Getting your first home audio system? Read this.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Getting your first home audio system? Read this.

distortion park: Apr 25, 2011

I'm currently looking for a soundsystem for our TV (mostly for movie watching). I don't know anything about speaker setups so buying a soundbar with a subwoofer is very tempting, they seem to be fairly affordable and the sleek looks + minimal wiring is important (even if I had l/r speakers they could only go about 50cm further apart than the ends of the soundbar anyway).

Still I'm trying to work out what 3.1 setup I could actually get and it's a lot more effort than just picking the appropriate product out of Samsung or whoever's lineup! One thing that I'm stuck on is that I don't have that much space for a receiver since it needs to share a space with the various TV accessories. Are there any small, affordable (total cost including speakers would ideally be in the 400-700 euro range) receivers that are recommended? Height is the main issue, something under 10cm would be ideal.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2024 12:28

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 6, 2024 16:22

distortion park: Apr 25, 2011

qirex posted:

At your budget I'd personally be looking at a pair of powered speakers, I'm not super familiar with euro pricing but stuff like the Triangle BR03 Connect or Klipsch The Fives might be a good place to start.

A speakers' characteristics and capability are defined by the size of the drivers, the size/shape/weight of the cabinet, their position in the room and the electronics inside. In a soundbar they basically put all their character points into the last thing because they let people's desire to not have large, box-shaped speakers away from the TV define every other aspect of the design. Some of them apparently almost sound ok because of all the effort they put into DSP but they tend to be the ones that cost the same or more than a traditional speaker/amp setup. Additionally the subwoofers they come with are generally pretty sad compared to the real thing [this is just physics, a 6" woofer in a five pound plastic enclosure simply can't output bass like a 12" one in a HDF box the size of a mini fridge].

Other options: On the higher end there's stuff like WiSA where you can use a small hub to send audio wirelessly to speakers from vendors like Buchardt, B&O, Dynaudio, Piega, Canton and Dali. Most of these start well north of 1000 euro to get started and go to "gently caress you." There's also compact stereo amps like the Sonos Amp, NAD M10/C700, Lyngdorf 1120 or Bluesound Powernode [plus cheaper options from companies like Wiim and Arylic] that have a HDMI ARC input then drive normal passive speakers.

Those Triangle Connect ones are interesting, they fit the room's look and are in budget at about 650eur. ~~I guess you set them up as bluetooth output on the tv when you don't have a receiver?~~ e: just saw one of the pair has a hdmi connection

One of my main motivations for looking at 3.0 systems was that the center channel apparently makes dialogue a lot clearer. Will just a stereo setup also work ok for that? The room is 3.5m*5m.

There's no chance of a mini fridge sized.subwoofer going in there anyday, I'll be happy to upgrade over the TV speakers! There's a cinema 5 minute cycle away I go to fairly regularly for the full experience.

distortion park fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Jan 2, 2024

# ¿ Jan 2, 2024 17:24

distortion park: Apr 25, 2011

Branch Nvidian posted:

Okay, so the issue definitely seems to be the Max app on the AppleTV. Not sure what to do about that other than not use Max, but that's kinda disappointing.

Every combination of streaming app/dongle/TV/etc seems to be broken or incompatible in some way the whole ecosystem is kind of janky

# ¿ Apr 9, 2024 19:14

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Getting your first home audio system? Read this.