Home Theater Speakers, am I getting the full surround sound?

Nowadays, more and more people love watching movie at home, lots of media-service providers are more and more popular now, like Netflix, Iqiyi. And more and more people are looking for surround sound setting at home. But if you buy surround sound speakers, is it means you are getting the full sound?

The answer is no. You are not getting the full sound if you don't know how to connect and set up your devices properly. Here are short definitions of those terms.

What is 5.1 / 7.2?

7.2 means 7 speakers, point 2 means 2 sub-woofers. Usually you will see 5.1, 7.2 which means 3 channels of the audio speakers Left center Right and 2 channels of the speakers Left and right on the back plus 1 sub low bass channel. With Atmos you will have the extra ceiling channels that gives you the extra sound from high above.

What is Dolby Atmos, DTS X, Toslink, SPDIF, ARC, HDCP?

Dolby Atmos and DTS X are the audio surround sound format which is the codecs that tells the audio which channel of the speaker should go to. The Dolby audio encoding format will assign all 6 audio channels to belonged speakers so it knows where the audio should be play back.

You can also choose to connect Toslink or SPDIF. Both cable transmit the audio data through optical cable. However, both don't support either Dolby Atmos nor DTS X.

ARC means Audio return channel. This allows audio signal to go both directions in stereo. You will see this on HDMI connector. For this you need to know High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) 2.2. This is the format for 4K video with surround audio. But some sound bar doesn't support the HDCP 2.2. This means even you had a 4K blue-ray player you can only play back 1080P video and stereo audio. Then you will need to connect your blue-ray player directly to your TV that support HDCP 2.2 and then use another HDMI cable for the audio. So if you want to be sure, your best bet is to use two HDMI cable, one for 4K TV and one for the audio. If your blue-ray player don't have two HDMI output then you can buy the spliter to accomplish this task.

Better Alternative Choice - OPSIS

So yes you will need to set up the surround sound speakers accordingly, and normally you need more than four speakers to get full surround sound experience. Or you can choose OPSIS. OPSIS gives you 360 surround sound from the simple bluetooth or line-in connection from any audio format.

You can see more information here: https://www.preteraudio.com/opsis