audiophiles - give me the straightdope

In My Humble Opinion
1

My wife has found herself with a ton of points to use for purchasing valuable prizes and merchandise!

To make a long story short, we’ve decided to add a little pizazz to our current home viewing setup We currently have a Sony Bravia HDTV, and we have a standard (non blu-ray) Sony DVD Player. I don’t have any stereo equipment, and my stereo needs are obviously minimal to none.

We want to enhance our television watching pleasure in our living room (not a media room which is a few years down the road).

We are looking at the following available options:
BRAVIA® Theater System
Blu-ray Disc™ Home Theater System
Sony Blu-ray Theatre System (but without the blu-ray disk player)

I’m not even sure where to begin on how to make an intelligence decision.

Here are some random questions to get the ball rolling.
What’s the big deal w/ Bravia?
Is it something I’ll really appreciate when I’m able to use it? Right now I have a remote for my Sony television, my Sony DVD player, and another for my stupid cable box that’s required for hdtv signal.

I love the idea of wireless (and small) speakers. However it’s relatively new to me. What can you tell me about that? Something I need to be concerned about?

What are some considerations I should think about when choosing a system.

I’m visualizing this thread falling like a rock. :slight_smile:

2

Before you get too enamored with the idea of wireless speakers, remember that they will need electricity. That means either D-cells by the truckload or wires (oops!) to plug them into an electric outlet. They’re also susceptible to RF interference. They may not be able to reproduce your neighbor’s phone calls (either by a cordless phone or a cell phone) but they may put out some static or hiss. Essentially, if you can get electricity to the speakers, you can probably figure a way to get signal wires to them as well.

Those systems you link to put a hefty premium on Blu-Ray. It’s hard to make a call on Blu-Ray’s longevity and whether it’s worth the investment. Some folks out there are saying that it’s a dead-end format, and will be replaced within the next couple of years by streaming video, especially as home entertainment and computers continue to converge. An upconverting DVD player will get you probably 60-70% of the quality for 15% of the price. The main factor is the DVDs themselves. If it’s an older title, the film-to-video transfer may not have been done with the same attention to detail that’s given to movies today.

3

Bravia is just a name Sony tacked onto their line of LCD flatscreen sets.
Before that they had the Wega line of LCD projection and flat-screen tubes and before that they had their Trinitron sets.
They’ve tagged the sound system with the Bravia mark basically to show it’s remote control functions work with the Bravia line of TVs once linked together. May be a convenient feature if you don’t want to mess with an additional remote.

4

Stay away from wireless speakers. As gotpasswords said, they must receive power from somewhere, and regardless of the source in the end they will be more trouble than they’re worth.
Essentially, the big deal about Bravia is… that it’s supposed to make you keep buying from Sony. I’m not saying that they are bad products, but IMO the whole Bravia thing is essentially a marketing scheme.
Decent HD pictures are relatively easy to obtain once you have a good TV, which you apparently do. Even a Playstation will give you good video. A proper HD audio system, however, is much more difficult to set up. The budget can be an important factor. Try to define your priorities: what is more important to you, convenience, looks, or quality? Also, I would look for demos and/or advice in stores before buying.

5

If you ever do decide to make the jump to Blu-Ray make sure you know if your Bravia set is a 720p or 1080p.
If it’s not a 1080p a Blu-Ray machine isn’t going to be of much use for an improved picture.

6

I like Sony for TVs and some other products, but definitely, absolutely, positively NOT for their speakers. They’re all complete and utter crap, without exception, in my experience. My recommendation, don’t buy any of those packages.

Furthermore, don’t buy *any *speaker from a catalog unless you’ve heard it in the real world first.

Speakers are, without a doubt, *the *most important component in determining what your sound system will actually sound like. 99.9% of people couldn’t tell the sonic difference between different receivers, CD players, or most other electronics. And it’s not a big deal to buy electronics without hearing them. If a receiver has good specs and the features you like, you are unlikely to be dissatisfied with it.

Not so with speakers. You can’t shop for speakers by spec. Every brand and model of speaker sounds different. You have to hear them. And all that matters is what you like. Not the brand, not the shape, not the price.

Ideally, you should take CDs of the different types of music you like to a store where you can play them on several different brands and models of speaker. First make sure the receiver you’re using is set to flat EQ: no bass or treble boost. Also try to eliminate or reduce any other distracting sounds.

Listen to the loud parts of your music, the soft parts, listen to how the speakers handle highs and lows. Listen carefully for as long as you can. (Don’t listen to the salesman.) Try to determine which speakers you find most pleasing and natural. It may take a long time. Be patient, take notes. If you find a very expensive speaker you like but can’t afford, look at lower priced speakers from the same manufacturer.

But spend as much as you possibly can on the speakers. You’re much, much better off listening to $1,000 speakers with a $100 receiver than the other way around.

Good luck

7

…misread post.

8

Well, it appears that the “Specifications” tabs on the pages linked in the OP don’t actually have much useful information a la specs. You could consider that a weensy little warning sign.

(Translation: They’re trying to foist crap off on you and are hoping you don’t notice.)

IMO you’d be better off focusing on a good two-channel audio system than a crappy 5.1 channel system.

I haven’t gone speaker shopping in years, but Paradigm Atom speakers were well-regarded as small speakers that were decent quality for a decent price.

9

I’d normally agree with commasense but I was under the impression from the OP that these were some kind of award “points” and he was limited to certain gift selections.
Yeah the Sony speakers are pretty much crap to anyone that seriously listens to speakers but they are still a bit of an upgrade from the speakers built into the TV.

I sold speakers and audio equipment for years, and unfortunately commasense the majority of the public doesn’t listen to music like we do. I had Advent, CerwinVega, Infinity, Klipsch and would do great demos and still people would opt for the $199 Pioneers or $150 KLH simply because they were cheaper, had a big woofer, and “uh (shrug) I can’t hear any difference.”

10

Thanks, Hampshire, for your support.

Enright3: Are there any other home theater systems in the points catalog?

Of course, if you were to take my advice and go somewhere to listen to Sony speakers and happened to like them, then obviously spending points on one of these systems would make a little sense. Except that the electronics components in these packages are fairly crappy, too.

If the choice is one of these three or nothing, I would probably pick the last system because, with the lowest list price, it presumably costs the fewest points, leaving more for you to spend on other things. Also, it doesn’t duplicate the DVD player you already have.

However, I am alarmed about one thing: the specs say that its THD (total harmonic distortion) is 10%. If true, this is absolutely horrible, so I suspect a typo. If it were 1.0% it would still be really bad compared to most decent receivers these days. But if it really is 10%, I wouldn’t recommend it under any circumstances.

The receivers in the other systems are rated for 0.7% THD, also not great. Which is another reason I really can’t recommend any of these systems wholeheartedly.