Alan Lofft of Axiom Home Theaters wrote a great piece for eCoustics.com that offers do's and don'ts for setting up your first home theater surround system. The tips I particularly liked were:

• "Don't turn the levels of your surround speakers up too high because you can't "hear" them. You aren't supposed to hear them in the conventional sense; that is, if they're set at the correct levels, the surrounds should not call attention to themselves...." [ Don't you wish that movie theaters would try this also? ]
• "Don't run your new HDTV (rear- or front-projection), plasma, or LCD panel at its brightest setting and shorten the life of the set (or the projector bulb). In the A/V business, that's called "torching" the set. The brighter you run them, the shorter the longevity of the plasma panel or the DLP/LCD projector bulb...." [ This always concerns me about plasma sets. ]

[ via LifeHacker ]

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