Sound bars for TV

[robgul]

I've been to Currys today to ask some questions - the 14 year-old boy (the store's expert!!) knew less about them than I did . . . and some features were "more better" - yes really!!

Anyway, my question:

We have a Sony Smart TV about 3 years old - sound is very poor, especially the spoken word in dramas . .  not helped that it's quite a large room with wood flooring.

We want to have a gadget that improves the sound, and works seamlessly with the TV - NOT interested in playing music, any fancy streaming, remotes, Bluetooth or other stuff - good old fashioned wire to connect to the electricity and the TV. 

When the TV is switched on the sound just works too.  I understand, from the expert, that some have a feature called "voice"

What should I be looking for please? - and don't want to spend more than £100.

[perpetual dan]

I’ve got no help to offer, but am interested in the answers as our new to us TV has an OK picture, but really crap sound. Voice, and unlike the OP, the bass is music is mostly missing and I’d like it back!

[Polar Bear]

With impeccable timing we bought a Sony television in the December before covid.  The timing was coincidental really as we were hosting the elderly paw not in law for Christmas and I felt that he'd like to have his favourite television programmes to hand.  🤔

I was right.

Anyhow, last year I bought a Sony X7800? Soundbar to plug and play using an hdmi lead on the arc output from the television into the soundbar.  It all just worked out of the box and has has one moment of confusion which happened after a software update for the television.  I had to unplug it, start the TV, shut down the TV and reconnect the soundbar.  It works just fine since.

When I turn the television on the soundbar fires up a few seconds later and there is a message on the bottom right of the screen indicating that we have an active soundbar. 

There were no instructions in the box but I found a Sony video online and it was as comprehensive as I needed.

What we get is a richer, deeper sound with far more micro adjustability and far more clarity than from the quite acceptable television speakers.  It is an all an all-in-one as oppose to having a separate bass box but I prefer this in terms of reduced clutter and that we are not audiophiles wanted the absolute experience.  There are dedicated options for output such as voice or cinema but we just leave it in automatic mode

As it was an older model I found one cheaper than I expected but it was still around £300.

Paw not in law has a Samsung one with separate bass box plugged into his Panasonic TV.  To be perfectly honest, it's rubbish by comparison.

HTH.

<  EDIT  >

Ours is in fact it is a Sony HT-X8500 model and can be had for £250 or less.  Having dug around for the receipt I paid just under £200 from a company called Hughes.  It was listed for higher but I got discount for a battered box which made absolutely no difference to the contents.

[Polar Bear]

Oh, the elephant in the room ... 

I think for your budget you will struggle to find anything of quality which will improve your experience.  That's my take on it anyway having spent some time listening to all the crap ones in Currys and our local Euronics outlet.

[Kim]

I think for your budget you will struggle to find anything of quality which will improve your experience.

A mid-range pair of headphones.

[Robh]

We have an old Sony with poor sound. My solution was to plug a set of computer speakers, that I had going spare, into the phono socket. The sound is now spectacular, due to the fact that the computer speakers are Bose, but I would think that any computer speakers would do the job. If you search around, you might even pick up something pre-loved by Bose for £100.

[robgul]

Oh, the elephant in the room ... 

I think for your budget you will struggle to find anything of quality which will improve your experience.  That's my take on it anyway having spent some time listening to all the crap ones in Currys and our local Euronics outlet.

Thanks for the info - the difficulty with making any judgement is being able to "try it out" in our environment.

 Reality is my personal budget is £0* as I seldom watch the TV - my wife is the TV watcher
* I would get rid of the TV tomorrow if I could!

[robgul]

We have an old Sony with poor sound. My solution was to plug a set of computer speakers, that I had going spare, into the phono socket. The sound is now spectacular, due to the fact that the computer speakers are Bose, but I would think that any computer speakers would do the job. If you search around, you might even pick up something pre-loved by Bose for £100.

Interesting - I do have a pair of powered speakers from a Gateway (remember them?) PC - I shall investigate the holes in the back of the TV!

[Lightning Phil]

Yeah headphone jack to powered speakers would be my choice at that price since you’ve ruled out a Bluetooth speaker. The advantage of the Bluetooth speaker though, is that she could have it right next to her, overcoming any room size issues.

[chrisbainbridge]

We bought the third television in our 40 years of married life just before lockdown from JL. We went So y and and Sony sound bar.
The voice is good. I have no known hearing issues but tend to avoid loud parties with lots of people.

[ian]

We have an LG soundbar (because we couldn't be bothered setting up the surround sound system when we moved to the Asbestos Palace). It wasn't expensive and came with a wireless sub-woofer.

It plugs into the digital optical output thing and as it's an LG tv, everything just happens and it works via the TV remote. Sounds pretty good to me.

[Ham]

The problem is obvious - flatscreen =/= space for a speaker. Sony had a go at using the whole screen as a transducer, I don't know if they still do, but I seem to remember it had good reviews when it came out.

Given that there was never going to be decent sound coming out of a speaker, and this appeared as a golden opportunity, most manufacturers skimp on the audio, so now they can now sell you another product as well. As has been pointed out, £100 won't buy you much, but Richer sound have a selection from that price https://www.richersounds.com/home-cinema/speakers-soundbars/soundbars.html which you should be able to hear on demo. The £150 Yamaha would likely be my choice at that level (slightly more, albeit) on the basis that I have respect for Yamaha audio, but that is based on historic data so can't be relied on.

