Speakers

As the days in the Northeast, Northwest and Midwest get chillier and darker with fewer daylight hours, we tend to move indoors and spend more time with our electronic entertainment. Getting cozy in front of the electronic hearth with music or movies over the winter months is a modern tradition. With that in mind, here are some guidelines for both newcomers as well as enthusiasts who want to enhance their home listening and movie-watching experiences.

Abandon Long-Held But Misguided Beliefs About Stereo
Try--if only for a few hours--to abandon any entrenched belief that stereo is the only way to listen to music. If you've been listening in stereo for the past 20 years or only listen using ear buds and an iPod, pick a couple of your favorite CDs to play back in 5.1 channels at a friend's home who has an AV surround receiver, using Dolby Digital ProLogicII(x), dts Neo:6 or H/K's Logic7. The added side surround speakers will bring those stereo recordings to life by steering the reflected and ambience cues to the side and rear surrounds, where they belong.

Of course, stereo was the standard format from the late 1950s until the mid-1990s, but digital recording has enabled not just more high-fidelity channels (up to 8, including the subwoofer channel) but sophisticated real-time "decoding" (analysis) of the stereo and phase information to extract reflective spatial cues that are routed to surround speakers will make music sound much more real, spacious and "live."

Think about the last concert you attended---indoor or outdoor. Sure, the performers were at the front, but the sound came at you from all directions, reflected and reinforced from side walls and ceilings in indoor concerts or even from foliage and buildings at outdoor venues. It's those reflections combined with the direct sounds that make a recording sound real when it's played in surround sound at home. Your brain can analyze the arrival times and strengths of direct and indirect reflections--but...