5 of the Best Ways to Test Your Surround Sound

If you have a surround sound system installed in your home, it is also important to check the quality of the system. With a few checks, it’s easy to understand whether each speaker is in the right place or needs to be moved for better sound, how well the subwoofer responds, and whether the effects fill the room. Fortunately, this can be tested in many ways at home.

For example, many games, movie scenes, and even some music mixed with Dolby Atmos can help find details that would otherwise go unnoticed. Thus, to satisfactorily experience the explosions, the footsteps behind the camera or even the dialogues between the characters, you need a balanced system. This is why you need to perform some tests to optimize your surround sound system.

To unlock the full potential of your surround sound, we’ve selected a few methods that help you check its quality. These examples put your system through different challenges so you can confirm whether the sound quality actually meets your expectations.

If you’re a gamer, one of the best ways to test your surround sound is to play games. “Cyberpunk 2077,” for example, offers one of the best surround sound experiences. In addition to offering a very good soundtrack, the game also allows you to test several different channels. You hear company advertisements overhead, NPC dialogue, cars and movement around you, which helps you know if everything is working as it should.

“Resident Evil Requiem” is another good game for this test. The game places a heavy emphasis on its horror atmosphere, mainly when you play as Grace. Since the player must pay attention to character movements and other sounds to know if they can move forward safely, surround audio is tested extensively. This way you can spot possible defects before completing the installation.

If you don’t like these games, there are plenty of titles offering similar audio quality to test out your surround sound. “Death Stranding 2” or “The Last of Us Part II” are also great titles to help you identify which home theater audio settings to adjust.

If you prefer to test your surround sound with movies, several scenes can help you check out the entire system. For example, early on in “Ready Player One” there’s a racing scene that lets you test the system in several ways, including making quick moves between channels.

The full movie “Mad Max: Fury Road” could also fit here, as the film uses surround sound very well throughout. But if you’re looking for a specific part, the scene during the sandstorm works great. It has deep bass, impact and effects separation that tests the quality of any surround sound system.

“Blade Runner 2049” is another film that handles audio ambience very well, mainly with scenes flying over the city. These moments serve to create a strong sense of scale, and you can clearly hear motors, drones, and other noises propagating through the side and rear channels, which is especially great on the best home theater systems on the market.

Several songs support Dolby Atmos and provide a great way to test your surround sound. With them, you can more easily notice the separation, height, and depth of what you hear. So tracks like Elton John’s “Rocket Man” and a-ha’s “Take on Me” work well to gauge bass, ambience, and vocal presence in a more immersive mix.

If you want to try it, streaming services like Apple Music offer extensive catalogs mixed for Dolby Atmos. Spatial Audio is included in the Apple Music subscription and songs from Billie Eilish, The Weeknd and Dua Lipa have been remixed specifically for the format. Just check the Dolby Atmos badge on the song page to make sure it will use your surround sound system.

For those who want to go further, tracks like Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” are also available in Atmos format to help you see how your spatial sound works. Orchestral soundtracks, especially those by Hans Zimmer, also amplify depth and work very well in surround sound setups.

Live concert recordings are one of the most effective ways to test surround sound systems while enjoying great music. That’s because they combine audio from many different sources at once, merging instruments, vocals, crowd sounds, and room reverb in a way that makes any system work. For anyone who wants to be sure everything works, a live show is a good test.

One of the best examples is Hans Zimmer’s “Live in Prague,” performed with 72 musicians and released via Blu-ray with a Dolby Atmos mix. The concert features iconic scores from films like “Gladiator,” “Inception” and “The Dark Knight,” so the sound palette ranges from delicate orchestral passages to massive, bass-heavy climaxes.

For anyone looking for something else, there’s “Us + Them” by Roger Waters. The recording also suits this purpose well, spreading the guitars, keyboards, and lead vocals across the soundstage. Many other live performances can work as well, provided your favorite artist has one of these recordings.

Many of the top streaming services have also invested in Dolby Atmos mixes for many of their original TV shows. This means they can be perfect for testing all the audio channels in your surround system. So if you don’t want to watch movies, there are plenty of options on Netflix, Disney+, and Apple TV+ that can work just as well.

You might want to watch “Stranger Things,” as the show uses sound effectively to build tension, especially in scenes set in the Upside Down. “The Crown”, on the other hand, relies on a more subtle mix, with reverberation from large rooms and well-placed dialogue. These differences make the two shows useful for assessing how the system handles hard-hitting effects as well as finer details.

“Foundation” on Apple TV+ is another good option. Its scenes with spaceships and on different planets create rich soundscapes, with layers that clearly propagate through the rear and side channels, making it a great way to test system separation.