Soundbars, Soundbases, Sonos & "all in one" solutions

Discussion in 'General Audio Discussion' started by Jeb, Oct 15, 2015.

  1. Jeb

    Jeb Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2015
    Likes Received:
    391
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Location:
    Bristol, UK
    After many many years my mum would like a new TV and has also said she struggles to hear much of the dialogue on programs these days. She's 65 and her hearing is in decent nick but she still has a hard time and often just resorts to putting the subtitles on instead.

    We thought something to boost the sound and clarity of the TV would be a good idea. This led me to explore something like a soundbar or "soundbase" or at least some kind of single speaker solution that could be plugged directly into the TV and would offer her something to play music from her phone/spotify too. She doesn't really have the space nor the inclination for proper speakers and amp/AV receiver.

    I went round various shops and showrooms and listened to many of these speaker solutions, which come in many shapes, sizes and configurations. I also got side-tracked into listening to multi-room systems and wireless speakers. One thing I felt they all had in common was that - to varying degrees -they all sounded quite dreadful. Rather than waste the experience, I thought I would commit it to writing in case anyone else is looking for something similar and would like a different opinion from all the 5 star reviews for these products on What HiFi.

    I understand that my experiences are far from ideal conditions and may well sound better once correctly set up in the home, so add plenty of pinches of salt to the following. Of course, I never expected them to be better than a dedicated AV system.

    Soundbars:

    Anything sub £200 just sounded unacceptably bad to me. Lots from Yamaha, Sony, Pioneer, Samsung, LG and Bose in this price-range. Many of them come in 2 box solutions with a soundbar and a separate (often wireless) sub. Most of the time the soundbars just produce an incredibly thin, tizzy and harsh mid and top, which the sub does its best to mask with a good amount of extremely loose bass. It's a very incoherent sound. Once you've turned down the treble enough so it no longer grates & boosted the bass enough to add substance to the sound, you've really taken a backwards step in overall clarity - especially for dialogue. In this situation it really seemed preferable to listen to the weaker TV speakers. I listened to some in the £3-400 range and these sounded almost equally bad but came in more exotic shapes.

    I watched one of the store assistants giving a demo to a couple. He first told them to listen to the sound coming from the internal TV speakers, then he plugged in the soundbar to showcase the improvement. They looked at him blankly.


    [​IMG]



    Soundbases

    More preferable seemed the single-box solutions - either the much more expensive sound-bars which often don't come with a sub, or the "sound-bases" which are larger, flat boxes which sit under the TV and take care of the low-range with downward firing subs onboard. Some of these attempt to produce a simulated surround sound by bouncing sound-waves off the walls - but I didn't really have the time to test this. Some reports of this are quite favourable - if positioned and set-up correctly.

    On the whole, this category did a better job of producing a more coherent sound - attaining a decent amount of clarity for movies whilst also remaining reasonably smooth. Less bass quantity but more in control of what they produced. However, none sounded particularly great. One that does stick in the mind is a Yamaha sound-base (the SRT-1000) which was only about £300 and sounded pretty big and clear. It was one of the few I listened to, including some two or three times the price, that didn't utterly fall-apart above anything but the most moderate of listening levels. The plasticky build quality on most of the yamaha soundbars, including those costing £7-800 is really quite woeful. They remind me of some of the stereos I had in the 80s/90s.


    [​IMG]




    Sonos:

    I also checked out the Sonos Playbar (£550) & indeed the whole Sonos range. It's ease of use would be ideal for my Mum and I had the idea that she could put one or two of the smaller speakers elsewhere in the house too. The Playbar looks nice with decent build quality and is probably one of the least offensive sounding soundbars I heard. This was mostly by virtue of the muffled sound it produces, which helps to disguise many of its flaws.

    I tested it with a scene from Batman the Dark Knight that they had running in the demo room and it certainly had a weighty sound. However, I had to crank the thing so loud to hear the dialogue that when the next scene switched and there was an explosion it was absolutely deafening and everyone turned and stared at me.

