Soundbar vs Bookshelf/active speakers

It looks like our soundbar/subwoofer setup is dying, so a replacement maybe in order.

Do we get another, or do we get a couple of active bookshelf speaker things either side of the telly. We’re not after earth shattering home cinema, just decent sound from the telly?

And, obvs, recommendations welcome. I guess we’d go to about £250ish.

If you don’t want to go the whole AV setup. I have a pair of Q Acoustics M20’s that I imagine would be possible to connect via an optical out from the TV, they are chunky, but you’d potentially gain back the sub space. I really like them for music in the kitchen. They are a bit above budget, but refurbs or open box off ebay will be close enough and everyone always means they’ll spend a bit more when they say a price right?

you’d potentially gain back the sub space

It’s down the back, so not taking up any otherwise useful space

everyone always means they’ll spend a bit more when they say a price right?

Nice try, but nope 🙂

I bought a cheap Majority Soundbar, £50 ish, for podcast and radio in the kitchen. Happy with it.

I needed to reconfigure my 2nd living room and wanted to disconnect the TV from the hifi, bought a a slightly better Majority with a sub woofer, it was about £90. Very good for the money.

If I was looking for something at about £250, I would probably take a punt on one of their higher specced soundbars,

Nice try, but nope

In that case you probably can’t go far wrong with something from the Majority range as above, I used to work with the owners, nice guys 🙂

Cheers, I’ll take a look at the Majority stuff.

I haven’t had a great experience with active speakers, first set was the really popular q acoustics- awful remote, didn’t sound great and stopped working after 2 yrs. replaced with steljes- much better allround but they have stopped working at 3 or 4 years, is that to be expected?

If you just want decent sound from the telly, a soundbar should be the most user friendly and least intrusive option. If you want decent music performance too, it might be worth looking at bookshelf speakers.

I can recommend a used Sonos beam gen 1 for less than your budget. Works really well in a small to medium sized room without a sub. Only problem is, if you definitely want a sub, the Sonos ones are expensive.

So far I’ve found soundbars a bit underwhelming when it comes to speech on the tv. They seem to be great for loud music and sound effects, but often this seems to overwhelm the speech. I’ve had a few different ones and they’ve all been the same.

I do have some Edifier r1700bt speakers which I’m using for music in the home gym, but been really impressed with them so far. Tempted to try them with the tv in another room instead of the soundbar and see how they go. Just need to get my finger out and try it to see.

Sonos Ray

Currently £258 on Amazon

I’d say soundbar

I have and love a pair of Edfifiers on my pc. We use to have a proper hi fi amp with speakers round the telly. Both great for music

But stereo seems problematic for tv and film with voices getting lost.

Our 3.0 sound bar is much better as we’ve got a centre channel for voices. Just occasionally we need “clear voice”, it’s great to have as an option

Soundbar at that budget. I’d be looking at speakers once you hit £400 or more. I’ve got a pair of Audio Pro A36 (I think) no issues with speech through HDMI Arc and can put on midnight mode and mess with EQ to get speech even more prominent.