A new AV receiver is the brain of a home theatre, and a bit of care during setup is the difference between a system that merely works and one that sounds genuinely special. The good news is that modern receivers do a lot of the hard work for you. Follow this checklist in order and you will have a properly configured, room-corrected system in an evening. If you have just bought one, or are about to, browse the AV receivers range and then work through the steps below.
1. Position everything before you plug in
It is much easier to sort placement now than after a nest of cables is in place. Your front left, centre and right speakers should be at or near ear height and evenly spread across the screen. Surrounds go to the sides or slightly behind the seats, and Atmos height speakers go overhead or fire up off the ceiling. The subwoofer's spot deserves real thought, and our Room Mode Calculator will help you place it and your seats to avoid the worst of the room's bass problems. Get the geometry close now and the calibration later will have far less to fix.
2. Connect your sources and display
With everything in place, wire it up. A few habits save a lot of grief here.
- Sources into the receiver, receiver to the TV. Plug your 4K Blu-ray player, console and streaming box into the receiver's HDMI inputs, then run a single HDMI cable from the receiver's output to your TV or projector.
- Use the eARC HDMI port on the TV. This is what lets apps running on the TV send high-quality audio back to the receiver. It is usually labelled eARC or ARC.
- Do not skimp on the cable for the main run. For 4K and 8K with full bandwidth, especially on a long run to a projector, a properly rated cable matters. Our HDMI cables are spec'd for exactly this.
- Connect the subwoofer with a single cable from the receiver's subwoofer output to the sub's line input.
3. Run the firmware update first
Before anything else, connect the receiver to your network and let it update its firmware. Manufacturers fix HDMI handshake quirks and add features after release, and starting on current firmware saves you chasing gremlins later. It takes a few minutes and it is the least glamorous but most worthwhile step on this list.
4. Tell the receiver what it is driving
In the speaker setup menu, confirm your speaker layout, for example 5.1, 7.1 or 5.1.2 for a system with two Atmos height channels. Getting this right ensures every channel is actually used and steered correctly. If you are still building the system, our speakers and subwoofers ranges cover each position.
5. Run the automatic room correction
This is where a modern receiver earns its keep. Systems like Audyssey, and Dirac Live on higher-end models, use the supplied microphone to measure your speakers and room, then set the levels, distances, crossovers and equalisation automatically.
- Put the mic exactly at ear height in your main seat, on a tripod if you can, pointing at the ceiling.
- Take measurements from several seats, not just one, so the correction optimises for the whole seating area.
- Keep the room quiet while it runs. It is listening carefully, and background noise skews the result.
The automatic result is very good and, for most people, the finish line. It is a genuinely excellent starting point in every case.
6. Check and refine the automatic settings
Room correction gets you most of the way, but a couple of manual checks are worth making. Confirm that all your speakers are set to Small rather than Large, so the deep bass is sent to the subwoofer that is built for it rather than to speakers that are not. A crossover around 80 Hz is the usual home theatre standard. Finally, set the subwoofer level to taste; the automatic calibration aims for a flat, reference balance, and many people enjoy nudging the sub up a touch for films. Trust your ears here, within reason.
7. Verify with real content
Play something you know well, a familiar film scene and a familiar track, and just listen. Dialogue should be clear and anchored to the screen, effects should move cleanly around the room, and the bass should feel even rather than boomy in one spot. If something seems off, it usually traces back to a speaker set to Large, a subwoofer level that is too high, or a placement issue the earlier steps can resolve.
When to bring in a specialist
The built-in automatic calibration is genuinely good, and for the majority of living rooms this checklist is all you need. But there is another level. A professional calibration with a dedicated measurement rig, done by someone who does it every week, extracts a precision and consistency that the automatic pass cannot, and it is the standard we hold in the reference rooms we build. A measurement mic lets you start down that path yourself, and if you would like it done properly, you can book a consult and we will dial your system in the way its makers intended.
Set up with care, a good AV receiver disappears, and all you are left with is the film. That is the whole idea.
