Sound Bar

[harryndodso]

I am considering getting a sound bar for the telly and reckon on spending £300 - £400. Does anyone have any ideas about a wise and prudent choice?! Thanks, and a Happy New Year, Harry.

[Hardgrafter]

I would first go to 'Richer Sounds' if at all possible, where the staff are reasonably knowledgeable.
https://www.richersounds.com/

You need to know what outputs are available on your TV and Digi box (Sky, Virgin etc). Optical connection seems to be the best. Ideally you only want to have one volume controller for both.

[killergorilla]

It often helps to get one the same brand as your television. The integration will have been better thought through.
I favour wireless sub-woofers as it give you a lot more flexibility in placement.
I bought a Samsung with an analogue vacuum tube amp HW-F750. Pricey but sounds great. I actually bought the two elements (soundbar and wireless sub) separately on e-Bay. It saved me about 50%. You can probably pull off a similar trick with newer models.
Finally, are you sure you want a soundbar? Proper 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound is leagues better. With a wireless module for the rear speakers you get a lot of flexibility. The difference is huge, especially for sports or movies.
KG

[fuiseog]

Which? have some very good articles on TV soundbars, including a best buy list of 19 with prices ranging from £150 to £650.

Which? also has a don't buy list of 17.

You'll get free access online at your local library if you're lucky enough to have one, or there usually is £1 free tiral offers that Google could unearth.

[tea42]

Trouble with all Sound Bars is that the speakers will be small diameter and thus lack decent base. My setup includes a 5.1 reciever and 5 B&W speakers. No sub whoofer, but the main 602 speakers do the base just great. All can be picked up for a song because Hifi buffs are always upgrading. For £400 you can get a great set of kit from Ebay with a Hifi fluent pal to advise. Great for playing music too.

[Itsallaguess]

I am considering getting a sound bar for the telly and reckon on spending £300 - £400. Does anyone have any ideas about a wise and prudent choice?!

I'm not really up to speed with the best choices currently available, but one thing to consider whilst you're looking is to have a think about Bluetooth connectivity of any respective options you might ultimately think about.

When we got a soundbar a couple of years ago, we made sure to get one with Bluetooth connectivity, as it's great to be able to stream music from a smartphone or tablet, to be able to listen via the better soundbar speakers than the ones available on most mobile devices. This is of course completely separate from what might be your primary use, for the TV, but this is just something extra to think about, perhaps...

Also, I know soundbars crop up on Hotukdeals quite often, so it might be worth keeping an eye on that website and perhaps having a trawl through some of the recent offer-threads. There's some knowledgeable people over there who often post useful information and comparison posts (perhaps saying why a particular deal isn't a good one, or where they might be better value in the current market), so I always find it useful to spend a bit of time looking through some of the recent offer-threads there, just to get a feel for things -

https://www.hotukdeals.com/search?q=soundbar

The above link is searching for the word 'soundbar' on the Hotukdeals website, and I notice that there's a 'hot' deal being discussed there for this Samsung 2.1 unit -

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/samsun ... ys-2868305

The unit being discussed on the above offer-thread is here -

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-ho ... 6-pdt.html

The above certainly isn't a recommendation for that unit, and I'd perhaps caution that it is discussing a wireless unit which may not suit you, but I just wanted to highlight another source of useful and current market-information whilst you're researching these things.

Quite often some of the most useful posts on the Hotukdeals offer-threads are the ones posted by people suggesting good alternatives to the current thread-offers, so it can be a useful exercise to have a trawl through some recent ones.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[PrincessB]

Does anyone have any ideas about a wise and prudent choice?! Thanks, and a Happy New Year, Harry.

Hi Harry,

I can offer some pointers.

First is to decide if you want a soundbar or a soundbase. A soundbar is slim and sits in front of the the TV or the wall, a soundbase is deeper and designed to sit under the TV.

As a very general rule, a soundbar will come with a subwoofer which can be wired or wireless, for the most part soundbases use their extra size to incorporate the subwoofers into a single box. If you end up with a subwoofer unit, you'll have to find a home for it - Have you got somewhere to hide a 30cm cube and a power outlet nearby?

