Here we are in the rarefied pages of Audio Esoterica magazine, home to high-fidelity equipment of extreme design and extraordinary performance. So we would quite understand if some readers are wondering why we’re in a home cinema.
Put simply, it’s because the art of audio reproduction isn’t limited to stereo. Accuracy is accuracy, however many channels you’re running.
And if we’re being honest, most of us spend more of our lives watching video screens than we do listening to our music. A global survey in 2021 found that music listening is pleasingly on the rise, averaging 18.4 hours a week per person, something over two-and-a-half hours a day. But similar surveys on TV habits show we watch three or more hours of TV a day. Even that may be an underestimate, since TV manufacturers tell us that TVs are often on for 10 hours a day. So the way we listen to the sound of that visual entertainment is critically important.
Consider also that the acoustics of many rooms are ill-considered and counterproductive to the delivery of accurate sound. But any self-respecting home cinema room will have been designed from the very shell to be acoustically effective, the room treated with diffusers and absorbers until things are as perfect as can be.
So there’s no better room in which to listen than a well-prepared home cinema. And we’d
