From Issue #2 , Page #74 | By John Kittredge

Looking for the perfect soundtrack? Here are 10 movies that will make the most of your audio setup.

My father has the 65-inch honkin' HD screen. Jealous much? Not me. My 32-inch screen might look mighty small, but that picture don't mean a thing if it ain't got good sound.

No matter how much I want to immerse myself in a movie on his system, I can't get past the limited sound system; it doesn't come close to my more modest setup, which includes a Dolby- and DTS-capable receiver, five speakers (front left, center, front right, rear left surround, rear right surround), and subwoofer.

As video displays have gotten thinner, more impressive, and more expensive, the audio side of the home theater setup frequently takes a back seat. "The flat-panel is very exciting. It's something everyone wants to have, and so it's become the predominant portion of a budget," says Bill McKiegan, VP of sales and marketing for Krell. "And being so thin, the direction towards in-wall speakers or smaller speakers [to match] has dramatically reduced the impact a great soundtrack can have. Audio will pull up second, if that high."

Eyes and Ears
The first use of surround sound in a theater was in 1940, with Disney's Fantasia. Admittedly, surround sound has improved a lot since then, but it's an indication of how long it's been held that there's more to the movie experience than what's up on the screen. "It's that visceral reaction that people have to sound. You really can highlight to somebody that it's not the video that brings this to life, it's the audio," says McKiegan. "Think of Jaws without that music; I joke that they made that movie, too, and called it Free Willy."

Joel Cohen, CTO of Crystal View, Inc., describes the importance of surround sound this way: "At best, the picture fills 30 degrees—if you think of your head in the middle of a circle of 360 degrees. What's going on off-screen has to be represented sonically." By shortchanging that part of the home theater experience, you're missing more than half of its impact. "Every moviemaker uses [surround] to enhance the realism and sense of your presence within what's going on," he says. "You have the sense that if you look over your shoulder, you could see something there too." Lose the surround, and you're no longer drawn into the experience. "It's like looking through a window. Everything's in front of you, and the space around you is dead except for the sound of the theater—or your room—which has nothing to do with what you're watching."

System Basics
It would be nice if we all could have our own custom-built, dedicated-room home theater in order to have the ultimate surround experience. Reality usually dictates otherwise, with two major factors being limited budget and space. Still, that doesn't mean you can't build an involving system. Set a realistic budget, and resist the urge to blow 90 percent of it on that wonderful-looking plasma or LCD. By spreading your dollars more evenly, you can end up with a very nice system. "You can make a 42-inch plasma look like a much bigger screen with bigger audio wrapped around it," says McKiegan.

Five speakers and a subwoofer should be the minimum—three speakers and "virtual surround" just won't cut it. A more recent solution to the audio question has been home-theater-in-a-box, an all-in-one package usually consisting of a receiver and matching speakers/subwoofer. But this can lead to problems. "Until recently, virtually everyone's answer was to come out with a package that had very, very small satellite speakers," says Don Milks, national product marketing manager for Onkyo. "Typically the one big compromise there is that while they are esthetically pleasing, they're almost certainly going to compromise sound quality."

The problem is one of simple physics: "As a speaker gets smaller the drivers get smaller, the more limited its frequency range in terms of its playback capability," Milks says. Most industry people seem to agree that the front left/right speakers should be able to reach a lower limit of at least 80 Hz, with 60 preferable. The reason is to smooth the bass management transition—the point where the surround processor routes frequencies to the subwoofer. Also, try to ensure that the speakers come from the same manufacturer. The similar tonality of each speaker will give you a more seamless soundstage.

In terms of the subwoofer, decisions based on décor usually result in a sub insufficient for your needs. "I see a lot of tiny subs being asked to fill rooms of good volume, because the decorator or someone won't allow for a real subwoofer," McKiegan says. "These tiny boxes are asked to output bass that they simply cannot do. It's just an awful-sounding result."

On the amplifier side, again, size it to the needs of the speakers, though you may get away with going a bit overboard here. "At a minimum I would suggest purchasing a name-brand receiver with an ample amount of power, and not necessarily features, but the capability of driving the system," says Daren Egan, sales manager of RBH Sound. "You need one that will decode AC-3 and that will decode DTS. Anyone thinking of purchasing anything less than that is setting themselves up for disappointment in the future."

Making Do into Dynamite
Buying a system from a reputable dealer or installer is one of the best ways to ensure that every piece of your home theater will be set up properly, but there are a few things that you can check on your own. The first is to make certain that the speaker level and delay is set up properly. Manufacturers recognize that this is often the most daunting part of system setup, and many such as Denon and Onkyo are bringing out receivers that, using a supplied microphone, do all the adjustment for you. In any case, all receivers have test tones, and using your manual and a RadioShack sound-level meter—the analog version with a needle display—you can do a fine job yourself.

What did he say? Probably one of the most common complaints about home theater sound is an inability to hear the dialog. It may be a fault of the DVD mix, but more often it's due to improper placement of the center-channel speaker. Try to keep the tweeter at ear level and away from the boundaries of the display or system cabinet. Also, resist the urge to turn the subwoofer up too high. It may make the effects louder, but it overloads the room and muddies the sound in the dialog frequency range.

