Home Theater Calibration
If you think that buying and installing a home theater system alone is going to give you an ultimate movie experience, you might be proven wrong unless you get your system properly calibrated. For any home theater system will not give its best until and unless it has been properly calibrated. There are various methods of home theater calibration, ranging from calling in professionals to do it yourself CDs.
The use of home theater calibration DVDs is the most common method of home theater calibration. These CDs come with step by step instructions and test patterns that lead you to getting the best sound and picture from your home theater system. The two most popular DVDs for home theater calibration are the AVIA Guide to Home Theater and the Digital Video Essentials. Public opinion is divided as to which one is better, for while some find the AVIA disc more user friendly, others feel that the DVE is technically better. Eventually it all depends on your enthusiasm and expertise regarding the output that you can get from either program. Many enthusiasts suggest using both in order to get the best out of your system. In case you are not planning to use either one very soon, then just running the THX Optimizer loaded on some Lucasfilm and Pixar CDs will give you an instantly better output from your home theater system.
While both these do it yourself discs improve your picture quality no end, using them for your home theater speaker calibration is a slightly tougher deal. These DVDs provide audio signals that help in setting the sound reference levels, subwoofer crossover, channel balance and phasing. You can also check room resonance, ambience effects, frequency response and voice matching. However, while you can identify the problems with your DVDs, they do not offer much in the way of audio related solutions. A better option for sound related calibration is the use of audio analyzers. Audio analyzers let you find out specific frequencies, thus leading you to the solution. Analyzers which can measure sound pressure even let you identify problems in the home theater room that you can rectify yourself. Sencore and Ivie Technologies are two popular companies that sell home theater calibration audio analyzers.
When everything is said and done, while most do it yourself methods can provide great calibration for your home theater, it may still not match work done by professionals. So if you can afford it, then try getting your home theater calibrated by professionals, since they employ a lot of techniques that cannot be used by normal calibration program users.
