Surround Sound On A Shoe-String Budget
Since we are all spending so much more time at home, believe it or not, we are spending most of that time looking at devices. As we are trying to be fiscally conservative yet enjoy all those new shows our streaming operators are providing, we started looking into cheaper ways of enjoying at-home entertainment. One of the biggest differentiators that change your viewing experience, other than your TV, is the sound. Traditional surround sound systems cost anything from a couple of hundred dollars to a few thousand if you’re looking for that premium quality sound. If you are like us and have champagne dreams on a beer budget, read on.
Enter Google Home speakers. With the mini speakers starting at $40 and home devices starting at $99, you can get a couple of devices and pair them together to provide that surround sound effect. Alternatively, you can sync your speakers and have the same music play across multiple rooms of your house without a noticeable lag.
Specifically, a year ago, Google launched an update that allows multiple devices to pair as left/right stereo speaker pairings which should deliver more 3-D sound than what two speakers paired as mono would do.
Excited? Now how would you set this up? Here are the steps:
- Open the Google Home app on your phone and select one of the devices
- Click on the Settings gear icon, and navigate to Device Settings
- Select Speaker Pair and choose the second speaker device and then tap Next
- The first device you selected will now be blinking. Indicate whether that is the Left or Right device and the other one would automatically become the other
You are now good to go and can even name this speaker pair so you can directly play to this pair. Even if your TV doesn’t have Bluetooth, you can connect using a Chromecast. The ability to pair 2 or more Amazon devices is also currently available, and maybe we will cover that in a future draft.