For the record, I have had this one for a couple of years:
https://www.whathifi.com/maxell/mxsp-sb3000/review

It has faults but if you look at the stuff it does right, it puts some of the more expensive stuff into perspective as every single feature is really useful.
Useful includes:
Controls on the device for those times when the remote has gone missing.
A proper display rather than some colour coded lights.
Bluetooth.
HDMI in and out - You have to use the correct ARC compatible HDMI cables but it is still a rarity even on the high end devices. I didn't ever use this as an optical cable from the back of the TV to the unit sufficed, it's still there.
A reasonable remote control.

I would suggest the What Hi Fi website a good starting point for research. Unfortunately, What Hi Fi exists to promote equipment and it is very rare to read a poor review. The journalists do have the decency to write in what is essentially code and will tuck in a few key words among the gushing praise that will help you to make a shortlist.

Keywords, include:
Bright/Forwards - Too much trebel and tiring to listen to for prolonged periods
Wooly/Booming - The bass is not crisp
Chuffing - the bass ports whistle

If you spend some time reading reviews you'll start to pick up on the keywords.

Usefully, What Hi Fi reviews the sound using small sections of popular films (usually blockbusters) which gives you some kind of objective test points to listen for if you turn up with a blu-ray disk of the film they used. For a £400 purchase, a decent hi-fi shop won't mind spending a bit of time setting things up so you can make your mind up.

I did this when I bought my last TV, my concerns were the black levels and the accuracy of red. We turned up with a DVD of Sin City (lots of blacks, lots of blood) and spent a couple of hours running sets through their paces watching the same clip over and over on different devices - This was at Richer Sounds at a quiet time of day but it worked out.

I would recommend finding a clip on your blockbuster film which has a scene with lots of background noises and quiet dialogue as many new TV shows and films are encoded with more audio channels than the simple stereo many soundbar/soundbases can decode - If you can't hear what people are saying, the device is not for you.

With that in mind perhaps something like the 3.1 Philips XS1 might work as a starting point for further research:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/philips-xs1

I like the 3.1 decoding (left, centre, right and subwoofer) - I struggle to hear the dialogue sometimes on my budget stereo Maxell, it all depends on the source material, so being armed with something challenging to test with is a good option.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

B.

[Smautf]

I am considering getting a sound bar for the telly and reckon on spending £300 - £400. Does anyone have any ideas about a wise and prudent choice?! Thanks, and a Happy New Year, Harry.

We don't watch much telly in our house and so had only a small and elderly 20" Sony sitting in the corner until recently, when we bought a larger smart Toshiba HD one in a fit of indulgence. The TV itself is pretty good but the sound was truly awful.

I was reluctant, to say the least, to spend more than the massive £200 we had just shelled out, so I found an old pair of bookshelf speakers in the loft and hooked them up using the headphone socket on the TV and a £25 mini-amp from Amazon (one of these : https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071Z81L6H/).

I'm not saying the results are as good as a dedicated surround system - I'm sure they aren't - but it's a significant improvement, and more than enough for our occasional dips into the iPlayer.

Chris

[Redmires]

I suppose the question is ... Do you want the full surround experience or just to improve on the standard TV speaker output ?

If it's just better sound you require you would be better off feeding it through a hifi system, or buying a decent one if you don't have one. A trip to Richer Sounds (as suggested) would help in either case though.

[harryndodso]

Many thanks to all for the informed and illuminating advice. There is much to ponder! Harry.

[Slarti]

I suppose the question is ... Do you want the full surround experience or just to improve on the standard TV speaker output ?

If it's just better sound you require you would be better off feeding it through a hifi system, or buying a decent one if you don't have one. A trip to Richer Sounds (as suggested) would help in either case though.

The problem with that, for me, is that the sound system and speakers have never been able to be in the right place for the telly.

Slarti

[Breelander]

...If it's just better sound you require you would be better off feeding it through a hifi system...

The problem with that, for me, is that the sound system and speakers have never been able to be in the right place for the telly.

Fortunately mine are - and the sound (especially at the bass end) is better than I'd expect from any sound bar.

If you try this route and your TV has tone controls or an equalizer, then with careful adjustment to get the tonal quality to match the TV can be a useful 'centre speaker'. If it sounds 'odd' and/or lacks bass this way, then your HiFi speakers may be out of phase with the TV. Just disconnect the HIFi's speaker leads from each speaker and reconnect them the other way round.