26th 2011f June 2011

Posted in: Home Theatre

Which multichannel receiver to choose between 5.1 and 7.1 will be coming for you who has decided to buy home theater system.

It is an important decision to maximize your satisfaction, but that is not the only thing to consider.

Of course most ads will recommend 7.1 receiver than 5.1.  Those advertisements usually saying that 7.1 system is much much better than 5.1 multichannel home theater system.

The question is, is it really true? Will it be the most suitable one for your needs?

Well, before we start the discussion lets start to find the meaning of each digit on multichannel home theater receiver. Practically, the first digit on the symbol represents the amount of the speaker while the last one represents the amounts of subwoofer. From the practical explanation, we can conclude that 5.1 multichannel receiver is a receiver with 5 channel speakers and 1 subwoofer. The same thing goes with 7.1 that means 7 channel speakers with 1 subwoofer.

5.1 multi channel receiver is the minimum requirement for surround sound needs. As said before, 5.1 means there are 5 channel speakers and 1 subwoofer: To deliver the majority of audio content the front and right speakers are used, center channel speakers that is used to deliver the main dialog, and finally, left and right surround sound speakers channel to gives you surround sound effect.

If you are a budgetary conscious person, you might want to choose 5.1 multichannel. With this 5.1, the lowest price is very possible for surround sound home theater. One of the best recommended yet high quality product for a budget conscious person is Onkyo HTS3300. You can find more about Onkyo HT-S3300 review from a well known and reputable retailer such as Amazon.

Besides budget, take your room size as a factor. For small room size you might want to consider the 5.1 multichannel receiver better. Using 5.1 receiver in big room won’t give maximum result for surround sound effect, so does using more than 5.1 receiver in small room won’t have much effect neither.

But the limitation above is not always right. In bigger room size, 5.1 receiver can still perform relatively good. But remember to consider its output power or watt per channel of your audio video receiver. How to consider the watt per channel that you need is really relative. For simplicity, try to increase the output power from 30 to 50 percent increase over RMS power in amplifier power. Or in other words, your amplifiers has to have output capacity up to 180 Watt if your speakers output capacity are 120 Watt.

And the conclusion is, a 5.1 home theater receiver is minimum requirement for a joyful surround sound effect and it is suitable mostly for small or average size home theater room.

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