May 2, 2025
George Lucas once said that the sound track was half of the experience when enjoying his movies. The roar of the engines, impact of the explosions, creepy footsteps behind you, jubilation of the crowds in the stands and triumphant music hailing the victor all make our favorite movies, TV, sports and games amazing. These immersive experiences are not difficult to create if you know how.
Creating a cinema like sound experience isn’t tricky. It has a lot to do with WHERE the speakers in your system are physically located. The physical locations of the speakers define the “soundstage”. The soundstage is the virtual space from which all sounds come from and is key to creating big, realistic and immersive audio experiences. We can break the soundstage space down into three dimensions...width, depth and height. Pretty simple indeed.
Step One: Creating Width
The foundation of a good soundstage is width. A wide soundstage creates separation between sounds on the far right and far left as well as definition for sounds coming from the center. The best way to accomplish width is to physically separate the left and right speakers so they are about the same distance from each other as they are from the listener. The center speaker can then be placed directly beneath or above the screen so it can anchor sounds coming from on or near the center of the screen.
Step Two: Expanding with Depth
Creating soundstage depth is the second step in building an immersive audio experience. Depth is created by placing speakers behind the listener. This expands the soundstage by adding a second dimension and now allows sounds to occur from anywhere in a 360° circle around the listener. Audio engineers creating soundtracks can use combinations of speakers to make sounds come from anywhere around the listener and align them to the action on or off of the screen. Creating depth is key in creating a cinema-like experience at home.
Step Three: Adding Height
Finally… we have height. Height is the third dimension in our immersive audio experience and is the latest innovation to make its way into professional cinemas and home audio systems. Height channels can be separate speakers mounted high on the wall or in the ceiling or even be “up-firing“ speakers that are placed in or on the top of other speakers. These channels allow engineers to easily place sounds above the listener. Think of birds chirping in trees, music coming from the apartment overhead or knowing a competitor is flying a helicopter toward you to attack from above. All of these events can benefit from height speakers helping create the proper sound experience to support these scenarios within a show, movie or video game.
Don’t Forget the Bass
In all of these systems, a subwoofer is a critical component. A subwoofer is a larger speaker that can be conveniently placed anywhere and reproduces very low sounds. Very low sounds are hard to locate thus allowing the subwoofer to be placed anywhere in the room. It is always advantageous to incorporate a subwoofer into any home cinema audio system to make sure the lowest sounds, often difficult for other speakers to play, are properly reproduced.
Additional Speakers
We have discussed the basics of creating an immersive audio sound stage with three speakers across the front creating width, two speakers in the rear creating depth and have also discussed height speakers which add a third dimension to the experience. Larger systems can be created with additional speakers to the sides and above the listener. Additional subwoofers are also often used for increased output and to balance out subwoofer frequency response by placing them indifferent locations in the room. These are all worthy additions but not mandatory when create a simple and immersive cinema experience in your home.
Easy to Make it Amazing
To get in the game and create a system that will add huge amounts of enjoyment to TV, movies, music, sports and games we recommend a wide front stage complemented by rear audio channels and a subwoofer. Three speakers across the front and a subwoofer is referred to as a 3.1 system (three main speakers and a sub) and is an excellent way to achieve a “Wall of Sound”. Adding two rear channels makes this a 5.1 system and creates a “Room of Sound”. If you were to add to height channels it would be known as a 5.1.2 system and make the room of sound even more immersive. For more information on these numbers and what they reference check out our article titled “Multi-Channel Audio by The Numbers”.
Have fun building the home audio system that’s right for you and enjoy the sound!
