Soundbar Vs low-end surround sound?

[d000hg]

We've set up our smallest bedroom as a dedicated TV room. 15x11' with a 43" LG 43UH610V central on one long wall, a reclining sofa directly opposite.

As yet we have no sound setup. The TV is decent but low end (£300 on offer) so I don't want to spend loads, as we are not movie buffs... Use it more for Netflix boxsets and the odd film.

As such I see plenty of products in the ~£200 range but I've no idea whether to go for a 5.1 system, or a soundbar.

I've seen this: https://www.richersounds.com/cambridge-tv5-v2-blk.html

Or this: https://www.richersounds.com/tv-home-cinema/home-cinema-packages/yamaha-yht1840.html

Would welcome your thoughts.

 

[Lucid]

Sound bars and sound bases have one primary task, and that's to improve the sound compared to the TV speakers. It's not a difficult job; TV speakers are ruddy awful for the most part, so even the sub £100 sound bars are an improvement. What sound bars and sound bases don't do, or at least the ones under £300 don't, is try to be a surround system with all the audio decoding formats and lots of AV connections, and accommodate coming formats such as 4K HDR etc. Those are the jobs of a fully fledged AV surround system.

The question you should ask yourself then is what are your priorities. Do you want just better sound than the TV speakers, and you're happy that it's just stereo; or do you want a sense of immersion in the sound and a way to connect more sources and still get the best audio from them?

 

[d000hg]

Thanks, yes I guess that's the crux. It's tricky as I've never really experienced surround, my mates aren't mostly into such things.

I know when we stepped up from HD ready to 4k that was rather a revelation, whereas the soundbar we had before was nice but not transformational. It seems a lot of content has 5.1 these days as well.

 

[Lucid]

If you were playing DVDs and Blu-rays then, IMO, it would be a no-brainer. DVDs carry discrete surround sound (DD and DTS), and Blu-rays have the enhanced version (Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio) as well as being able to be down-scaled by the player to DD and DTS. The first time your surround system makes you look over your shoulder because it sounds like there's someone (or something) in the room with you....

TV too carries surround. Sometimes DD (on the HD channels where the programmes feature it), but also Dolby Surround which is hidden inside the stereo audio signal. The surround amp can decode that using Dolby ProLogic II, and it's surprisingly effective.

There's the practical aspect too. When you have a dedicated speaker for voice then it's possible to make speech easier to hear by increasing the level of that channel and lowering the effects and music channels. That's something you can't do with a sound bar/base

If you're mostly streaming though then you're unlikely to have anything better than DD, and if you're going to those site with "Argh Jim-Lad where's-me-parrot?" content then you'll be lucky to get anything better than stereo.

 

[d000hg]

We almost exclusively watch Netflix and Amazon, rarely iPlayer, live TV and physical disks.

I'm pretty sure Netflix at least carries decent audio, on the video side they support HDR and so on and it's lovely.

 

[Keithmac]

Majority of Netflix is in Dolby 5.1 so seems a waste not having at least 5.1.

 

[d000hg]

There's the practical aspect too. When you have a dedicated speaker for voice then it's possible to make speech easier to hear by increasing the level of that channel and lowering the effects and music channels. That's something you can't do with a sound bar/base

that's actually a big plus for us... So many times we have to turn the volume way up to be able to understand the dialog. Especially with deep gravelly voices.

In 5.1etc, is the video actually coded in its own channel, or does the system figure it out?

 

[Tigercubrider]

https://m.johnlewis.com/sony-bdv-n5...VsArTCh0IXABMEAQYAiABEgJcuvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I have had my system at home for a couple of years and think it's this one.
Personally, it is fine- I actually use 7.1 at work for film and theatre

The reason that I chose this was both price plus the fact that the rear speakers are wireless - important as I have parquet flooring

The actual signal is in a wrapper, decoded by a codec, so yes the video signal is wrapped alongside the sound and decoded .
You normally connect a tv via hdmi which communicates in both directions

 

[d000hg]

A lot of the systems we see in places like Curry's include Blu-ray players... We have an Xbox for that.
Wireless for (some) speakers would be handy but not a deal breaker.

 

[Lucid]

that's actually a big plus for us... So many times we have to turn the volume way up to be able to understand the dialog. Especially with deep gravelly voices.

In 5.1etc, is the video actually coded in its own channel, or does the system figure it out?

"5.1" refers to sound only. Video isn't part of 5.1

The way the picture and sound information is transported isn't really something you need to worry about in too much detail. By and large most connections for image are now made by HDMI. This has the capacity to carry audio too. Audio can also be carried separately (and simultaneously) by other audio connections. After HDMI it's Optical and Digital Coax that are the most useful.

