Sonos Playbar

[techgenius]

Techgenius, thanks.

Before going with the Sonos system, I thought long and hard about the high-end Yamaha soundbars, which have similar technical abilities to the Monitor Audio you mention (and a seperate subwoofer). My concern about a single soundbar is that the surround processing (even if technically excellent in ideal conditions) is too reliant on the vagaries of the room it is installed in. It is difficult to see how it could ever be better at producing surround effects than having actual speakers at the rear.

Hi ALAYTON81,

Absolutely true that a soundbar is no match for a comparitively priced 5.1 system. What the guy on the Monitor stand told me was they take the 7.1 channels from the BD and re-create it by adding some sort of psyco-acoustic effects. So unlike the Yamaha, that relies on boucing soud off walls, the Monitor SB is almost completey unaffected by the type of room or furnishing to get the effect to work. They have obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this bit of kit.

 

[The_Lhc]

Hmm, cracking spam Gromit!

Don't you agree that one should audition more than one soundbar? If you just compare the Sonos Soundbar with what comes out of most tv-sets it is absolutely fabulous!

Of course but it's usually polite to introduce yourself on a forum before you start posting adverts (particularly for brands nobody's ever heard of, makes it much more suspicious).

 

[techgenius]

Oh, just remebered though. Superfi are actually knocking 10% off the Sonos playbar at the gadget show in anyones in the market for one.

 

[fog567]

Did anyone actually answer the op question.?mainly that is it possible to watch bd's when the tv does not have optical out

 

[The_Lhc]

Did anyone actually answer the op question.?mainly that is it possible to watch bd's when the tv does not have optical out

Yes, you'd just take the optical out straight from the blu-ray player. If the disk doesn't have a DD soundtrack you'd have to set the optical output to stereo and let the Playbar create a pseudo-surround effect.

 

[ALAYTON81]

So even if the disc only has a DTS soundtrack, you can still set the BD player to send stereo via the optical? Is that true of all BD players (mine is a fairly old Panasonic BD30)? I will try this out soon and report back, but thanks for the suggestion.

 

[ALAYTON81]

So even if the disc only has a DTS soundtrack, you can still set the BD player to send stereo via the optical? