Guide: Create your own home theatre

See all the possibilities for your new home cinema in the living room

You’re tired of your favorite movies falling to the ground when you turn on the TV and the sound starts to flow out of ultra compact TV speakers that sound like a music box with absolutely no bottom. You would like to upgrade the sound in your home with a cool home cinema, but the possibilities are many and that is like finding your way around a jungle! Do not despair, in this blog post I will review some obvious options based on different situations.

SPOILER! Of course, it should be no secret that I will mention our own sound furniture as a good solution, but I will still try to relate objectively to other possible solutions for Lemus HOME is not for everyone. 

Quick overview

If you look at the most popular categories in home audio, the following are worth mentioning:

Soundbar

The soundbar is probably the best-selling sound system for your television. Calling it a home cinema would be a significant exaggeration though, but it's a nice upgrade from the television sound. However, you do not get the great movie experience and soundbars are not made to stream music either. Soundbars will never be able to provide the deep bass, which is one of the most important factor for a great sound and movie experience.

Soundbar with Dolby Atmos

Soundbars with Dolby Atmos are now being found everywhere, and have become a widely used sticker for large manufacturers to use. In short, Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology that you have started to build into soundbars to create a feeling that the sound comes from all sides so you avoid having 5 or 8 speakers standing around the room with wires everywhere. It works by having units placed at an angle in the soundbar that shoot up into the ceiling, out onto the side walls and to the back wall, and therefore reflects the sound around the room.

BUT, and it is a large but, as many consumers have begun to notice. Unless you have the perfect room where your sofa is placed perfectly in the middle of this room, you will experience a somewhat flat feeling and the magic will disappear. The perfect room is four walls with equal distance to each wall, a not too high ceiling and the back wall is not too far away. The sofa should be located in the middle of the room. If this is possible in your home, then it can be an exciting solution if you, like 9 out of 10 others, do not have the perfect living room, then you pay a lot of money for a function that will not work as intended. 

Soundbar + Subwoofer

Soundbar together with a Subwoofer (the box that only plays bass) is also a very popular solution, as on paper you get both fine high tones from the soundbar and the deep bass from the Subwoofer, which is a must for your favorite action movie. However, there is a HUGE difference in the solutions on the market, as high tones are not just high tones, and bass is not just bass. In this category, price and quality are often linked.

However, you should be aware that you will have a square box standing in your living room, and if you want the sound to work optimally then it is as often too large to be stored under the sofa.

In addition, a Soundbar + Subwoofer is still not suitable for playing your favorite music, and not many Soundbars have streaming technologies available such as Airplay2, Cast, Spotify Connect, and more.

Stereo Floorstanding Speakers

The good old floor-standing speakers that we have loved and hated for generations. They still have their place in the home unless the better half has put them in the basement because they fill up.

Do you love to sit on a Sunday morning and enjoy your master recordings of your enchanting jazz collection, and will you give it full throttle on James Bond with lots of bass and good dynamics, and are you so lucky that your better half does not go up in decor, wires and large amplifiers or let yourself make allowances with that – well, then it's a really nice solution that solves the job.

However, it can quickly become an expensive affair if you want quality, as again there is a HUGE difference in bass and dynamics from speaker to speaker and the different amplifiers. If you also want your floor-standing speakers to play with your other smart home speakers, or you want streaming options like Airplay2, Cast, Bluetooth, Spotify Connect, and HDMI to connect the TV then you have to spend the big bucks. Do you also want functions such as room correction, so that the sound adapts to the room you are sitting in, you will rarely find solutions for less than DKK 50,000. 

Surround Sound system

The Surround Sound system was created specifically to act as a home cinema, and will therefore work as the obvious choice. There are many options in all price ranges, and you will be able to quickly and cheaply create a great home cinema experience. Here you can choose between 5.1 or 7.1, where 5.1 is based on six audio sources and 7.1 is based on eight audio sources. The more sound sources placed around your living room, the more detailed surround sound feel you will get. This solution requires some, both of you and the decor of your home. Surround sound requires many larger sound sources, each of which requires many wires as well as cross-connections.

So if you do not want a multitude of speakers to take over the interior of your living room, then the option of incorporating speakers and wires in the walls and ceiling is also an option. But surround sound can easily become an expensive and unmanageable affair - especially if you want speakers that really have something to move with.

Surround Sound systems, like Soundbars, are not made to enjoy your favorite music, nor do they have various streaming options or multiroom. Among these, you will also only find room correction among the most expensive Surround Sound systems.

Lemus HOME

Of course, we do not miss our own Lemus HOME collection, which is a collection of sound furniture with sound quality in true Hi-Fi, created and developed by some of the world's leading sound engineers, who usually develop large floor-standing speakers. Together with Danish designers, we have created a complete piece of sound furniture that will function both as an aesthetically Danish designed and produced furniture as well as your new home theater and music system all without ugly cable, large amplifiers and cumbersome connection.

We have taken the good sound from the floor-standing speakers and integrated them in a unique design, where both amplifier and cables are hidden in the furniture's structure, so you get the fantastic Hi-Fi qualities from floor-standing speakers, but do not have to compromise on the decor. In addition, you get all conceivable streaming options such as Airplay2, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, Bluetooth, and Multiroom.

Included even HDMI so you can easily connect your TV, without the use of multiple remotes.

Last but not least, you get an advanced room correction, so the sound will adapt to the room it is in, so you can wave goodbye to poor acoustics regardless of the conditions in your home.

Lemus HOME is a stereo sound furniture, which means that there are two sound sources that send the sound out into your living room. Well, two sound sources are not suitable as a home cinema, as a Surround Sound has six or eight sound sources 

That's perfectly correct if it had been a completely ordinary pair of stereo speakers but that's far from it!

Using our advanced quad core DSP (a minicomputer), we can create a huge bass experience and go all the way down to 15hz with the Lemus HOME Classic, which is the absolute deepest bass that we humans can pick up. And down to 20hz with Lemus HOME Artistic and Piano. So you do not need a separate subwoofer to get the perfect bass experience.

In addition, the sound system is designed to make the walls around play with, which creates a feeling that you are at the center of the film experience.

We have chosen to spend all development dollars on extremely deep bass, timbre and dynamics for both music and film experiences, instead of Surround Sound effects with disappointing bass, poor timbre and no dynamics.

Conclusion 

As you can probably read, your future solution will depend on your specific needs you have at home. If you just want a little upgrade from the television, then the soundbar is a really good solution.

If you want to go all-in with the wildest home cinema in the basement with speakers, subwoofer and wires everywhere is not a problem, then a complete Surround Sound system is inevitable.

If, on the other hand, you want a Danish-produced and designed complete sound piece of furniture, where you can store all your cables, TV box, Wi-Fi router etc. away, and you want a sound system that can be used both as your home cinema and your new music system, then the Lemus HOME collection is a really good choice. You can find our range here

Really good looking for your next home sound upgrade.