TV soundbars

Can be, kind of like a radio gram over a dancette. Brian

You can go to a Yamaha YSP-2500 that does some really weird stuff taking advantage of sound reflections to simulate having speakers all over the room. That had a crazy number of speakers, each one claiming to be directional. And yes, it needs to calibrate to a room (using a supplied external mic). It has extremely good reviews.

You can go even more insane in pricing.

The point being, that between that and the Goodmans, there are a whole range of varying devices.

Amazon is a good place to plug one in and see real reviews. What do you really want and what budget?

Fitted a £100 LG soundbar and a 42" Samsung TV in an office the other week - the TV sound was notably better.

Try before you buy!

In message , News writes

Can I join your thread?

Huge price range.

I need something to *sharpen* up the audio; particularly on lower budget American films. Simply turning up the volume causes annoyance. Specsavers are very keen to help me but mostly I can manage without expensive things stuffed in my ears.

Family joke... what bird is that singing? What bird?

I don't want cinema surround sound but would like the ability to tweak the treble end of the output.

Skimming some of the reviews turned up criticism of compatibility with other electronic gizmos. I suppose it is too much to hope the device will not require a separate handset and power supply but simply plugging in to *audio out* and cutting out the set speakers is attractive.

Tim Lamb scribbled

I've got a cheapish Maxell soundbar and I'm forever losing the credit card sized remote. The Maxell adds body/depth to the sound. Dunno about treble, it's that end of the spectrum old farts lose first.

You'll be subjected to more of that Strictly screeching. I'd invest in some earplugs instead

A half decent telly can sound better than a ?40 soundbar.

If the telly has ARC (Audio Reverse Channel) on one of its HDMI inputs get an external speaker set/sound bar that has an HDMI out that also understands ARC.

You should then be able to control the external speakers via the TV's remote over the HDMI connection.

My 28 inch Sony CRT set certainly did before I scrapped it, but where can they put decent sized forward facing speakers, in modern, virtually frameless, wafer thin sets that people demand today?

These soundbars certainly have their place, but they seem to have stifled the pursuit of true surround-sound to some extent, which is a pity.

Indeed :-) I normally watch something else via YouTube and wear headphones.

In article , Tim Lamb scribeth thus

If you have a half decent hi-fi system then try the TV sound thru that.

Most sets have line level outlets....

Results can be very good indeed:)

Digital TV could have given us world class surround sound audio but what we have ended up with is highly filtered over compressed crap audio on most channels.

IMO my Nicam decoder of 10/15 years ago on analogue transmissions produced better audio than I'm getting today on majority of digital TV channels.

IMO putting the audio through my AV amp produces a much better experience than from than TV speakers alone. Visiting friends houses and listening the output from the TV speakers confirms that my set-up is better, However, after listening to inferior audio for any length of time and it becomes almost acceptable.

just about any junk shop or charity shop will be giving away old 'midfi' units with an amp and a pair of loudspeakers - better than a 'soundbar' by a huge margin.

I keep thinking of surround sound, but is anything actually recorded in it?

What's wrong with connecting the line-out from your TV to your stereo that 's already in the room? Much better sound, a fiver for a connecting lead, and no extra clutter.

Just most of the stuff on TV for the last few years and films for longer. But its only DD5.1 not bluray quality.

Last time I tried it there was always a reason that most of the stuff just didn't work. Only pretty new stuff had the extra sound on it, and only if you got it from the right TV channel.

I remember surround sound systems over 20 years ago, why the f*ck has it taken so long to record everything like this?

SD Stereo, Prologic II at best.

HD may get you multi-channel surround sound but for very few broadcasts. Very little on the BBC Freeview is ACC5.1 and on the lesser channels you will be lucky to get poor quality mono.

IMO experience some channels can get the front and back speaker decoding swapped. For a couple of adverts this trick can get your attention but it's bloody annoying and likely to put you off the product for life.