Sound bars, those things you stick in front of the telly to make the sound bette

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

r quality.

Are they any good?  The sound on our telly right now is not good.

[Tewdric]

Yep, they are worthwhile.  Bose are about the base level for really reasonable sound quality, but the £150 jobs add ambience and atmosphere to movies and are great as long as you don't overthink things.

[Attitudeless Badger]

Our cheap and cheerful Samsung one is a great improvement over the basic telly speakers.   Would suggest you consider the same make of soundbar as the TV, as then the remote controls are easily compatible.  The Samsung soundbar remote does the main TV functions itself, so no need to have too many remotes lying around.

[ian]

I couldn't be bothered with the surround speaker system wires when we moved here, so we got an LG model with a subwoofer. It's obviously not as good as a surround system, but I'm happy with it. It'll also slurp tunes from my phone via Bluetooth.

[Kim]

Presumably there's an unspoken agreement amongst telly molishers that none of them should come with decent sound, in order that they might sell such things.

[orienteer]

I think the main problem is that modern slimline TVs simply don't have enough space for decent speakers.

[Kim]

I think the main problem is that modern slimline TVs simply don't have enough space for decent speakers.

As opposed to CRT tellies which didn't have decent speakers because...

[tiermat]

We have had, for the last 2 years or so, a cheap Celcus one.

I have just, after much deliberation, shelled out for a Sony HT-XT3 sound base, partly because the new TV cabinet is a good 3" lower than the old one! 

[Mr Larrington]

I think the main problem is that modern slimline TVs simply don't have enough space for decent speakers.

As opposed to CRT tellies which didn't have decent speakers because...

...there's no demand for it?

[TimC]

I think the main problem is that modern slimline TVs simply don't have enough space for decent speakers.

As opposed to CRT tellies which didn't have decent speakers because...

...there's no demand for it?

You're probably right - there really was very little demand for good sound from CRT tellies. I've heard one or two expensive LED TVs that produce a half-decent 2+1 sound, but they aren't common. The better sound bars do a quite decent stab at surround effects while giving much more convincing movie and music stages. But they are still way, way behind a good 5 or 7+1 setup - which, of course, takes a lot of viewing room real estate!

[Mr Larrington]

In the prehistoric era I had my distascope wired up to a pre-existing stereo.  Not brilliant but only cost £1.99 for the leads.  An audiophile mate spent thousands on a surround setup in the early 90s using about five separate amps and a laserdisc player, just in time for Them to invent DVD and integrated 5:1 boxes.

[pcolbeck]

We have had, for the last 2 years or so, a cheap Celcus one.

I have just, after much deliberation, shelled out for a Sony HT-XT3 sound base, partly because the new TV cabinet is a good 3" lower than the old one! 

I have one of these too. Massive improvement. If you have a Sony TV they are ace due to integration with the remote etc. If you don't have a Sony TV then I think you can get slightly better for the same price (eg the Richer Sounds own brand ones).

[Chris S]

I just bought a new telly, and it came bundled with a sound bar, and a BFO sub-woofer.

It may have been a line to persuade me to buy an infeasibly expensive optical cable, I'm not sure, but the bod in the shop didn't recommend using Bluetooth between telly and sound bar as it's prone to "a few milliseconds lag" which can be off-putting/annoying. So I bought the infeasibly expensive optical cable, and it seems fine.

Playing music through the sound bar from the phone, tablet, or DLNA server over BT is a nice bonus.

I watched Interstellar last night. I think the neighbours in the flat below might have thought there was an earthquake  .

[tiermat]

We have had, for the last 2 years or so, a cheap Celcus one.

I have just, after much deliberation, shelled out for a Sony HT-XT3 sound base, partly because the new TV cabinet is a good 3" lower than the old one! 

I have one of these too. Massive improvement. If you have a Sony TV they are ace due to integration with the remote etc. If you don't have a Sony TV then I think you can get slightly better for the same price (eg the Richer Sounds own brand ones).

One of the reasons for going Sony is just that, we have a Sony TV (I want to buy a 4K one, but Mrs T won't let me!)

[Kim]

It may have been a line to persuade me to buy an infeasibly expensive optical cable, I'm not sure, but the bod in the shop didn't recommend using Bluetooth between telly and sound bar as it's prone to "a few milliseconds lag" which can be off-putting/annoying. So I bought the infeasibly expensive optical cable, and it seems fine.

Audio lagging by a few milliseconds is normal and ordinary and just part of the way the world works.  You brain will hardly notice it.  It's leading audio that's highly discombobulating.

