…any recommendations? Leaning towards a 5.1 but might settle for a 2.1 if the price difference is vast and the sound difference is small. Any and all input is appreciated.
Just giving this one bump. Curious if anyone at all has any experience with Sound bars. How they sound. What ones are good.
In case your’re unaware a sound bar is essentially a single speaker that simulates surround sound. Either 2.1 or 5.1 surround sound.
Thanks.
Do not spring for a “5.1” soundbar. The whole point of the “5.1” designation is that you’re meant to have five distinct speakers - four conventional speakers scattered around the room, plus a subwoofer. The result is that sounds actually come from front-left, front-right, back-left, back-right, etc. You can get soundbars that claim to do this through clever audio engineering tricks, but they can’t get past the fact that all the speakers are in one bar. (Unless they include a separate sub, which many will).
The advantage of a soundbar is that it is often cheaper than stand-alone speaker systems, it’s easy to set up, and it’s compact - but you’ll never audio quality as good as that of stand-alone speakers, and the 5.1-style immersion is just not going to happen.
I actually plan to get a soundbar for my own place - but that’s precisely because I have neither the room nor the inclination to muck about with a proper 5.1 setup.
The Wirecutter generally does reasonable, detailed reviews - they recommend a Vizio soundbar: The 4 Best Soundbars of 2023 | Reviews by Wirecutter
Mr. E. pretty much said it. Soundbars are for people who want slightly better sound than the TV’s own speakers without the setup hassles of a true 5.1 speaker array. I’d say “at lower cost” but a good soundbar can be almost as expensive as a good (not great) amp and 5.1 speaker setup.
If you want good sound, put in the bit of extra effort to run wiring for 5 mounted speakers and a subwoofer. Soundbars are not worth the money, IMVVHO… either they’re cheap and they aren’t much better than the TV, or they’re expensive and still fall short of even a middlin’ 5.1 setup.
The “sound projection” claims for them, especially those that claim to emulate rear speakers, is pretty much BS. You can get good, separated 3-channel sound from a soundbar, nothing more. Mucking around trying to throw delays and extra separation is likely to just create booming, muddy sound. If you elect for a soundbar, go with the cheapest, least-featured one that has good reviews for front sound.
I have one. It’s not great, but it is noticeable better than the TV sound. I believe it is a Vizio sound bar, around $100, got it a few years ago, nothing fancy at all, does what I need it too. I’d say if your looking to save some space and have good sound, go for the sound bar. 5.1 is nice but the set up can be a pain and not all rooms are good for it.
I bought a new plasma TV last year that had horrible built-in audio. After checking out a number of (moderately priced) soundbars, I settled on the LG NB3530A. It sounded (by far) the best of the ones I could actually listen to. It is only 2 channel, but has a (wireless) subwoofer that makes a big difference (and is very easy to setup).
It was also easy to change my TV/cable remote to control the volume on the soundbar, so one less remote.
The sound bar is what the TV should have had in the first place, but didn’t because you are going to buy the TV anyway, so why include it?
So you will be going from substandard TV sounds to what should be normal TV sound. If you want more then that you should be looking at a speaker system, not a sound bar.
But saying that, and having one of my own, I would suggest looking more at user interface, will it work with your universal remote as your normal volume control? Like I said I have a sound bar, but I only use it about 1/2 the time due to UI issues, but does sounds better then just the TV speaker.
I didn’t go for the 2.1 option as the subwoffer was a additional unit and I wanted to keep a clean looking setup, also I’m not sure that a subwoffer adds anything besides compensating for biologically underendowed male genitalia, yes it’s great for a few early cheap thrills but beyond that bhahhh - sounds artificial. YMMV
I was thinking of buying one as well, but I want one that the TV can sit on top of. My house is too small for a bunch of speakers, so that’s out. I’ve looked at reviews for the Bose Solo and the ZVOX models, which run about $350. They get pretty good reviews, so perhaps I’ll indulge myself.
I won’t try to argue that you’re wrong, but both of my TV rooms of the past decade have been fairly small rooms (11x14 or so) and the only thing that took up extra room was the subwoofer… which lives in the bottom of an end table. You can get decent speakers the size of soup cans, which should fit in the tightest circumstances.
If you don’t want the expense or hassle of wired speakers, no problem… but space for them is (or can be) a non-issue.
FWIW I already have a cheap set of 2.1 speakers but their sound is going so I was thinking of replacing them…a sound bar seemed like a good idea but it is sounding like that may not be the case. Please, keep the discussion going. This is helpful.
What kind of outputs do you have? I use computer speakers with a mini-subwoofer for my 27" TV. You don’t need anything fancy to take advantage of the encoding tricks recorded into video because a lot of it is done with just left and right channel separation. I can hear sounds that appear to be far to the left and right of the speakers because the signal is delayed between the 2 channels. It’s an old audio trick and it doesn’t require anything “decoded” on your end.
Obviously this can’t reproduce sounds behind you but you’re not looking for that anyway. Soundbars may or may not be able to deliver lower frequencies which is why I suggest something with a subwoofer. You don’t need anything massive to pick up the lower frequencies but it does need to be isolated from the left and right speakers.
take a CD with you and test drive the speakers. Use music you’re familiar with and has a wide frequency range as well as music “types”. Listen to something with a piano, a guitar, a violin, a horn, and a saxophone. You’d be surprised at the differences between speakers. I was surprised at the quality between the same brand of speakers within $10 of each other.
And when you make your purchase check out what your TV can do. Mine has an equalizer built in and allowed me to tweak the sound. I switch between “movie”, “custom” and “speech” settings to maximize sound quality.
One of the problems is that the wiring for the rear speakers has to cross two wall openings, one of which is the front door and the other of which is an archway opening that is the size of three normal doors. It pretty much makes it a non-starter, as the wiring would have to run across at the ceiling level to feed any rear speakers, which would be unsightly. I also don’t want to have to jam an amp/receiver into the small space that I have (actually, it would mean having to buy a new piece of furniture to accommodate it, the DVR and the DVD player. The room is too cluttered as it is. The other thing is that while I want to enhance the sound, I don’t need something that produces seriously high fidelity or loudness levels.
I think that this is incorrect. The “5” part of “5.1” is for the five speakers, two front (left and right), one center, and two back. The “.1” is for the subwoofer. So a total of 6 speakers. At least that is how I understand it.
As for poor speakers in modern TVs, so many people do spring for the AV receiver and run everything through it. With the AV receiver, the TV’s speakers are not typically used at all. If many people aren’t going to use your speakers, why put good ones in?
I’ve been contemplating a sound bar as well, because the walls in my apartment are concrete and I don’t want to run visible wires. So how feasible are wireless speakers for a surround sound system?
I got a good sound bar and I am very happy with it.
Not as good as a full on set up with rear speakers but a huge step up from the TV speakers. The sub helps a lot with the overall sound.
A huge plus is the remote truly universal and replaces all the other remotes.
you can install something like thiswhich uses a sound bar and wireless remote subwoofer and rear speakers. The rear speakers are wired to the subwoofer. So you have a simplified installation and only wires in the back of the room.
I haven’t heard them demo’d but this is the setup I would look for.
Thanks. I’ll consider it. The other thing that would be nice is if the sound bars were designed to mount on the bottom of the TVs of the same brand. Dell sells a sound bar designed to mount on many of its desktop computer monitors.
Yes and it would have been nice if cell phones all used the same charger. Look how long it took for that to catch on. What you suggested sounds like a no-brainer.