no need to spend exorbitant amounts of money on cables, it will make very little difference to what you hear in the end.

Our homes don't make ideal listening spaces. Even if it's quiet enough and you don't have neighbors to worry about, there is the small matter of room acoustics to consider — which very few people do. You can't separate the sound of your system from the influence of your room. Sound waves reflect off of walls, floors and ceilings. They bounce around, creating standing waves and reverberation. These two phenomena will dramatically alter what you hear. 

Standing waves will affect the frequency response (tonality) of what you hear, and reverberation also impacts the time domain response, making sounds less distinct, and making speech harder to understand. Fixing these issues is complicated, but a relatively simple fix is to affix broadband acoustic absorbers like these UMIACOUSTICS Acoustic Wall Panels – which are similar to what's used in recording studios and movie theaters — to the large, flat, parallel surfaces in your room. These will tame the acoustic problems, allowing you to better appreciate the playback of your system.

There's a lot of advanced technology built into home theater components, whether we're talking soundbars, standalone processors, or multi-channel receivers. One feature that's often overlooked is the ability of these devices to utilize this technology to apply room correction. For instance, services such as Dirac are compatible with a wide variety of sound systems and can at least partly address the issue of room acoustics outlined above. 

This is often achieved in a few minutes with a process that has usually been made foolproof. Depending on the device and manufacturer, it typically involves using either an included microphone, or a smartphone, or in the case of many soundbars, a built-in microphone that is used to detect how your acoustic environment is affecting the playback. The system will emit a brief test signal, then filters are automatically applied by onboard DSP to correct for any anomalies caused by the room. It's well worth taking the time to explore these features as they can make a dramatic improvement to the sound of the system, particularly for music enthusiasts.

Home theater subwoofers are standalone loudspeakers built for one thing: to add bass to your system. Low frequencies are the most taxing part of the frequency spectrum for loudspeakers to produce, electronically crossing over to a dedicated subwoofer improves the sound of the whole system. Subs also delivers the LFE (low frequency effects) channel denoted by the .1 in 7.1 systems or in 7.1.4 Atmos systems, for example.

Many people stick their subwoofer in the corner of the room, which does get you more bass output due to the boundary conditions, but isn't necessarily the ideal location if you want the most even sound output from the system. The nice thing about these dedicated low-frequency units is that their output is usually limited to frequencies below around 100Hz, which means our hearing doesn't allow us to localize where they are. This means you can put them basically anywhere in the room, ideally based on where it provides the most even response. 

However, it's important to realize that if you place the sub further away from your listening position than the mains (full-range speakers) or your soundbar, the bass will arrive at your ears a bit later than the rest of the sound, causing a lag in the low frequencies. Some processors and receivers can compensate for this delay, though many don't. If it can't be fixed in the settings, you'll need to physically move things around.

If you are building a home theater system in a DIY fashion by selecting your own components, or perhaps repurposing a set of older speakers in a surround setup, take heed. All loudspeakers have an impedance rating, which tells you about how hard it is for an amplifier to drive the speaker. Speaker impedances are typically 4, 6 or 8 ohms nominal. The lower the speaker's impedance, the more power it will draw from the amplifier. 

However, not all multi-channel receivers are specified to drive the low 4 ohm impedance speaker loads on all their outputs simultaneously. In fact, even those that are might get quite hot if required to do so, especially as you turn up the volume. Check the receiver's specifications or user manual to be sure. Otherwise you may end up with your system overheating or shutting down due to thermal issues, especially if you like listening loud.

There's a lot of technology packed inside modern home theater receivers. As well as handling all the digital processing for audio and video, plus streaming and wireless networking, there are multiple channels of power amplification to drive all the connected loudspeakers. As a result, receivers typically run quite warm, even when idle. Consequently, it's essential to make sure that there's unrestricted airflow around your receiver — most manufacturers typically recommend at least six inches of clearance above the receiver and two inches on each side for adequate ventilation.

If you like keeping your AV amp tucked out of sight in an AV cabinet or dedicated rack, things can heat up considerably, particularly if there's other gear like streaming boxes or games consoles sharing the space. For this reason we recommend installing a cooling solution, like dedicated AV equipment fans to keep everything cool, ensuring a longer working life for your components.

The center channel in a surround sound system exists primarily to ensure that the dialog remains clear and is spatially anchored to the action on the screen. This means that even if you're not sitting in the center of the room, the speech delivered by the characters on the screen still sounds like it's coming from them, not off to the left or right. Most people get that the center channel goes in the central position, and it is usually placed below (or sometime above) the screen. 

What many miss though is that the ideal position for that center channel speaker is actually right in the middle of the screen itself, which is only possible with an acoustically transparent projection screen (which is what's done in movie theaters). The compromise means speech sounds like it's coming from above or below the screen, which isn't too noticeable as long as that speaker is mounted as close to the screen as possible. Of course all of this also applies to soundbars, which deliver the critical center channel dialogue, as well as everything else.

Connecting your AV system together should be quite straightforward, but there are some things to be aware of, especially if you'll be using a smart TV as your source component, rather than the receiver itself.

If you're using your smart TV as your streaming source, then make sure you're familiar with the concept of HDMI ARC and eARC. Modern TVs have special inputs labelled HDMI ARC or eARC that carry audio and video signals to the TV, but also carry audio from the TV back to the connected receiver or soundbar. This is important as it allows digital audio to flow in both directions, allowing the TV to share its audio output without the need for additional cables. In short, HDMI ARC simplifies setup by allowing bidirectional audio over a single HDMI cable, while HDMI eARC enhances HDMI ARC by supporting higher-quality audio formats and higher video bandwidth.

Always use a digital audio connection where one is available. Keep in mind that only HDMI cables can carry immersive audio formats like Dolby Atmos. If you're not getting all the channels from your source component, everything after that isn't being fully utilized.

Once everything's hooked up, a step that often gets overlooked until it literally trips someone up is cable management. Before you get too comfortable enjoying content on your fancy new surround system, make sure you deal with any cables trailing across the floor, or hanging in an unsightly mess below the TV.

Signal and power cables to your subwoofer, and particularly the speaker cables connecting up the surround channels should be secured to ensure they're not going to present a trip hazard for you or your guests.

Speaker cables can also be cut to appropriate lengths. If you didn't have the foresight to bury all the necessary wiring in your walls and ceiling, a simple solution to keeping things neat and hidden away is to use these cable raceways from Amazon that can be easily attached to walls and painted to match your home decor. Once that's taken care of, it's time to kick back and enjoy your new surround setup!