How to Buy an Integrated Home Theater Audio System

Home Theater Audio Shopping Tips

Ready to go shopping? Here are our tips for bringing home your own personal best buy.

Listen: When it comes to evaluating sound, there's no substitute for your own ears. The quality of a system's speakers will make or break its performance, and you can't gauge that from specs or descriptions alone. Take your own discs so that you can listen to material you're familiar with. And even if you intend to use the system only for movies and TV, include some music CDs. They will make it a lot easier for you to spot problems with tonal balance.

Push the subwoofer: Calling young Skywalker! Here's where you will need a DVD, preferably a noisy thrill-fest. Find a scene with some heavy bass action and see how the system's subwoofer holds up when you really crank it. You want one that won't wimp out on this sort of material at the volume levels you like to hear.

Don't hesitate to go digital: Even if all you've got right now is a VCR and a 10-year-old TV, chances are you're going to wind up sooner or later (probably sooner) with a DVD player or HDTV that will really benefit from Dolby Digital decoding in the sound system. It's not a big premium anymore.

Look before you leap: Take a good, hard look at the room where you plan to use the system. What has to go where, what can go where, and how big can it be and still fit? There's no point in paying extra for a 7.1-channel system if you've got no place to put the two extra surround speakers, for example. If cabinets are involved, make measurements and carry them with you. A small pocket tape measure can be very handy.

Don't get caught up in numbers games: A thousand watts into crummy speakers is just really loud bad sound. And 20 surround modes is 17 too many if you're going to use only three of them. Stay focused on good sound and ease of use.

Get to know the remote: A poorly laid-out remote control is a pain forever. How easy is it to find critical buttons (volume, pause, mute, channel, and so on) in the dark? How comfortable is it in your hand?