Surround Sound Receivers

If you’re thinking about installing a surround sound or home theater system you might want to pay a little extra attention to the receiver since many an aficionado considers it to be the heartbeat of any quality output.Typically there are over six different surround sound formats that movies, television shows and other media are encoded, so here is a partial list of a few of the more popular formats should you run across some acronyms in your research of what will best suit your needs.

  • Dolby Digital is the surround sound format used by practically all standard DVD’s and some HDTV broadcasts. This format provides digital signal processing to the following channels: 5.1 (front right and front left speakers, center channel speaker, two surround sound speakers and one subwoofer.
  • DTS is a surround sound format used by certain DVD’s and some high quality CD’s. This format provides digital signal processing to the following channels: 5.1 (front right and front left speakers, center channel speaker, two surround sound speakers and one subwoofer.
  • Dolby Digital EX is a surround sound format that can be used with special high quality DVD’s and is also able to decode standard DVD’s with Dolby Digital as well. This format provides digital signal processing to the following channels: 6.1 (front right and front left speakers, center channel speaker, 1 surround left and one surround right speaker, one set of matrix surround sound speakers, and one subwoofer.
  • THX Surround EX is a surround sound format that can be used with practically any Dolby Digital, Pro Logic, DTS or EX source. This format provides digital signal processing to the following channels: 6.1 (front right and front left speakers, center channel speaker, one surround left and one surround right speaker, one set of matrix surround sound speakers and one subwoofer.
  • DTS ES is a surround sound format that can be used with practically any Dolby Digital, Pro Logic, DTS or EX source as well with certain DVD’s encoded with DTS – ES. This format provides digital signal processing to the following channels: 6.1 (front right and front left speakers, center channel speaker, one surround left and one surround right speaker, one set of matrix surround sound speakers, and one subwoofer.