Finally, a good system setup disc such as Joe Kane's Video Essentials or Ovation's Avia Guide to Home Theater—the latter perhaps a bit easier to navigate—provides additional test tones and screens to optimize both the video and audio portions of your system.

In the end, your system should be about balance, where each piece contributes equally to the final result, what Egan describes as "the suspension of disbelief, the point where you feel as if you are part of the movie. You become James Bond." Watching a movie is easy to do; only audio, combined with the video, will give you the feeling of being in the movie.

When reading DVD specifications, you will see that the surround sound is provided in one of two formats, Dolby Digital (also known as AC-3) and DTS (Digital Theater Sound). Both formats encode audio information to be played back in at least five channels plus the subwoofer (known as 5.1). Newer formats such as Dolby Digital EX or DTS ES add additional surround channels (for 6.1 or 7.1), but 5.1 is considered the system minimum. In terms of sound quality, some people feel that DTS is better than AC-3, the reason being that surround-sound information is compressed (complicated algorithms "throw away" data considered to be unnecessary) to save space on the DVD, and DTS is less compressed than AC-3. This theoretically means that DTS can be better, although other factors can influence sound quality, too. In any case, almost all current receivers and processors have the capability to decode both, so on releases with Dolby and DTS tracks you should listen to each to see what sounds best to you.

The equipment used for this article includes: center channel, NHT's SC-2; L/R fronts, Mordaunt-Short MS-10i Pearl; L/R rears, NHT Super Zeroes; subwoofer, Paradigm PDR-10; receiver, Denon AVR 3300; DVD Player, Philips DVDQ50AT; jitter reducer, Camelot Dragon 5.1; display, Sony Wega KV32XBR400.

10 DVDs with Supreme Sound
1. Apollo 13 (Universal Studios, DTS release). There is, of course, the liftoff, if all you want to do is test your subwoofer. But the sound designers, who won an Academy Award, also spent a lot of effort on the ambience to put you in the command module in space. Some feel the soundtrack on the DTS release is a noticeable improvement over the earlier Dolby soundtrack release.

2. Dark City (New Line Platinum Edition). Alternate-reality films put extra demand on the soundtrack to help in the suspension of disbelief. This soundtrack achieves this admirably, with clarity and broad dynamic range. Plus it throws in some deep bass, too.

3. Das Boot (Columbia Tristar, Director's Cut, Superbit DTS). Maybe not as many depth charges as another submarine flick, U-571, but it succeeds just as well at making you feel the claustrophobic confines of a WWII submarine. As another reviewer noted, when rivets start popping from deep-sea pressure, you'll find yourself ducking with the crew.

4. Eagles: Hell Freezes Over (Image, DTS). If you want to be in the band, there are DVDs that can help fulfill the fantasy. But this is a straightforward disc, well-recorded, and with a great re-creation of natural hall ambience that puts you where you belong: in the audience.

5. Fight Club (20th Century Fox, 2-disc Special Edition, DTS). An overall surround sound extravaganza, the soundtrack pulls no punches (sorry) in helping to realize the director's vision for the film. Very active—and sometimes deliberately indistinct—information in the surrounds contributes to the sense of foreboding and dislocation; and some serious bass in places (e.g., the plane crash).

6. Master and Commander (20th Century Fox, 2-Disc Collector's Edition, DTS). The first 10 minutes are a good test of your system's dynamic capabilities, moving from the soft sounds of the ship in the fog to the all-hell-breaks-loose assault of a full cannon broadside. Very effective at creating the below-decks ambience of a 19th-century man-of-war: you'll find yourself wondering if there's someone upstairs in your house, when it's only sailors in the film walking topside.

7. Saving Private Ryan (DreamWorks SKG, Special Limited Edition). Many find the first and last half hours of this movie difficult to watch when combined with the Academy Award-winning sound, it's even more harrowing. The flying bullets and ricochets early on are a test of soundstage coherence and your surrounds, and when the tank comes over the rise in the last battle you'll find out just how low your sub can go.

8. Toy Story 2 (Disney/Pixar, The Ultimate Toy Box, 3-Disc Collector's Set). This has gone from being an over-played demo disc to a film simply to be enjoyed. Still, the opening sequence is demo quality, especially for transient impact and bass capability. The music in Jesse's flashback is a wonderful example of how great sound is an indispensable part of the movie experience for communicating emotion.

9. Unbreakable (Touchstone Video, 2-disc Vista Series, DTS). Some may say a deliberate—but no less entertaining—film, whose building emotional power depends on the limited, but broadly mixed and effective musical score. Listen to how the impact of key scenes is heightened by the expansion of the soundstage into the surrounds.

10. Winged Migration (Columbia Tristar, Special Edition). Surround sound doesn't have to bang you over the head to be of demo quality. This re-creation of the migratory habits of birds will have you saying, "How'd they do that?" not only because of what was filmed, but also because the soundtrack, with the rustle and creak of feathers, subtly reinforces your sense of being in the midst of flying birds.