I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that sound can be just as important to the home theater experience as your TV. Usually, it’s the element that distinguishes a setup from a room that happens to have a TV in it. I could be playing Conan the Barbarian on an 85-inch TV, but no one would probably accept the room as a theater without hearing the boom from that Basil Poledouris soundtrack.
That said, people sometimes lean too far in the opposite direction, in my opinion. They spend far more on their speaker setup than their TV, forgetting that it’s what you’re watching that matters, not perfect fidelity or bragging rights. It’s not like people watching Conan on VHS in the 1980s were ripping their hair out because Dolby Atmos hadn’t been invented.
If you’re using cheap external speakers for your TV or none at all, there are a few ways you can step up your audio experience without biting deep into your streaming budget. You don’t have to use all of these, and I’m deliberately including a few options that are totally free.
Buying an add-on subwoofer
Your options may vary dramatically
As I mentioned, boom is essential to the home theater experience. You don’t necessarily need a subwoofer to experience it — in fact, the woofers in my Sonos Ray deliver plenty of bass on their own — but it’s hard to deny that owning one is a shortcut to feeling like you’re at the cineplex.
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