A large display is only half of the viewing experience and with the $2 speakers manufactures are putting in modern TVs a Surround Sound System is necessary. The speakers in flat panel TVs are mounted in the back of the display meaning they must bounce off the wall before getting to you. If your TV is in a tight fitting custom cabinet that you spent hundreds or thousand on, forget it, your not hearing anything from that TV. Getting surround sound doesn’t mean having a dedicated home theater. There are many ways to bring the home theater experience into a living room without making it feel like a college dorm.
A surround sound system allows you to bring sound “Front and Center”. All movies are filmed in surround sound and many cable programs are now broadcast in 5.1 surround sound. This means that the production team went through the trouble of separating the many tracks of audio so that when something happens in the background it comes through the rear speakers and you feel like you are on the set of that show.
Today Surround Sound systems are sold in many ways. The most popular is a Home Theater-in-a-Box (HTIB) system where all the speakers are provided along with a subwoofer and receiver. This is a very affordable option and usually comes with the speaker wire and FM antenna. The receivers in these systems will have a limited amount of inputs and features compared to stand alone models. The HTIB systems Man Caves Home Theater sells are more robust than you will find in retail store and they cost the same or less than retail stores. The best part about these systems is that we can hook them up for you and show you how it all works.
The other option for buying Surround Sound Systems is to buy everything individually. The benefit here is that you get exactly what you need. This allows you to mix and match speakers to find the best fit for your space. If your room is open to another room on the back wall use in-ceiling speakers for your rears so that those speakers are out of the way. Let’s say your on a budget and you don’t want to buy something cheap, spend money on a few items in the system that you will have for years to come and upgrade other components later. This is a huge advantage over HTIB systems which people typically only keep for a few years.