Room correction

Tackling unwanted acoustic issues in your home cinema isn't only about speaker positioning and physical treatments - your AVR or processor can help too, says Mark Craven

- Mark Craven

Getting your home cinema working to its best can feel like a never-ending journey. HDR settings have to be adjusted, loudspeakers have to be positioned - and room correction has to be done.

It hasn't always been this way. In stereo music-only systems, room correction is rarely employed, enthusiasts often preferring to position loudspeakers via a process of a tape measure and trial and error, and to 'dampen' a room's sound through some judicious use of soft furnishings and, perhaps, some acoustic panels. These are all sensible steps, but room correction can be a vital extra helping hand, especially in a multichannel, full-range environment.

The goal of room correction, as the name suggests, is to combat acoustical issues in your room, caused by interactions between reflected frequencies, that affect sound performance. In an ideal world, you want all channels in a setup to be level matched at the listening position, and the sound to reach you ears (and decay) when it should.