Soundbars and connectivity – educate me please?

STW really does seem to be the fount of all knowledge, so the logical place to ask for a little education

We have a 42″ LG TV that was donated to us, to replace a 32″ Linsar that’s now been relegated to the spare room. The “main” tv is in a small room, roughly 4m * 5m. The TV is in one corner, and we have sofas on the facing walls. In truth, we don’t notice any problems with sound quality from the TV, but we’ve not tried anything more to know what we’re missing, but many people have commented how much of a difference a soundbar will make so I am considering trying it.

The TV has 3 HDMI connections, one is HDMI ARC. It also has optical out, though it looks like this is obstructed by the 3rd party VESA mount stand that I’ve had to use since the TV was previously wall mounted and did not come with a stand.

We have  a Humax PVR freeview box connected to one of the HDMI sockets and this how we watch MOST of our TV. When we use this, we switch the TV on then use the PVR remote for everything including volume. TV volume sites at 50% and PVR volume sits at 8 out of 20, unless we’re watching from the kitchen table while eating – we can do this without moving the TV, but the volume goes up to about 14 or so.

We also have a firestick in a second socket, which we use for streaming iPlayer etc. When we use this, we have to drop the volume of the TV from the 50% level it normally lives at dopwn to about 10%, again increasing it if we’re in the kitchen, up to maybe 40 or 45.

I don’t think we’ve ever watched TV on the TV itself.

We’ve a Denon CD/Radio sitting under the TV that’s rarely used, plugged into a pair of Wharfedale 7.1 bookshelf speakers. One’s on the floor behind the TV, the other on the floor in the opposite corner, between the sofas. I think I’ve actually run a red & white twin audio cable from the PVR to the Denon, but it never gets used. I occasionally listen to CDs on this while reading, and we might have the radio on once in a while. Radio is more often used in the kitchen though.

Ideally any soundbar would just know what was supplying the picture showing on the TV – PVR, firestick or less likely the TV itself – and sync the sound accordingly, without us having to choose a different input. If it could set the right volume too, so much the better.

If the soundbar could do bluetooth as well, well things are getting even better. I’ve got music on my phone, and we both use BBC Sounds. I’ve got a LOT of music on a hard drive if it comes to that, if it’s possible to play from external devices? I hear there are magical things called “multi-room devices” where you can stream music from “a source” in more than one location, or even stream different sources in different rooms – so I could listen to 1990s thrash from my hard drive in one room while Mrs NBT watches Homes Under The Hammer, with an extra frisson of excitement as the hammer blow shakes the very foundations of the house. Or perhaps not.

Oh, and I’d like to do all this without spending a fortune. I’ve seen Sonos beam Gen 1 on Vinted for under £200, and the Sonos Ray is currently half price in the Black Friday events. I do recall threads saying the Sonos UI / app has issues though?

Anyway, over to the soundbar illuminati. Educate me, suggest things for me to look at, hell sell me your sold stuff if you have “upgraded” and have a setup that will suffice for me

cheers

Sonos Beam is great. One HDMI cable between it and the ARC socket on your TV will give you hassle-free better sound for whatever is playing on the TV. If you pick up a couple of Sonos Play:1 or Ones later then you can have surround too. No bluetooth but you can set whatever playing on it via the phone app.

Don’t bother with the Ray, it doesn’t do ARC.

Exactly what Simon said.

Had a Beam (gen 1) since they came out and it’s been great.

I would also recommend Sonos. I have two setups attached to two LG TV’s (one Arc + Ones + big sub, and one Beam + Ones + Mini sub). I haven’t had any issues at all with the app since all the fuss kicked off, I think ‘simple’ use with a TV is the least affected, as opposed to streaming music to them, but I just use Airplay direct for that rather than touching the Sonos app. I did have some picture/audio sync issues with the connection over ARC, but that was only with one source (my old Sky Q box), not with any of the other connected sources (or TV internal apps). Upgrading to a TV with eARC fixed it. If you can hardwire the bar to your network with ethernet that is recommended as compared to wifi, but I’m sure most people find it fine without.

