The Best Gifts for Home Theater Fans

A home theater is a system where every component has to agree with every other one about sockets, levels and, in one specific case, tone of voice. That is why this page is arranged around what to verify rather than what is best — the best subwoofer in the world is a doorstop if their amplifier has no subwoofer output.

If you can get a photograph of the back of their receiver, you can answer nearly every question on this page in thirty seconds. If you cannot, there is a safe pick at the end.

A subwoofer is the biggest single change you can give them

Of everything here, adding a subwoofer changes the most. Film soundtracks put an entire dedicated channel below the range most speakers can reproduce; without a sub, that channel is simply not being played. Our setup guide covers where it goes and why.

The Klipsch R-120SW is our value pick and it is a good one for an honest reason: Klipsch publishes 200 W continuous next to the 400 W peak figure that appears in every retail listing, and publishes 29–120 Hz with a ±3 dB tolerance rather than a bare number. Most subwoofers at this price publish neither.

Check this before you buy it. The R-120SW has line/LFE RCA inputs only — no speaker-level inputs. If their amplifier is an older integrated or a stereo receiver with no subwoofer output, this subwoofer cannot be connected without a converter. That is a hard stop, not an inconvenience. Almost every AV receiver made this century has a sub output; a two-channel amplifier often does not. If theirs does not, we have a page on the ways around it — and the SVS SB-1000 Pro in our no-budget guide does have speaker-level inputs, which makes it the safer choice when you are not sure.

Also check it will physically fit: this is a 19-inch-deep, 31 lb box.

Surrounds or height speakers: the low-risk pick

Most people with a 5.1 system have thought about going to 7.1 or adding Atmos height channels and have not got round to buying the speakers. That makes a pair of small bookshelves one of the more reliably welcome gifts here, because it is an upgrade they have already decided they want.

The Polk Monitor XT15 is our all-rounder under $200 and Polk does something unusual that helps a gift-buyer: it publishes a recommended amplifier range of 30–150 W, and it explicitly rates the speaker for Dolby Atmos height duty as well as ordinary stereo. So it can serve as surrounds now and height channels later.

Two honest gaps. Polk publishes 86 dB sensitivity with no measurement condition attached, which means it cannot fairly be compared with the Klipsch figures quoted at 2.83 V. And the 30 W lower bound rules out the smallest amplifiers we recommend — worth a glance at their receiver’s rating. Why sensitivity figures are so often incomparable is its own page.

A centre channel — the one gift with a brand rule

The centre channel carries most of the dialogue in a film, and it is the one speaker where matching the brand and range of the existing front pair genuinely matters. It is called timbre matching and it is not audiophile folklore: if the centre uses a different tweeter from the left and right speakers, a voice changes character as it moves across the screen.

The Klipsch R-52C is our pick because it is timbre-matched to the R-41M and R-51M bookshelves — same 1-inch LTS tweeter, same Tractrix horn — and because it publishes 95 dB sensitivity, the highest of any centre channel on this site. Which is also the condition on this gift: buy it if their front speakers are Klipsch R-series. If they are ELAC or Polk, buy the matching centre from that maker instead.

Two more checks. It is 18.75 inches wide, which does not fit under every television or in every media cabinet — measure. And it is useless in a stereo system: a centre channel has no role in two-channel listening.

If they are still running television speakers

Then the gift is the receiver, and the Denon AVR-S570BT is the one we would give, with a clear-eyed view of what it does not do. Denon publishes 70 W per channel rated across the full 20 Hz–20 kHz band at 0.08% THD — the honest measurement condition, and the reason it is our rated-power pick under $500 when most rivals quote a 1 kHz figure and hope you do not notice.

What it gives up for that honesty is significant and you should know it: no Dolby Atmos, no DTS:X, no room correction of any kind, no phono input and no network streaming. If the person you are buying for has talked about Atmos or about ceiling speakers, this is the wrong model and you want the bracket above.

The safe pick when you cannot check anything

If you cannot see the back of their receiver, cannot measure their cabinet and do not know what brand their speakers are, buy acoustic panels. The room is almost always the largest measurable problem in a listening setup, treatment is the cheapest real improvement on this site, and a panel has no sockets to be incompatible with.

The ATS Acoustics 24×48 panel publishes its full per-frequency absorption curve rather than a single NRC number, which is what lets you see what it actually does. Its own data makes the honest point for us: the NRC is 1.00, and at 125 Hz it absorbs 0.12. NRC averages 250 Hz to 2 kHz only, so it structurally cannot show bass performance. Two-inch panels do not fix bass — nothing at this thickness does.

Two things to flag: ATS states plainly that these are not fire rated, which may matter for some installations, and they are around 12 lb each. Where to put them is a ten-minute job with a mirror, which is a nice thing to be able to do with a present on the day.