Thanks to donations from family and friends, notably Bret and Dave, I’ve had plenty of speakers to setup a Dolby Surround Sound system for use with our Onkyo stereo system or home theatre. (“Home theatre” is something of a misnomer here since the TV is an old RCA 27″. We’ll probably replace it in the next year or two with a larger HD model.)
Yesterday, Bernard was checking out my stereo wire connections since the right speaker was occasionally cutting out, and I couldn’t figure out why. In the midst of that diagnosis and solution one thing led to another and by the end we were sitting on the sofa watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in Dolby 5.1. Now that’s a successful wiring project!
For the uninitiated, that means we had five speakers—two front, two rear, and one center—putting out sound. It’s not the same sound, either. Dialog comes mostly from the center speaker, while ambient sound is split both left/right and front/rear as appropriate. It’s just like a movie theatre, and it sits right up there on my “highly recommended” list if you’re thinking about putting any sort of sound system together.
Big thanks to Bernard (and Dave and Bret) for helping make this a reality!