4. Mismatching products

When buying theater components, it's crucial that they work well together. A good rule of thumb is that decent speakers require at least 100 watts of power per channel and more power is better, as you are actually more likely to blow out your speakers from cranking up an underpowered system than playing an overpowered system loudly.

Another benefit is improved dynamic range. That means dialogue stays fairly quiet, while explosions are louder. A badly-matched system will often play everything in narrow volume band, making everything less enjoyable.

5. Oh, Those Impulse Buys!

Men like to laugh at women who buy shoes or clothes on impulse, but the truth is, when it comes to electronics, those "open box" (or worse...off of the back of a truck) specials invariably leap into their cars and then come back to haunt both the checkbook and the home theater system they get wedged into.

Have a plan and stick to it. Don't let a sale (or worse, a salesman) get you to suddenly reverse course and toss out months of carefully considered planning.

6. Using the Wrong (or No) Tools

If you want to set your system up properly, you need some basic tools. Start with a good wire stripper for the speaker wires, a decent set of screwdrivers and two items not found typically in a toolbox: a sound pressure level meter (available at RadioShack, $30) and either Joe Kane's Digital Video Essentials or Ovation's Avia Guide to Home Theater ($49 at Best Buy and Circuit City). You need the latter two DVDs to do basic calibration of your audio and video systems so they sound and look as good as they were designed to perform.

7. Knocked Out of Balance

After years of plain stereo sound, usually just from the TV, a lot of people are tempted to overdo it when it comes to the rear-surround channels. "Invariably when I hear someone's first home theater system, the surround channels are at least 10 dB higher than everything

else," says Peter Tribeman, president of Atlantic Technology. "No matter how many times the proper calibration method is spelled out in the owner's manual, first-timers believe that if the surrounds are not audible all the time then something is 'wrong.' These channels are often so loud you cannot understand the dialog."

The best way to get balanced sound is to sit in your normal listening position with the SPL meter and use the Test Tone button on your receiver's remote. The receiver should play static through each of the speakers in your system and boost or reduce the levels in each channel so that they read the same level on the meter.

8. Failing to Embrace Digital Audio

There is a lot of speculation among electronics industry insiders about how many people properly connect the digital audio from their DVD players and satellite receivers; some feel less than half of do-it-yourselfers get it right. It's easy to get fooled, as connecting the standard stereo RCA audio cable from your DVD player to the receiver will give you Pro Logic surround sound, just not true digital 5.1-, 6.1- or 7.1-channel audio. Make sure you have a single cable; either an optical cable, a thin fiber optic cable that glows red at the end when you plug it in, or a coaxial digital cable, which looks a lot like a single audio cable. Both ends should be plugged into "digital" ports.

Another thing that trips people up is the audio setting on the DVD player. Make sure it's set to Dolby Digital/DTS and not PCM, which just puts out a digital version of the stereo soundtrack.
If you've been living with mere analog surround, you'll be amazed at the increase in clarity of dialogue and detail of sound effects once you make the change to digital.

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