Nothing beats immersing yourself in your custom home theater. But to truly capture the majesty and magnificence of your favorite films, you need to make the most of your room’s acoustics. Staying conscious of how your room interacts with the sound from your home automation products can go a long way towards getting optimum custom home theater sound. Southwest Audio Visual is committed to ensuring the room you’ve chosen for home theater installation is working with you—not against you.

Balance Direct Sound and Reflected Sound

Custom home theater acoustics can be tricky. Therefore, it’s important to keep a balance between direct and reflected sound in home theater installation. While you may be satisfied with the direct sound waves that reach you from the speakers, you may be missing out on reflected sound waves helping them achieve a fuller sound. Therefore, the placement of your home automation system is of utmost importance.

What you need is a mix of diffusive materials and absorption materials.

Diffuse the Situation

It’s no use to completely rid your room of reverb—an overly dampened room can be just as ineffective as an under-dampened one. Many diffusive materials, such as wood, feature hard, uneven surfaces to help scatter sound around the room. Typically placed on walls and ceilings, diffusors can help make full use of your sound to truly immerse yourself in your films. If your theater is a multipurpose room, diffusing sound can be as simple as spacing out books on a bookcase so the sound has more space to move.

Absorb, Absorb, Absorb!

You should also add absorption elements that will catch those pesky sound waves bouncing around your room. This can be as involved as adding “egg crate” foam pads to your home theater installation, or as simple as hanging heavy curtains over your windows. Luckily, a wireless home automation system ensures the curtains won’t interfere with their function, and will leave you free to enjoy your film without worry of something catching.

These are just some of the basics. When you call SWAV, you can count on us to make sure your custom home theater is operating at its utmost efficiency. A proper home theater installation may take extra effort, but it’s well worth it!