[Kim]

Television sound has always been shit though.  Most people don't care.  Most people have the saturation turned up to 11 and can't tell if the picture's in the right aspect ratio either.

Televisions are marketed by the performance of the display, so that's where the effort goes.  If they get to sell a few people some additional squeakers, all the better.

That 'sound bars' exist at all is a tacit admission of this by the industry - a way to make the sound adequate for the people who can tell, but are for whatever reason allergic to the wires and brackets required for proper surround systems.

[Ham]

Television sound has always been shit though. 

Not sure that's the entire story. With CRT sets, any shit TV had a better than shit speaker, combined with the size enclosure and forward facing and a better than shit amp resulted in reasonable sound. Wouldn't like to overstate it, but the resultant sound was better than (just about any) flat screen, and much better than the truly shit that was put into cheap radios. Better TVs had typically better sound - Sony, Grundig, Phillips before they went downmarket for eg. Now, no matter how much you pay for your flat screen TV it sounds like shit.

[Kim]

I must admit, I'm probably a bit out of touch with the quality of sound you get on modern TVs, on the basis that when I visit someone and we end up watching something on the telly, it's usually because it's the house of an enthusiast with an above-average TV and surround system.

The indestructible^[1] Ferguson set that adorned the family living room when I was a teenager was crap though, and did the same sort of speech distortion that you expect from the ubiquitous 1970/80s 'educational' tape recorders with cheap veneer and those horrid 2-pin DIN plugs.  And the 14" set of my own was notable for it's lack of either  a) a line output or  b) Ceefax, either of which would have greatly improved the experience.

The sort of rubbish that Mrs Barakta's-Mum and Dr Biggles have liberally distributed throughout their environment for ignoring the news and pacifying grandchildren is probably more typical (they're the sort of people who'd buy a TV because it was recommended by the oik in Currys, or on sale in Tescos).  And last time one of those got switched on in my presence was because I'd hijacked it as a second display for wrangling race results...

Still, if the squeakers on my 32" 'gaming' monitor are anything to go by, they're pretty dire.  I assumed they'd applied the same sort of technology that allows laptops and phones to make a respectable effort in the limited space available, but evidently not.


_{[1] FCVO.  I repaired it at least twice.  And I think a professional had at it a couple of times before my parents trusted me with such things.}

[Mr Larrington]

The squeakers on the smaller of my monitors are truly dire.  When Windows throws the occasional curveball and switches the sound to them everything sounds like Mickey Mouse on helium.  This in spite of disabling every sound output except the optical one on the sound card which goes to a Denon amp and thence to a 5:1 surround wossname.

[robgul]

We have an old Sony with poor sound. My solution was to plug a set of computer speakers, that I had going spare, into the phono socket. The sound is now spectacular, due to the fact that the computer speakers are Bose, but I would think that any computer speakers would do the job. If you search around, you might even pick up something pre-loved by Bose for £100.

Interesting - I do have a pair of powered speakers from a Gateway (remember them?) PC - I shall investigate the holes in the back of the TV!

Separate speakers even worse than the TV's own     

[FifeingEejit]

Got a HiFi and speakers in the same room?
Got an Amp with Digital in
Sorted.

Yes my B&W 606 are a bit over kill for telly but..........

[PeteB99]

I had the same problem with the sound from my new Sony TV. After a bit of looking round I got a Bose sound bar which links up fairly seamlessly with the TV(needs switching on separately though).

It has a mode which is supposed to give extra clarity for mainly speech broadcasts but as the indication for this being switched on is when an orange indicator light changes to a slightly different shade of orange * (I'm colourblind BTW) it's not very useful. I tend not to have it at high enough volume to make it worthwhile.

* I emailed Bose about this and got no reply

[robgul]

Got a HiFi and speakers in the same room?
Got an Amp with Digital in
Sorted.

Yes my B&W 606 are a bit over kill for telly but..........

This is a HiFi free home - no real interest in music other than Classic FM and that's supplied by Alexa!

[Pingu]

Got a HiFi and speakers in the same room?

Yes 

Got an Amp with Digital in

Nope 

Got a D/A converter though 

Sorted.

[De Sisti]

Got a HiFi and speakers in the same room?

Yes 

Got an Amp with Digital in

Nope 

Got a D/A converter though 

Sorted.

This is what I did and I'm quite happy with the results. Mind you, I only ever power up the
Yamaha AX400 amp and Kef Koda speakers when I'm listening to music on tv (eg. an orchestra
playing).

[robgul]

The Sony HT-SF150 120W RMS  has been recommended as being a match for our TV with good dialogue sound . . . about £125 from Amazon or John Lewis - both of whom have easy return processes if it's not suitable.

Probably go for that.

[Kim]

but as the indication for this being switched on is when an orange indicator light changes to a slightly different shade of orange * (I'm colourblind BTW) it's not very useful.

I have the same problem.  These are usually a green and a red (which can be quite a short wavelength red) in the same shell, so ostensibly capable of being green, red, or something yellow when both are lit at once.  I've modified a couple of battery chargers to break the two signals out on separate LEDs so there's spacial as well as colour separation.

Less invasively, if you blu-tac a red or green filter over it (experiment to determine which works best), you should find that it increases the change in brightness between the two states, which might help you tell them apart.

[L CC]

I was going to share what we have but Dr Google tells me it was [HOW MUCH] and is now more than your budget for second hand.

It's our only sound output in that room. So I guess that's OK then.