This weekend I decided to experiment a little bit with my home theater set up. Now, my home theater is by no means elaborate, but unlike most people who run a majority of their content through components such as a DVD or Blu-ray player to a typical 5.1 system; I run my stuff through a multimedia PC connected to my AVR via an HDMI cable. I like it this way, because not only can I surf the Web from the couch and see the internet on a 42” screen, but I can also run stuff through my surround sound system that most people would just play on their PC speakers, like Hulu, YouTube and even my digital music collection.

My reason for blogging about this is because this weekend I set out to find what combination of settings would create the ultimate surround sound effect from my 5.1 system. Today, many people would consider a 5.1 setup to be the standard in home theater surround sound, but as any true audiophile can tell you, this configuration only creates decent surround sound if you’re sitting in the sweet spot, which is typically limited to that one special seat in the room. Daring to be different I loaded SRS Audio Sandbox on my home theater PC and adjusted the settings according to my setup. Next I popped in the Dark Knight DVD and messed with the settings even further during the intense action sequences. The difference between having SRS Audio Sandbox on versus off is night and day; my subwoofer and center channel really came to life when it was turned on. Everything sounded so much clearer. Next I adjusted the 3D space settings and all of the sudden the sound field exploded all over my living room making me feel like I was in the movie. This was pretty good, but not 100% perfect due to the fact that my rear channel speakers still sounded like they were coming from the ceiling. To fix that, I adjusted the SRS focus setting and voila! Perfect! Watching DVDs never sounded so good and to top it off the sweet spot grew from the middle of my couch, to the entire living room, so now I can get a full surround sound sensation from anywhere I choose to sit.

If you have a PC connected to your home theater system, try using SRS Audio Sandbox to adjust your settings before they go to your AVR. The difference is absolutely amazing! Download it today at http://srslabs.com/store/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=6