EDIT; Oh yeah – Sonos buying hack. They offer up to 40% discount when you upgrade from certain bits of old hardware (detailed on their website). You can buy said used stuff on eBay (typically you can get qualifying stuff for ~£30) and used it to save on new stuff. Putting together my two setups I saved well over a grand doing this. Each piece of hardware can be only used once so you need to specifically question the seller whether the serial number has been used previously, and it is a bit of a faff as you have to register the old hardware on the old app to get it recognised on your account.

Sonos beam 2 is on offer across multiple sites for Black Friday,

I’ve also got a Beam (gen 1) + 2 x Ones + Mini sub attached to my tv, and it’s great. Totally idiot proof and we use the tv remote control for everything including volume. You’ll need to get a bit more involved if you want to start including a hard drive with music on into things though.

I don’t bother with the app myself beyond initial setup, I just use AirPlay to do the music thing.

I bought a Polk something-or-other to connect to a Samsung TV that has a Chromecast and a PC plugged in. It’s also compatible with Google Home, so I can cast directly to it using YouTube Music/whatever. It’s used more in this mode than any other.

(All my owned music is also on YT music so I never need to stream from an HD)

Sonos here

Beam, 2 Symfonisk surrounds and the big sub

It’s phenomenal

From experience, once you bite the Sonos bullet with your LG tv, check what the tv is sending to the soundbar. IIRC the default on mine wasn’t Dolby digital/PCM – it worked but was actually pretty disappointing soundwise until I changed it over. Enjoying mine a lot, especially as obviously the Sonos has build in Spotify connect so I’ve a convenient music player too if I just need some tunes on.

Beam Gen 1 + Two Symfonisk + a sub. Beam works great plugged into HDMI-ARC on our Sony TV and I airplay Music to it from my phone (rarely use the Sonos APP). Saw those Beam 2’s on offer but honestly not sure I’d notice the difference – so maybe a pre-loved Beam 1 is the way to go?

Sonos are good, but you do pay for the name a bit.

There’s a gajiliion soundbar + sub setups, anything from a decent brand will sound miles better than your telly (you’ll realise how crappy you telly sound was…). We have a Phillips one, it got good reviews at the time (which was about ten years ago) and was about £250. Just have a look on Richer Sounds and pick something that’s the right size, gets good reviews at the price you’re happy with and has the inputs you need.

In terms of your basic connectivity, make sure the soundbar will take a HDMI ARC input (most will) then PVR into one HDMI socket on telly, firestick into the other, a HDMI lead from the HDMI ARC socket into the back of the soundbar. Done, and pretty much everything should work from one control (may need a bit of menu jiggling on the telly).

Pretty much every soundbar will have bluetooth, so that’s linking your phone sorted. You could probably also run a lead from the CD player into the soundbar too, so that would get rid of your separate speakers (if that’s something you want to do).

Linking it to play music from the hard disk is another level of palaver, but you’ll now have a nice set of Wharfedale bookshelf speaker you’re not using, so I’d just have them and a little amp in another room…

I’ve got an older Maxell soundbar, well more of a ‘plinth’ that the TV sits on, that does ARC as above but you still have the issue with sound output being at different levels from the different devices. In fact even different apps on the (same) Firestick need different volume levels so I don’t expect there’s anything that can adjust itself for that aspect but would like to hear if possible.

I’ve just bought a Ray as they are on a good deal currently. Optical only, but it sounds fine to my ears! It’s mainly to improve speech clarity for me as I’m deaf in one ear, and it has certainly done that.  Nice and compact too, so SWMBO is also happy :⁠-⁠)

We’ve got an LG Soundbar for our LG TV.
You just turn the TV on & it doesn’t matter whether you are using the TV, Freeview recorder or Blu-Ray player as a source it comes through the soundbar. I think we had to fiddle with the sound settings in the TV but it pretty obvious what to change it to.
I assume most soundbars would do the same thing.

It also has bluetooth which to be honest we never use as we have a Chromecast Audio connected to a hi-fi for music.
Having said that, we also have the Spotify app on the TV and BBC Sounds, so can just stick music on through the soundbar if we want.

