If you want to experience the excitement of multi-channel digital audio that's available from your Blu-ray Disc player, video game console, and/or HDTV tuner/DVR, but your room layout or spouse does not agree with all the five to seven individual surround speakers and wiring that's required to properly set up a 5.1 or 7.1 speaker surround sound home theater system, you are in luck.
Several big name manufacturers have gotten quite good at producing nice-sounding long and thin speakers called sound bars that pack five to seven channels of virtual surround sound into a single speaker cabinet that can sit beneath or be wall-mounted underneath or above a flat panel HDTV set, and almost visually disappear. Check out the sound bars (and optional matching subs) in the slideshow to the right.
Sound bars produce multi-channel digital audio effects by reflecting sound off the walls and ceiling of your room to simulate what you would get from a true surround sound speaker system. The only other speaker you will need in addition to your sound bar is your powered subwoofer.
You will need to run speaker wire from the speaker outputs on back of your home theater receiver (the short distance?) to the five to seven speaker inputs on back of the sound bar, plus a subwoofer cable from the receiver to the location of your sub.