Within the remit of what you're considering, sound can be transported from a source to an audio system in one of three formats:

- Discrete multichannel: individual audio tracks for each of the main speaker and the subwoofer. Most often this is encoded in to a single data stream which we refer to as Bitstream. The piece of audio equipment is then responsible for unpacking it. Bitstream can be carried by HDMI, Optical or Digital Coax. DD as a Bitstream is what your media player will be outputting for Netflix on the films and programmes that have multichannel audio.

- Digital Stereo: As the name suggest, this is a stereo signal in digital format. This can be carried by HDMI, Optical and Digital Coax.

- Analogue Stereo: This is most commonly seen as connection via the red and the white phono plugs, but it could also be via 3.5mm headphone jack or any number of different types of analogue audio connection.



Whether sound is in analogue or digital format is irrelevant, it can still carry a form of surround sound encoding called Dolby Surround. This carries a hidden (matrixed) channel for dialogue which we call the Centre channel, and a channel for rear surround effects. Lot's of TV channels use Dolby Surround encoding.

 

[d000hg]

Discrete multichannel: individual audio tracks for each of the main speaker and the subwoofer. Most often this is encoded in to a single data stream which we refer to as Bitstream. The piece of audio equipment is then responsible for unpacking it. Bitstream can be carried by HDMI, Optical or Digital Coax. DD as a Bitstream is what your media player will be outputting for Netflix on the films and programmes that have multichannel audio.

Within this context is there a standard way channels are used i.e bass, vocal, music, SFX? You mentioned 5.1 allows vocals to be isolated better so I wondered if this is transmitted separately to begin with, or the software is just able to filter out and divert that to individual speakers?

 

[Lucid]

A lot of the systems we see in places like Curry's include Blu-ray players... We have an Xbox for that.
Wireless for (some) speakers would be handy but not a deal breaker.

The sort of systems you'll see in Currys and other high street multiples have traditionally been designed for convenience and features first; quality takes the seat way way at the back of the bus.

Wireless rear speakers are a case in point. The speakers are rarely truly wireless. There's generally one speaker or a rear channel amp that is connected to a mains socket. There's then speaker cables to the other rear speaker. All it replaces is the speaker cable from the front of the room to the back and replace it with a speaker cable from one side of the room to the other.

the other catch with wireless speakers is audio compression. The signal is reduced in quality before transmission to make the data stream more robust to interference. It hits the quality though. They way they get away with it is that the rear speakers are limited in quality anyway, so one masks the other.

 

[Keithmac]

Within this context is there a standard way channels are used i.e bass, vocal, music, SFX? You mentioned 5.1 allows vocals to be isolated better so I wondered if this is transmitted separately to begin with, or the software is just able to filter out and divert that to individual speakers?

5.1 is left/ centre/ right/ l+r surrounds and sub (the .1 part).

Dolby Digital is one codec, DTS is another, those two should be your main concern really as far as decoding goes.

 

[Lucid]

Within this context is there a standard way channels are used i.e bass, vocal, music, SFX? You mentioned 5.1 allows vocals to be isolated better so I wondered if this is transmitted separately to begin with, or the software is just able to filter out and divert that to individual speakers?

Yes.

Centre channel - Primarily dialogue - Something like 60-80% of what you hear from the whole surround system during typical conversation pieces is coming from the centre speaker.

Front Left & Right - Primarily music, front stage sound effects, a little dialogue to help with stereo positioning effect. When the music swells or bullets start to fly then it's the front channels with the sub that are doing the heavy lifting

Rear channels - Primarily ambient effects and some steering audio to help create the effect of position or movement

Subwoofer channel. From multi-channel off a disc (DVD/BD), the sub channel is strictly a Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel. That means it carries a dedicated audio track for deep bass that goes lower than the 20Hz low frequency limit of the main 5 surround channels. The sound of the T-Rex stomping about in Jurassic Park, some of it was carried by the front L&R speakers, but there's a whole load of much deeper sound only available on the LFE track, and then only accessible if you've got a big enough sub to reproduce it. LFE has to exist as a separate channel because the main channel specs don't allow for the sound to go lower than 20Hz. LFE will go down to 3Hz, but this is sound you feel rather than hear.

In home surround kits the subwoofer does two roles. It reproduces the LFE track (within the limits of the sub - LFE goes from 120Hz down to 3Hz) - but also takes on the responsibility of reproducing the main channels bass for those speakers that can't get down to 20Hz. All small satellite speakers have this limitation. They might get down to 80-100Hz but then hand over to the sub for anything lower.

 

[Brigadier]

Why don't you book an appointment at Richer Sounds, and decide whether you will put up with a soundbar, or really would want the sound system instead.

Once you're sure, you can then get into the specifics of the system you have decided on.

FWIW, IMHO, the sound is the experience; when I was a kid at mom's, my brother had a 14" portable telly, but with his Kenwood stereo + sub wired up.
Within minutes, you'd completely forgotten that you were squinting at a tiny telly.