Too many new home theater builders make this mistake

Home theaters don’t completely replace movie theaters, but they come close depending on who you ask. I’ll always have love for the movie theater, but I’m perfectly okay with watching things at home now that I have a Dolby Atmos setup in my living room. It took a while to get here, and I still have a lot of work to do because it never feels like you’re done upgrading once you make your initial purchases.

A lot of people think that speakers are the backbone of a home theater setup. That’s where you’d be mistaken, because while the sound comes out of the speakers, what’s powering them is what matters most. You can have all the speakers in the world, but if you have nothing to plug them into, it’s useless. A receiver is the most important part of your setup — if you opt for one, of course. Not only is it the mothership of the whole system, but it can also be the thing holding you back the most. You have to know what you need before pulling the trigger on a receiver.

Make sure you buy the right receiver

They come in many forms

I have a 7.1 Dolby Atmos receiver, which means I use two of the ports for Atmos height speakers, meaning I have a 5.1.2 setup. I knew I wanted to get to an Atmos setup eventually, so I bought a receiver that would support it. I also knew this setup would go into my living room, so space was limited. You can get receivers with plenty of speaker ports if you want to go wild with it, but that was never in the cards for me. I did extensive research before I made a purchase, and that’s how I settled on the Denon 760h. It checked all the boxes for me, and I have since filled up each of the speaker ports.

The downside to this is that I’m unable to continue adding speakers if I want to, and that’s a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people. Receivers aren’t cheap by any means, and getting something with more ports would’ve cost a lot more than I wanted to spend. While a lot of money goes into the speakers and subwoofers, you also can’t forget that a receiver costs a few hundred dollars as well. It’s a big investment, and I would hate to buy a receiver that you outgrow in a hurry. I’m in a position where I have receivers hooked up in two different rooms, but one of them is from Goodwill and fits the needs of my spare bedroom perfectly. All I needed was a way to set up a pair of stereo speakers, so the 7.1 receiver I have in there is overkill, but for $15, I couldn’t pass it up.

Another thing to consider with receivers is audio formats. My $15 Goodwill receiver is about a decade old, and it doesn’t support things like 4K HDMI or modern formats such as DTS:X or Dolby Atmos. If that was a receiver I planned to use in my living room, I’d be very disappointed. Thankfully, most modern receivers worth their salt come with support for all major audio formats, and don’t be surprised to see 8K support either. I don’t think 8K will be mainstream any time soon, or ever, but you can consider your bases covered if you get a receiver that supports it.

There are many receiver brands to pick from, and I don’t necessarily think there’s a bad option. Denon and Onkyo are popular budget picks, but you can find solid offerings from JBL, Sony, Marantz, and Yamaha, just to name a few. The main thing you need to be on the lookout for is how many speaker ports are available. Be honest with yourself about what your plans are, because while a 5.1 receiver is perfect for most situations, nobody wants to go out and buy an entirely new receiver just to add a few more speakers. It’s much easier to buy something you can grow into.

If you take care of your receiver, it can last for many years. My dad has been using the same Marantz receiver for decades, and since all he does is listen to music with a stereo setup with it, there’s no need for an upgrade.

Start small if you have to

No need to rush ahead

What many people don’t realize is that you don’t have to drop thousands of dollars at once. You can start small. My recommendation is to grab a good receiver and a nice set of stereo speakers. It’s easy to look at those home theater in a box bundles, but I’d rather get something that I know I’m going to like for years to come. A good set of speakers will be a good set of speakers for a long time, so it’s worth spending on a good set.

If you start small, you have to remember to match your speakers. It doesn’t matter as much with the surround speakers as it does for the front, but you want to make sure your front three speakers match. If you grab a stereo set at first, grab the accompanying center channel speaker when you upgrade down the road. You can easily track down this information when the time comes, and the naming scheme will usually be a giveaway for when something’s a set. The reason this is important is because it helps create a unified sound stage, and this means everything blends together instead of your center channel speaker being too loud or too quiet.

I give this advice because it’s what I’d tell myself if I was starting over today. While I ended up buying a receiver that I like, I bought a pair of Sony bookshelf speakers that I quickly grew out of. I use these speakers as my rear surrounds, so it’s not like they were a total waste, but I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have bought them. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of seeing a cheap set of speakers and jumping at them. Don’t get me wrong, cheap speakers work, but I’d just rather spend my money on something that I plan to keep around for a while.

Remember, you can only grow as much as your receiver allows for you. If you buy a cheap stereo receiver, then the only thing you can have is a pair of speakers. This is a scenario where you’d want to buy the best set of speakers that you can since there wouldn’t be a way to reuse these once you replace them.