Sound-wise, it is much better than the TV especially as it has a sub that sits behind the TV unit. But until we got it, I was happy with the sound from the TV for general viewing. I think it cost around £180 or so.
The one downside is it doesn’t have a ‘vocal’ mode which can be a pain with a lot of shows that seem to emphasise the background music or special effects, at the expense of quiet vocals.

if you are looking for a decent budget option have a look at the Majority range on Amazon.

I bought one for about £80 for the 2nd TV and I was very impressed with the sound quality and value for money.

If you want multi room connectivity, check out the Wiim Mini.

Any soundbar with HDMI ARC support will manage the sound from the TV, regardless of what input is being used.

The TV just sends sound via the ARC instead of outputting to it’s speakers.

Just thinking about the music you have on a hard drive, I have all my old CDs ripped to MP3 and they live in my phone. Previous phones had them on an SD card, current one has enough memory to have them just sitting on it. To give you an idea, it was 300-odd CDs and is about 20Gb size-wise.

Cos it’s on my phone, I can Bluetooth it (or stream it via a Chromecast Audio) to anything I want. Just an idea.

Any soundbar with HDMI ARC support will manage the sound from the TV, regardless of what input is being used.

The TV just sends sound via the ARC instead of outputting to it’s speakers.

THat’s great thanks

it was 300-odd CDs and is about 20Gb size-wise.

That’s an idea, I have about 20gb on my phone right now but it’s about 30% of my collection. Still, it’s not expensive to get a igh capacity USB stick – like this 256gb Sandisk USB stick for £17.. Need to see how much music  I have an how much I will ever likly play that way

What happens when your phone dies? Is it backed up somewhere?

What happens when your phone dies? Is it backed up somewhere?

It’s on an SSD hard drive on my home PC that gets switched on every month or two as I now use a laptop for work, and “remotely” backed up on an external SSD hard drive that lives in my locker at work – I must bring that home soon to sync stuff properly. It might also be an old NAS that is in the shed, it was unplugged when we decorated and I never got round to plugging it in again as it’s an old school drive and thus quite noisy and slow. That’s probalby five years out of sync though

Yep. Well, kinda. It’s on the laptop too, and on the SD card that was on the previous phone

LG TV with matching LG soundbar and wireless sub, have had it best part of 10years with only one issue being when I got fibre installed and the new hub being close to the sub was blocking signal to it, moving the hub resolved the issue.

One remote a press of a button will turn it all on, and control the volume easily.

I have recently picked up Sonos in other rooms and the lure for a Beam 2 or ARC with a sub (or mini sub) is very strong. If I can get through black friday, I’ll keep running it till it dies.

Have taken the above on board and decided to dip a toe tentatively rather than dive in headlong. As such rather than spend a chunk and buy into the sonos ecosystem, i bought one of these in the black Friday sale.

https://www.majority.co.uk/soundbars/teton-plus/

Uk company, and I’m sure they’ve been recommended in here before. £80 includes a 3 year guarantee. ARC input on the soundbar and Bluetooth so i can play from my phone. If it doesn’t work  out i can sell on without losing a huge amount

^That’s the one I bought for the 2nd TV. Recommended Majority a few posts above.

For £80 I was very impressed.

Nowhere near as good as my Samsung Atmos thing but that cost me £750, on a half price deal.

I have the £50 Majority Snowden in the kitchen for radio and podcasting. Sits on the brackets of a wall shelf.

I think a poster on here has done some work with them?

Buggeration. Because of the way our tv is set up, the soundbar doesn’t actually bloody fit.

We’ve got a tv unit that the TV sits on at an angle. That means that really the soundbar needs to sit on the base of the tv stand, especially as the soundbar is wider than the tv unit (it’s almost the same width as the tv)

 This is the stand we have

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perlegear-TVs-Securely-400x400mm-Height-Adjustable-Management-Black/dp/B077P3SZGThttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Perlegear-TVs-Securely-400x400mm-Height-Adjustable-Management-Black/dp/B077P3SZGT

I can’t get the tv high enough to allow the soundbar to sit beneath it as it blocks the remote control receiver. Plus, the pads on the soundbar actually sit either side of the  base which is not ideal

oh grrrr