Which isn't to say that an infeasibly expensive optical cable isn't the sanest approach, because Bluetooth is wireless RF voodoo pixie dust, and if not top of my all-time list of technologies that can be expected to inexplicably fail to work, is certainly in the top 5.

[pcolbeck]

We have had, for the last 2 years or so, a cheap Celcus one.

I have just, after much deliberation, shelled out for a Sony HT-XT3 sound base, partly because the new TV cabinet is a good 3" lower than the old one! 

I have one of these too. Massive improvement. If you have a Sony TV they are ace due to integration with the remote etc. If you don't have a Sony TV then I think you can get slightly better for the same price (eg the Richer Sounds own brand ones).

One of the reasons for going Sony is just that, we have a Sony TV (I want to buy a 4K one, but Mrs T won't let me!)

The Sony one comes complete with the optical cable that is the only connection required to the TV.

[Mr Larrington]

If, as ian otp asserts, wifi is the Devil's Radio, Bluetooth is the Radio of one of his lesser imps, designed to delight and frustrate in equal measure.  Getting tunes to emerge from the Bluetooth squeaker in the bathroom is akin to getting pandas to mate - tedious, prone to the two parties involved completely ignoring each other and, if successful, results in a baby panda which is then rejected by its mother and dies.

[Morat]

I always opt for cables over radio waves for any permanent installation, unless it's physically impossible to run a cable. In those cases I'm likely to redesign the installation to suit cables!
On the other hand, there's no real reason for an optical cable to be expensive. Buying cables in consumer shops is often sure route to wallet abuse - HMDI being probably the best/worst example.

[Kim]

^ Wise words.

[pcolbeck]

Correct. We get through heaps and heaps of OM3 and OM4 optical cables on our installations and these are carrying 10 or 40Gb/s of data. They cost a fraction per metre of what you will pay in PCworld or an AV shop for an optical cable.

[Kim]

The high markup on consumer accessories in physical shops is basically a tax on ignorance, lack of arsedness and urgency.  I don't really mind paying the latter - we've all had to buy something from PC World because we need it *today*.

[ian]

Mine came with an optical cable in the box, it's just a bit of a optical fibre, not sure why they'd be expensive unless you believe hifi voodoohoodoo. I like my 0s and 1s to have a nice warm friendly tone.

The subwoofer is wireless though, but not Bluetooth. Possibly its sentient and does its own thing. BooBaBoom. Larrers is right about Bluetooth being the radio of lesser imps. It actually seems to work fine from my iPhone, but with a shiny new £1700 computer, it   's  s    t ill         a   bit s   h       it. Possibly I'm in the way but there doesn't seem to be enough of me to be radio opaque. Unless it's the Implant playing up. Mind you, I let a little bit of Chris Moyles into the system the other day. It probably fouled my speakers.

Our Samsung Bluray has started giving us cryptic messages in Korean. I've no idea what it's trying to tell me. Up pops a message box in Korean and then the screen slowly fades to black. I'm a bit scared. I keep meaning to take a picture so I can one of my Korean colleagues to translate. It could be an important message. It's following a bit of a trend, back in olden types I had a VCR player (toploader ftw) that had a very convoluted front panel with all manner of cryptic LEDs that would light up at odd times. I think it was trying to communicate but I never found out what. God, I miss tracking control. Ever was better with tracking control.

[rogerzilla]

The high markup on consumer accessories in physical shops is basically a tax on ignorance, lack of arsedness and urgency.  I don't really mind paying the latter - we've all had to buy something from PC World because we need it *today*.

Even Maplin are in on this, their cheapest HDMI cables being about £20.  I only buy digital cables like HDMI or DVI on eBay where they are usually two quid or less.  As long as they work, the quality is exactly the same as a £2000 cable.  It's digital FFS.  There is a very slight argument for buying better quality interconnects for hi-fi but even then a 1V signal isn't going to be troubled much by a short length of cheap copper cable and I doubt you can hear the different between a £5 one and a £1000 one.  The only place where you might spring for half-decent cable is for an FM aerial cable or a phono interconnect, both of which deal with very weak analogue signals and are hardly ever seen these days (I had an FM roof aerial installed last year but that's because DAB sucks a large one).

[Mrs Pingu]

Amazon now also do their own range of cheapo cables etc

[Chris S]

I've had cheap HDMI cables in the past that didn't work with Samsung's Anynet+; something I pretty much rely on with my setup. I really like being able to control Blu-Ray, Kodi, the TV and a Soundbar with one remote.

Also not sure how well cheap cables can handle 4K throughput.