Choosing the correct speaker size for your theatre room

When you’re thinking of purchasing your first home theatre system or consider upgrading, where do you start? Usually the speakers, but what size speakers do you need? Selecting the correct speaker size is important for many reasons, usually you go in the retail store, look around and if you’re lucky somebody will come up to you and ask if you need any help, then you’re relying on there SALES skills to sell something that you hope is what you need.

Choosing the correct speaker package

Speakers that are too big;

The correct speaker package for home theatre room is important for a number of reasons, in our opion are all equal. Starting with a speaker package that is too big for the room – there are limits and guide lines that need to be followed, if the sales guy walks you to the biggest speakers they have on display and talks you into them, and your room size for argument sake is 5m x 4m, there are a few problems, firstly you’ll never be able to use the speaker to their full potential, the sound pressure levels that they can produce would deafen a person in a small room, not the mention they’ll be taking up too much room and also usually bigger means more money, so you’d be wasting money there well on large speakers, although you can spend a lot of money on small speakers, if things were equal, the same amounts of money was spent on the right set of speakers (smaller speaker), you would be purchasing high performance award winning speakers for the same value as regular large speakers.

Speakers that are too small

The opposite is try as well, if the speaker package you purchased is too small, you’ll always have the system turned up to full all the time, the room will not fill up with sound properly and you’ll never feel immersed in the movie, if this is the case the life span of small speakers will decrease due to extreme wear and tere. In this case your budget needs to be extended regardless, even purchasing a larger amplifier to accommodate the extra power required to drive the larger speakers. To get the most out of floor standing speaker (larger speakers), there is a different way to wire them up, nearly all sales people and most installers do not know about the appropriate way, so do some research, ask the questions and be careful of installers that are unsure of your basic questions.

As a conclusion, to size up your home theatre room properly, a technician should come out to you and see the room first, to consultant with you and talk about options you’ll have, talking to a sales person only in the showroom can result in mistakes being make and we’ve seen this on many occasions which only after the installation, regrets are made.