An important defining element within a home theater is the surround sound. By watching movies with it, you will experience a totally different movie experience. This type of sound allows your home theater to imitate that of actual movie theaters. Most movie production studios take surround sound into account when designing sound elements which are compatible with most home systems. By using this audio, the special elements of movies such as a suspense or action movies, are greatly enhanced.

When it comes to home theaters, the sound is one of the most important components that can compliment HD televisions.

There are two different sound formats used within most home theater packages. These two types are Digital Theater Systems and Dolby Laboratories. Dolby Pro Logic, Dolby Digital and Dolby Laboratories are present in most home theaters. There are many sound enhancements in packages for home theaters, such as Digital Theater Systems. These products contain the DTS mark.

You can purchase many different sound options when buying Digital Theater Systems or Dolby Laboratories. Many of these options, when purchased as an upgrade, produce headaches. You should be aware of the different sound formats of these products before purchasing.

There are many DVDs which are marketed that are now integrated with the Dolby sound option. Others are marked with the DTS option. By buying the right sound options and utilizing the correct sound format, your home theater will have a movie theater sound to it.

For a sharper and clear sound, DTS audio is best. DTS uses a less amount of compression compared to Dolby's encoding.

It's important to remember that you will not hear DTS audio encoding on your normal television shows or on DVD sound enhancements.

Users of home theaters need to decide whether DTS support needs to be involved in their personal home theater system. This can be done by choosing the adequate speaker setup.

Home theatre speakers setups of 7.1, 6.1, and 5.1 are most commonly used. The .1 in surround sound refers to the channel for the subwoofer. The number following the .1 stands for how many speakers are in the system. Most channels for subwoofers are in a lower frequency sound and are perfect to boost bass sound effects.

In a 5.1 surround system, the 5 stands for the speakers and the 1 stand for the subwoofer. The speakers are set up as a left front, center and right speaker. The right, left or rear speakers contain the surround sound The 6.1 surround sound system consists of an added speaker in the rear. In the 7.1 system, there are 2 channels for the surround and the rear speakers complete the home theater setup.

The above discussed theater setups each complement the formats of surround sound. There are different sound channel mixes and splits which depend of a particular sound format such as DTS or Dolby.

The final decision on your home theater system speaker setup depends on the "upgrader". This could either be DTS or Dolby compatibility.