OTHER TECH

You dropped the money. You bought a 1080p LCD flat-screen big enough to play air hockey on if you laid it down (and had the right paddles). You have the Blu-ray Disc player. And, you have the kind of surround sound system powerful enough to propel Delaware into a geo-synchronous orbit.

Problem with that big audio dynamite, though, is that while you watch the special deluxe edition of the extended version of the directors cut of the Jan Michael Vincent epic Damnation Alley, the booming subsonics from your high-end speakers dislodge the fur off the Alsatian in the apartment downstairs.

Don't get us wrong: Turbo-charged audio is a beautiful thing. And if you've got an isolated home theater, or at least a household whose members don't mind the occasional plaster-cracking movie explosion (assuming no one has coronary health issues), you're golden - as is this age of Blu-ray audio, with new lossless formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio (both bit-for-bit identical to the studio master).

The problem is the incredible high dynamic range of the sound on today's DVDs and Blu-rays. On the one hand, high dynamic range offers incredible performance: It allows for the playback of sounds as soft as a rustling leaf to as loud as the thunk of that asteroid that will one day crash upon Kazakhstan (or wherever). But it also presents a dilemma. Turn up the volume loud enough so you can actually hear the dialogue, and you're suddenly blasted by the deafening sound of a gunshot; turn down the sound so as not to piss off the neighbors, and you can't hear a damn thing the characters say.

Sudden explosive sound can be a real bitch for those whose sound systems reside in dwellings sharing walls with other dwellings - apartment buildings, for instance (the editor of this site actually got a noise complaint from a neighbor during a Sunday afternoon screening of the Blu-ray, Ratatouille.). Or for those who do live in their own homes, but watch movies after the kiddies' bedtime. Or even for those who watch a movie in one room and don't want to disturb the rest of the house.

The good news: There are ways to enjoy your home surround system without punishing those around you. Sound & Vision columnist Ken Pohlmann (also a professor, author, and top consultant in the field of digital audio technology) recommends keeping surround sound setups simple.

First, he focuses on what you really must be able to hear when watching a film in your home theater: what the folks in the TV are saying. "Virtually all movie dialogue comes from the center channel," says Pohlmann. "The common complaint is that viewers can't understand dialogue. You can avoid overall too-loud levels by raising the center channel volume only. And, doing this in the receiver is usually easy."

And there's another big sound adjustment you can make: "Bass travels distances and through partitions much more easily than higher frequencies," notes Pohlmann. "The lower the frequency, usually the easier the transmission. Most noise-intrusion complaints deal with bass, and can be solved by turning down the subwoofer often via the preset sound setting included in most surround sound receivers. Also, a subsonic filter that cuts very low bass would be helpful."

Some good news: You may not have to do all that knob-turning yourself every time you pop in the latest Batman movie. Assuming you have a modern A/V receiver, advanced home theater remotes (such as those in the Logitech Harmony series) can be programmed to raise the center-channel volume and lower the subwoofer levels whenver a DVD or Blu-ray player comes online (then, of course, revert them to the original levels at shutdown).