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I assume most everyone is familiar with the basics of what makes up surround sound, an immersive audio experience for television, music and especially movies. There are simple set ups that can greatly improve the sound experience over that of simply using your television’s factory speakers. These can range from a few hundred dollars to well into the tens of thousands of dollars for high end systems. For the purposes of this post I’m going to stay closer to the shallow end of the massive pool that is home audio, specifically surround sound. I’ve always had a passion for audio but I’m not sure that I would consider myself an “Audiophile” but from my first car I already started sinking my time and money to a better audio experience. Fast forward to years later and I bought my first H.T.I.B. (Home Theater In a Box) and I had truly stepped up my game so to speak and I was very happy with the upgrade. It took me a few years more to set it up properly with aftermarket speakers and proper placement of those speakers. I had what is known as a 5.1 surround sound setup, a pretty effective and simple setup made up of a pair of front left/right tower speakers, a front center channel, a pair of rear left/right surround speakers and a powered subwoofer for low bass frequencies. This is a fairly simple format that has been around for decades as a means to recreate sound to match the experience of a movie theater and mimic closest the sound intended by the original sound engineers. There are many different codecs that I will get into further down the line that have different characteristics, sample rates and applications.