I used my TV’s built-in speakers for years before taking the leap and building a Dolby Atmos home theater. I started off small, buying affordable bookshelf speakers in JBL’s Stage2 lineup. From there, I added floorstanding speakers, up-firing Dolby Atmos height speakers, and a center channel. I threw in an Edifier T5 subwoofer I already had from a previous setup, and two years later, I had a functional Dolby Atmos home theater.
I learned a lot along the way, and made a few mistakes in the process. If you’re ready to start building a Dolby Atmos home theater of your own, you can learn from my blunders to ensure your system comes together without a hitch.
Start with a 4K UHD Blu-ray player
To enjoy lossless Dolby Atmos, you need the right disc player
Everyone has a specific goal (or two) in mind when they set out to build a Dolby Atmos home theater. It could be to create an immersive music listening station, elevate the console gaming experience, or to replicate the movie cinema experience at home. My reasons for investing in Dolby Atmos at home were twofold. I wanted to improve the quality of my stereo speakers for use with my turntable within a 5.1.2 setup that could play lossless Dolby Atmos audio. JBL’s Stage2 speaker system checked those boxes, but I didn’t realize just how tricky it’d be to achieve lossless Dolby Atmos audio for movies.
Streaming services don’t offer lossless Dolby Atmos, so you need a 4K UHD Blu-ray collection and a 4K player to enjoy it. You can’t use just any 4K player — it needs to specifically support Dolby Atmos surround sound. This is a problem, particularly for older players and gaming consoles, such as the Xbox One S. It’s difficult to find good 4K UHD Blu-ray players in 2026, especially at reasonable prices. A highly-rated player like the Panasonic UB-820 costs $550, whereas the reliability of players around the $300 price point can be hit-or-miss.
Here’s where I made a mistake: I underestimated the cost and importance of a good 4K UHD Blu-ray player. I spent years budgeting my Dolby Atmos build, acquiring speakers here and there along the way. I knew that speakers and a Dolby Atmos receiver would be pricey, and patiently waited for open-box deals to save money. All the while, I didn’t consider the $550 I’d need to spend on a quality 4K player. Now, I have a Dolby Atmos home theater that’s ready for lossless Dolby TrueHD discs, but I can’t take advantage of it until I upgrade my cheap Blu-ray player.
So, if 4K disc playback for Dolby Atmos is your goal, start with a solid 4K UHD Blu-ray player. They’re backwards-compatible with regular Blu-ray discs and work with other Dolby surround sound formats. You’ll be able to enjoy the benefits of 4K UHD Blu-rays from the get-go, and will have everything you need for lossless Dolby Atmos as soon as you finish your 5.1.2 or higher system.
Use banana plugs for speaker wire
And make longer speaker wire runs than you actually need
Passive speakers use speaker wire to connect with your AV receiver. You can cut speaker wire the old-fashioned way, twisting the copper strands and inserting the end into the spring clips or binding posts on your amplifier. However, these can be a real hassle. They can shift, and make moving or swapping parts of your speaker system difficult. A better alternative, if your speakers and receivers use five-way binding posts, is to use banana plugs. I used my JBL bookshelf speakers for over a year before I discovered banana plugs, and I wish I had known about them sooner.
The biggest drawback to using banana plugs is their cost. Speaker wire is relatively cheap, and it costs nothing to manually strip the shielding and twist the copper strands yourself. I paid $15 for each four-pack of banana plugs, but it’s the best money I ever spent on my home theater setup. There’s a center gold-plated pin that you insert into your speaker wire’s copper — no stripping required — that ensures a perfect connection. After screwing the banana plug together, you have a plug that can be quickly connected to and disconnected from a five-way binding post.
To put bare speaker wire into a binding post, you need to carefully push the twisted strands through a tiny hole and screw the post down. This sounds simple enough, but when you’re dealing with a Dolby Atmos setup that has at least seven speakers that need to be wired by hand, it gets exhausting. That’s especially true for cable runs to a speaker or receiver that is in a hard-to-reach spot. By using binding posts and banana plugs, connecting a speaker to your AV receiver takes a second and is painless.
Banana plugs give you the flexibility to move your speakers around, swap cables, and add equipment without having to rewire everything. This is necessary for a Dolby Atmos setup, as you’ll need to test speaker placements to find their ideal locations. I struggled with bare speaker wire throughout an apartment move and placement tests before I switched to banana plugs, and you should invest in them from the beginning.
Plus, using banana plugs makes it easier to test equipment before you buy it. You can find a local audio dealer and test speakers or receivers in your own home before deciding. This allows you to hear everything in your own space, not a demo room. It’d be quite annoying to wire multiple sets of speakers for at-home testing, but with banana plugs, it’s no problem.
Focus on room treatment and calibration
Before you spend money on height speakers, fix your room
I made the mistake of buying things out of order. I should’ve bought a 4K UHD Blu-ray player and banana plugs first, and I didn’t. If there’s a theme here, it’s that you need to be smart about how you invest in your Dolby Atmos home theater. A category that’s often overlooked is room treatment. You can spend money on a nice AV receiver, a great 4K UHD Blu-ray player, and superb speakers, but you won’t get the best sound from your equipment if your room acoustics aren’t up to snuff.
Dolby Atmos systems require more attention to room acoustics than most speaker setups. Since there are height speakers either firing sound up or down, the audio is reflecting off unusual surfaces. For example, my up-firing Dolby Atmos speakers are designed to reflect sound off the ceiling. When I began building a Dolby Atmos system, I added acoustic panels on the walls, completely forgetting that the ceiling is the part of my room that needed acoustic treatment the most. If your speakers are down-firing, you may need to consider treating the floor.
It’s easy to get lazy and buy cheap acoustic panels — the tiny foam panels in every podcast room. That’s what I did in the beginning, too. Then, I realized those foam panels weren’t doing anything to improve my room acoustics. I switched to fiberglass acoustic panels, and the reflections in my room were finally tamed. Before spending upwards of $2,000 on Dolby Atmos gear, take the time and spend the money on quality room treatment.
Everything else to consider when building a Dolby Atmos setup
These are a few of the things I overlooked as I built a Dolby Atmos system, but there are other aspects to consider. Think about how the parts in your system will match. You can buy everything from the same brand, but you don’t necessarily have to. Consider possible upgrade paths, and how you can build out your system over time. Finally, check Dolby’s official guidance on Atmos speakers and placement to nail the spatial effects.
- Brand
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JBL
- Connectivity
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Wired analog audio, binding posts
- Size
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4.5 inches
- Power
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150W
- Driver Size
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4.5-inch woofer, 1-inch tweeter
- Frequency Response
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85 Hz – 25 kHz
JBL’s Stage2 240H are up-firing height speakers compatible with Dolby Atmos. They use binding posts and speaker wire to connect with home theater receivers, working within a surround sound setup. These speakers are made to be positioned atop of Stage2 floor speakers, requiring no drilling or mounting.