    The Playbar is meant to offer a real alternative for music too. In this department it is again much less bright & offensive than many of the others as long as you're happy with missing a huge amount of the content and getting an approximation of the song instead. Expect bass and vocals and little else. If you were having a party where no one could hear the music anyway then it would be an ideal solution.

    Unsurprisingly, the rest of the Sonos range seems to share the same sonic signature as the Playbar - inoffensive & muffled. With each step-up from Play 1 to Play 3 to Play 5 there were small improvements. The format at the store allowed you to select a track and then switch between each speaker. Once I had done my best to match the volumes by ear, the differences between them seemed much less than I first thought. The Play 5 (around £400) did sound a little cleaner, richer & less fragile.

    All three models would do a good job of filling your home with thoroughly mediocre sound. If I were set on the Sonos eco-system I might just stick to the Play 1s and save myself some money and space. I'm not sure how many you need to combine for it to sound good. I got up to 4 and still wasn't there. The sonos software seemed very user friendly and made me wonder about the potential of piggybacking their system/software with better equipment instead.

    I know Sonos has a huge following and I wondered if I just didn't hear it at its best.


    [​IMG]




    Samsung

    Samsung's multi-room speaker system made Sonos seem world-class. Some of them are shaped like the kinds of loud-speakers that are mounted inside the roof at football stadiums for public service announcements. They sound like that too.

    The most shocking was an egg-shaped speaker that sounded like someone using a megaphone with a smartphone speaker. It was £450.

    Unlike Sonos, I believe these Samsung speakers can handle high-res audio. Funny.


    [​IMG]




    Naim mu-so

    One option to combine nice TV sound with a music streaming solution appeared to be Naim's pretty expensive (£900) all-in-one Mu-So. It looks and feels superb and sonically was the one of the few minor beacons of light in an otherwise dark day. In many ways this was just relative to the disasters I had heard earlier. Still, it gave me hope. I played some offline content from Tidal. While you could pick flaws in it in all day long it was still by far the best sound I had heard from any such piece of equipment. Still weighted towards the low end but just more balanced and natural sounding than any of the others. It was probably comparable with some 2-speaker mini-systems and it might well sound better using Wifi rather than the bluetooth option that was available to me.

    Unfortunately, since TV use is not really its primary focus, when I tested it with a movie it really didn't sound great. Very congested and just a little too indistinct. There were also some issues with lip-syncing and I'm not sure how feasible it is to solve those. Some of the soundbars and the Sonos have options for addressing that kind of thing.

    If space and simplicity is at a premium, money is insignificant, and looks are important its certainly an option. If I didn't put its sound & value in context, I could declare it "quite good". For £900 you could spend £600 on a decent pair of bookshelf speakers and just buy an inexpensive amp/dac with streaming options and have a sound that would probably destroy it in every way.

    You can change the colour of the speaker grill for £70.


    [​IMG]




    So...All in all I didn't get very far. Just one man's thoughts & experiences... nothing to take too seriously, of course.

    Are my expectations too high ? I noticed now we're starting to see more soundbars/soundbases and multi-room wireless solutions from established audio companies like Arcam, Denon, Kef, Bowers & Wilkins and Focal- and I hope that these sound significantly better than the ones I heard today.

    Do most so far just sound bad because the industry is young and geared towards ease of use rather than sound-quality? or technically speaking is the idea of being able to combine amp/dac and speaker in one box - and still achieve great sound - just totally doomed from the start?



    ( PS: If anyone has recommendations for a great sounding soundbar/soundbase that they are currently using, I would much appreciate your thoughts. And so would my mum, of course :) )
     
  2. Cspirou

    Cspirou They call me Sparky

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2015
    Likes Received:
    8,200
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Northwest France
  3. Jeb

    Jeb Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2015
    Likes Received:
    391
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Location:
    Bristol, UK
    Looks very cool indeed and has a couple of inputs + bluetooth too. I'll keep an eye on that one. Thanks!
     

Share This Page