Sound Bars - Important Tips to Remember When Buying a Sound Bar System for Your Home Theater

Sound bars are the perfect way to get great home theater audio without setting up tons of speakers or dealing with messy wiring. If you want unmatched audio quality, you owe it to yourself to find out more about soundbars. Sound bars, or sound projectors as they're also known, consist of a single unit that houses multiple speakers to get the best home theater sound without multiple speakers and messy wiring.

Sound Bars - Important Tips to Remember When Buying a Sound Bar System for Your Home Theater

Sound Bars - Important Tips to Remember When Buying a Sound Bar System for Your Home Theater

---

Sound Bars - Important Tips to Remember When Buying a Sound Bar System for Your Home Theater

Sound Bars - Important Tips to Remember When Buying a Sound Bar System for Your Home Theater

If you have a plasma flat screen television, sound projectors are the perfect speakers to get great sound. As you probably already know, the little built-in speakers in most flat screen TVs simply don't put out great audio for movies, music or video games. When you add a sound projector to the mix, though, you'll get the best surround sound without cluttering your room up with speakers or tripping over wires all the time.

Sub-woofer Concerns

Some single speaker solutions don't really provide the low end bass that you need to get the best quality audio. In fact, some soundbar systems include a wireless sub-woofer to make sure that you get the best audio experience possible. There are some sound projectors that do include sub-woofers, just make sure that you check before you purchase to know whether or not you'll have to purchase an additional speaker.

SoundBar Types

Some soundbar systems are active and include their own amplification; this means that they simply plug into your television and start putting out great sound. Other models, however, are passive and need to be plugged into a home theater receiver to produce audio.

You can even add a sound projector into an existing home theater audio system for the ultimate in dynamic sound quality. Soundbars work great on their own, but when you add them into a full surround sound set up, you'll be amazed at how much better movies, music and games sound. You'll think you stepped into the local theater when you put a sound projector into the mix.

Whether you choose to integrate a sound bar into your existing system, or to simply use one on its own for better sound from your television, make sure that you get the best sound bar for your unique home theater set up.

Check out some sound bar reviews to see which models offer the best sound, and while you're at it, look for the best deals to save some money in the process. You'll be amazed at how much better movies sound when you crank up the volume on a brand new soundbar.

Sound Bars - Important Tips to Remember When Buying a Sound Bar System for Your Home Theater

Eliminating that Terrible Hum From Your Home Theater Speakers

You've all heard it, that dreaded 60Hz hum through the speakers of a home theater or house audio system. Hopefully you heard it at a friend's house and not your own. It can drive you completely nuts. You may have even tried, unsuccessfully, to fix the little noise problem. That can make you even more crazy. What causes that horrendous noise through your speakers?

Eliminating that Terrible Hum From Your Home Theater Speakers

Eliminating that Terrible Hum From Your Home Theater Speakers

---

Eliminating that Terrible Hum From Your Home Theater Speakers

Eliminating that Terrible Hum From Your Home Theater Speakers

More often than not humming through your speakers is caused by a grounding problem. There are three main ground problems that cause problems in an audio / video system. These are ground loops, improper grounding and lack of a ground altogether. The other possible culprits that can cause noise are bad cables, a faulty piece of equipment or electrical noise from a lighting dimmer or electric motor. There are steps you can take to troubleshoot the noise and eliminate it from you theater.

The first step is find out where it is coming from. Disconnect your source and display equipment from your receiver or surround sound processor. If the noise stops, connect them back to the receiver or processor on at a time until the noise returns. When the hum comes back, you found where the noise is entering your system. Note that if you are connecting remote equipment, such as running the signal from your theater room DVD player to the TV in the bedroom, your chances to pick up noise increase dramatically. With such long runs, noise can be induced into the long cable runs from adjacent electrical wiring. It is also easy to create a ground loop, because the equipment is plugged into two different, widely separated outlets, on different electrical circuits.

If the noise is caused by a cable box, the noise is likely caused by the cable TV ground. To test this theory, disconnect the incoming cable TV feed to the rear of the cable box or TV while they are still connected to the rest of the system. If the noise is eliminated by disconnecting the TV cable, the problem is the cable TV ground. You can electrically decouple the cable TV feed from your system with a ground breaking transformer. These are available from many sources. Be advised that many newer, digital cable TV systems require any device in the signal chain to pass a full 1,000 Mhz. Some of the older ground break transformers will not do this. Be sure to check the specifications of whatever device you are purchasing to verify it will pass the digital cable TV signal.

If the noise is from your projector, TV, or monitor, it is most likely caused because the video display device is plugged into a different outlet than the other a/v equipment. It could be on a different circuit as well. These circuits may have two different ground potentials. That is, the resistance to ground is different on each circuit. A difference in resistance to ground from one ground point to another can cause the dreaded ground loop. If you get a ground loop, current flows between the two components. If the current flows through the components internal audio signal ground, you will get a hum.

You can use an isolation transformer, similar to the type used for cable TV ground problems, to eliminate the electrical connection from one component to the other. These transformers are inserted in line with the audio signal connection between the two components. If there is no audio connection between the components, the problem may be current flowing through the video portion. In this case, a video isolation transformer should be used to eliminate the ground loop.

Sometimes power conditioners will stop noise problems by placing equipment on different, electrically isolated outlets. This is done using isolation transformers. Sometimes this is ineffective however, due to the differences in internal construction of different power conditioning equipment. Some safety regulations, such as UL 1950, specify that an isolation transformer is only allowed to isolate the hot and neutral wires; the grounding wire must be passed straight through. If this is the case, the ground loop problem may still exist because many communication circuits are connected to the grounding conductor and not the neutral. In this case, the isolation transformer, or any power conditioner or UPS with an isolation transformer will have absolutely no affect on the grounding problem.

The noise may be generated externally, from a dimmer or refrigerator compressor for example, and coming in through the main power input on the audio video equipment. In this case, a high quality power conditioner may be effective in reducing or eliminating the noise problem. You may also find that one of the signal interconnecting cables in your system is faulty. This can also cause noise problems. Check for this by swapping the cables with one that you know to be good.

You can solve most noise problems in your home theater or multi room audio/video system by taking the systematic, step-by-step approach. Work your way up the signal chain, eliminating each piece of equipment as you go. If you have nothing connected to your speakers except the speaker wiring, and they still hum, the problem is noise induced into the speaker wiring from adjacent power cables. Other than that case, most problems are caused by ground problems, which you can find, and solve, if you take it one step at a time.

Eliminating that Terrible Hum From Your Home Theater Speakers