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In my latest bit of rapidly setting money on fire, I'm considering upgrading my soundbar to something more advanced. Recently upgraded my TV to a 55" LG C2 OLED, and I'm still using a Samsung HW-M360 soundbar and subwoofer combo from 2017 or 2018 connected via TOSLINK/optical. I'm not really convinced I need to replace the existing soundbar, but the lack of eARC, Atmos, and most other fancy features has me looking at stuff. It's in a bedroom, not a living room, so it does quite well for the space that it's in, though it also worked pretty well in the living room of the apartment I used to occupy. My living situation is somewhat complicated now, but to put it simply I live with my parents due to reasons not tied to money. I don't need, and more specifically do not want, something that is going to be overly loud and an annoyance to them. My folks have a super nice Atmos enabled Samsung S800B that works with their 2022 Frame TV that does that Q-Symphony thing that uses the soundbar and the TV speakers to sound even better. It looks like LG has something similar on their 2023 soundbars, and is being backported via firmware updates to some 2022 model soundbars. Rtings.com doesn't seem to put LG in the better quality tiers for any Best Of lists though, consistently having them beaten by Samsung, Vizio, Sonos, Bose, and Sony in various categories. A real bridesmaid, never a bride kinda situation. Is there an actual benefit to getting a soundbar from the same manufacturer of my TV, or would a better priced and more capable soundbar outweigh any benefits the LG version of q-symphony would provide? I'd like something that's just a soundbar or soundbar and subwoofer combo. I'm not looking to spend more than $500 realistically. I don't have anywhere to put surround satellites, and don't want to buy a $500 soundbar that needs a $400 subwoofer add-on to sound decent. My budget could go up to around $1000 only if the quality is like pants-making GBS threads, load-blowing levels of amazing, but that seems rather doubtful for my other room size and speaker-count constraints. If this is the wrong thread for this, point me to the right one please. This seemed the best place to ask.
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May 8, 2023 00:26
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 22:08 |
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Bought the LG S80QY soundbar. This thing loving rips. Weirdly it seems the LG TV speakers+soundbar thing isn’t rolled out to 2022 TVs yet (but is rolled out to the soundbars). Scared the poo poo out of my cats when I did the room calibration thing.
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May 13, 2023 18:53
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About a year ago I updated my TV and soundbar solution, went with an LG C2 and an LG S80QY 3.1.3 atmos bar w/ sub with the intention of using LG’s wowcast thing to combine the TV speakers and the soundbar speakers into a single system. Turned out that LG’s implementation of this is garbage so that didn’t pan out. I’ve continued using the soundbar though, and generally like it but I’m running into an issue and I can’t tell if it’s the TV, the soundbar, my Apple TV, or the apps, but while watching stuff all of the sound is great and fantastic except for the dialogue, which I can’t loving hear for poo poo. I’m running the ATV -> Soundbar -> C2. I’ve tried night mode on the bar, I’ve tried boosting the center channel on the bar, I’ve changed the preset EQs on the C2, I’ve tried “Reduce Loud Sounds” along with swapping between Stereo and Atmos on the ATV. This happens on shows on Max, Paramount+, and Crunchyroll. I thought about just getting rid of it and doing a stereo pair of HomePods, but that probably won’t work with the PS5 or Xbox consoles. Is there some other setting I should be looking at or messing with to try to get this balanced out? Fake edit: just so it’s known, this set up is in a bedroom and there is not enough space for a proper home stereo system or true surround. I’m having to work with the confines of the space I have available and a soundbar solution works much better for the space than a proper multi-unit speaker + av receiver set up.
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Apr 7, 2024 22:26
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Sounds like something is trying to output the sound through the center channel and it's not working for some reason, which is why you barely hear any dialogue. Worst case is that the actual center channel speaker on the soundbar is broken, but that's unlikely. I've mostly noticed it enough for it to be an issue on the AppleTV, while the consoles have been generally fine. quote:Try cutting out the Apple TV for now and just do Console(or tv streaming app) -> C2 -> soundbar just to make sure that you are actually getting sound from the center channel and that the dialogue is intelligible. Or try changing up how things are connected and running AppleTV -> C2 -> soundbar. I'll give these a shot this evening after work, thanks. Trying to google search for other people having trouble with this soundbar hasn't really come up with much, which is making me think it's an issue more with how I have things configured. After posting yesterday I tried some other streaming apps and Max is by far the worst of the bunch. Paramount+ can be a little difficult at times, but is mostly fine. Crunchyroll ended up having no problems whatsoever.
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Apr 8, 2024 18:18
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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.
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Apr 9, 2024 01:05
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distortion park posted:Every combination of streaming app/dongle/TV/etc seems to be broken or incompatible in some way the whole ecosystem is kind of janky I also learned that apparently you only get stereo sound from Max unless you're paying for their TWENTY loving DOLLARS A MONTH tier, so that could also be part of the issue in this case since the ATV and/or the soundbar are trying to turn that into a 3.1.3 mix.
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Apr 9, 2024 19:29
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 22:08 |
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Animale posted:I thought they did 5.1 on regular tiers but left Atmos/Dolby Vision for the expensive plan. I’m just gonna go back to Blu-rays.
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Apr 9, 2024 23:16
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