Amazon has a good deal on a very well-regarded sound bar that I’m eyeing. I just replaced my aging TV and am considering upgrading the sound, as well.
My living room isn’t all that large and I primarily use the TV for games and Netflix/Hulu. Since the rig runs off of Bluetooth it means I’d be able to stream music and whatnot from my phone as well.
I’d appreciate input from those of you who have (or have decided against) setups like this, as well as comments about this particular model if anybody is familiar with it.
I have a surround system, and I love sound effects and music coming from behind me. I don’t see any point to a sound bar unless your built-in TV speakers suck, in which case you probably bought the wrong TV.
I quite enjoy my sound bar. It’s not a complete replacement for a stereo and speakers for a high-end, high-volume music experience, but it’s great for movies, TV, and listening to music casually. My system is 5.1 channel, though, and I find it to be really immersive. Not sure how much different a 2.1 experience would be.
I have a 47 inch Panasonic LCD TV in my bedroom and the built-in speakers suck, well, not so much suck as they don’t provide adequate volume. I bought a sound bar to alleviate the problem and it works great. It provides fantastic volume, much better than I would have expected from a 36 inch bar. Great low-end bass for movies.
It sits directly in front of and looks like it is part of the TV. One of the best devices I have purchased.
I have an old sound bar, bought more than 15 years ago, but it’s still pretty faboulous. It has Dolby virtual 5.1 surround sound and provides a pretty good simulation of multiple speakers. DVDs and broadcast TV sound fantastic. Even old VHS hifi tapes sound good on it. I have a Bluetooth receiver hooked up to it and wirelessly stream music to it from my phone. Once you have a soundbar, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.
Oh, I forgot to mention, it’s great for videogaming, too.
Wrong. I have a high end Sony TV that has good sound; but it’s still just TV speakers. The sound bar I have puts out great sound. I say if you have a chance at one at a good price, you’ll be glad you purchased it.
Sound bars are the mediocre middle ground between awful flat panel speakers and full blown stereo systems. If your main goal is sound quality don’t. If your main goal is easy to set up and slightly better sound, well okay then.
You’ve already got it, but I’ll toss my two cents in anyways. Also, you said it gets it’s signal via bluetooth, but I don’t know how the bluetooth sender get’s it’s signal.
In general, I’d suggest taking the money you’d spend on a sound bar plus a little more and getting a center channel and two front channels. That way when you’re ready to go to (proper) 5.1 surround sound you don’t have to replace the sound bar, you just have to buy the rear speakers and a sub.
But that’s assuming you already have a receiver or something that can put out 5.1 (via wired connections). If your TV is sending out the bluetooth signal and this can pick it up, this was probably considerably cheaper.
I’ve yet to hear any flat-screen TV that has good sound. You simply cannot create good sound inside a flat space like that. I have a very inexpensive sound barI bought on sale from Radio Shack for only $99 years ago and it still sounds great. Not as good as a full home theater system, but I didn’t have room for that.
Something to keep in mind: Make absolutely sure whatever remote control you use as your main controlling one (i.e. changing channels) can emulate the remote for whatever brand sound bar you buy. It is a HUGE pain in the ass to have to always use a separate remote for the sound.
FWIW I don’t use the sound on the TV. I have a tuner amp connected to the TV via digital optical audio and I use the sound on that always. It’s set up with 5 surround speakers and an active sub. Tv remote to turn it on and change channels, stereo remote for volume.
My setup is similar. However, my TiVo remote controls the volume on the receiver and the on/off for the TV. I have to turn the receiver power on with the receiver remote, but it can tell (via an HDMI connection) when the TV is turned off and shuts itself off as well. It’ll also send a ‘turn off’ signal to any HDMI connected devices as well. So, if I was, say, watching a Blu-Ray disc, I can hit the TV power off button on the remote and the TV, receiver and Blu-Ray all turn off at once.
ETA, I can fully understand why a lot of people have zero interest in a setup like this. It’s considerably easier to just turn on your TV and watch TV and then turn off your TV and be done. Years ago I hooked up my parents TV to the stereo since it was right there and was all like ‘doesn’t that make it sound so much better’. They kinda agreed, but not really and weren’t too happy when they turned the TV off and the sound was still playing…that was the first and last time they did that.
Getting my 2.1 soundbar/sub to work properly involved way more work and research than I was expecting. I guess I’ve been out of the loop on home-theater audio for a few years so I just assumed I could hook up my TV’s optical out to the soundbar’s optical in and voila, I’d be using it correctly. But a little more investigation revealed that’s not always the case. Most TV’s don’t send anything but a PCM stereo signal on the audio output ports. So my soundbar might not be receiving the proper surround signal (5.1) where it would translate it to a 2.1 format. It turns out that my TV does have an option to output the audio in a bitstream format, so that was good, but I’ve read where most TVs don’t. I think the soundbar’s electronics, when fed with a 2-channel stereo PCM signal, will just send the lower frequencies to the subwoofer where as if it received a surround signal the encoding has already seperated the channels the way the content creator intended. I can tell a difference, but it’s not dramatic.
Also, the optical input/output is incapable of transfering the newer HD audio formats. I believe it requires HDMI. So I guess the best way to ensure you’re getting the proper output from your system is to feed it with the HDMI from your content source (cable box or streaming device, blue-ray or whatever) and then have the HDMI output from your soundbar connected to your TV. I see the VIZIO you linked to doesn’t have HDMI in/outs so this wouldn’t apply to you.
My parents have a Vizio sound bar on their tv and they have been very happy with it. The sound quality is good, and the surround effect can be almost as good as a dedicated 5.1 multi-speaker rig if (BIG IF) you have the room setup; walls to reflect the side signals off of. Is it as good as my new Onkyo/Atmos setup? Not even close. Is it “good enough”? Yes, especially if you don’t want to futz with multiple speakers.
For the OP, page through the recent archives of the San Jose Mercury News. There was a review of sound bars just in the last day or two. Can’t remember exactly.
Ahhh, do mean the remote control?! This is why I pointed this out to the OP, it is a huge pain to have to constantly use a separate remote for volume. Because my sound bar was an off brand (Memorex) my regular TiVo remote didn’t have its code. I had to buy the deluxe ‘learning’ TiVo remote.
Can anyone offer a brief explanation (maybe just one sentence? because I don’t want to mess up this thread). But what is the advantage to a sound bar over ordinary speakers? It looks kind of strange.
I bought a Sony speaker for my smart phone and was very surprised that it played wonderful stereo sound when it is just a single tiny box (like your sound bar but not nearly as wide). I’d love to know how they do that.