Home Theater Speaker
Assemblage/
Speaker Break-in/Amp Getting Hot?

Home Theater Speaker Assemblage

A home theater needs at least six speakers: left front, right front, center front, two surrounds, and a subwoofer or bass module. For a Dolby Digital system, all speakers except the subwoofer should be capable of a full range of sound and be fairly equal in quality and performance.
The left front, right front and center speakers carry the bulk of the music and sound effects in a home theater. These speakers should be high quality and able to handle a wide range of sounds.

The center speaker is the primary carrier of dialogue and should therefore be the same quality as the left and right front speakers. Ideally, it should be the exact same speaker, or at least matched in quality and power.  Placement of this speaker may be best right on top or directly below the video screen.
For some home theater systems, the surround speakers can be smaller in size because they do not need to carry the booming bass. The surround speakers should be as close as possible in sound quality and balance as the front speakers for an even sound.  We do recommend the same speaker driver ensemble as the fronts for Dolby Digital.  Subwoofers reproduce the low bass sounds that make movie effects like explosions, sonic booms,

crashes, and dinosaur footsteps seem realistic. These are the sounds that really pull you into the experience.  A good subwoofer, preferably a powered subwoofer, is needed for a full effect.
Any speaker placed within 2' of the television needs to be magnetically shielded to avoid video signal breakups and picture distortion not to mention picture tube damage. Most speakers marketed toward home theater are shielded, but it is an important item to verify.

The Speaker Break-In

There's really only one piece of gear in a home theater system that almost every audio/video expert agrees can benefit from "break-in", speakers!  Dynamic speaker drivers (the cone woofers and dome tweeters found in almost all speakers) have moving parts that are generally rather stiff when they come out of the factory.  One of these parts is called the surround; it's the rounded piece of rubber or foam that connects the outer edge of the cone or dome to the speaker basket.  The other is called the spider; it's the part that connects the center of a woofer cone to the back part of the speaker basket, and that keeps the woofer's voice coil centered in the voice-coil gap.

Surrounds and spiders are kind of like shoes, they're not very flexible at first but with use, they become much more flexible.  And as the surrounds and spiders in your speakers become more flexible, your speakers will sound better.  Some speakers sound just a little better after break-in.  Some go from sounding horrible out of the box to sounding glorious after 24 hours of break-in.
Should you break in your speakers?  Absolutely, if you want to get great sound from them right away.  There are a couple of easy ways to do it.  If your receiver or preamp has a test tone that automatically circulates from speaker to speaker, you can just leave the test tone on for a day or two while you're at work

.  You could also find a particularly brutal action scene on a DVD or laserdisc, such as the canal chase scene from Terminator 2, and set your player for chapter repeat, then crank up the system (not too high) and leave the house for several hours.
With audio electronics, the need for break-in is nowhere near as acute.  Once they're warmed up the first time, after about 15 minutes of use, solid-state electronics will almost always sound 95 percent as good as they'll ever sound.  Break-in of audio electronics does make sense.  However, for those who use tube amplifiers in your stereo or home theater systems, or for high-end, high-resolution audiophile sound systems, break-in time is of the utmost importance.
One last suggestion:  Be sure to give your speakers a listen right out of the box, before they're broken in.  That way you'll really appreciate how good they sound once those flexible surrounds and spiders stretch out.

Keep Power Amps Cool

A cooler for use with power-amplifiers, receivers, integrated amplifiers or any other equipment that runs hotter than it should. Just center it over the heatsinks and plug the wall-type power supply into a switched outlet on your receiver or preamp. The Cool-it will send a quiet stream of room temperature air down the heat sink fins to the power transistors in your amp or receiver, ensuring that they operate many degrees cooler than they would normally.
Ideal for amps and receivers which must operate with limited ventilation, such as inside partial enclosures.  On display at our store, sold as each or in pairs.  Ask for "The Cool-It" By Active-Thermal.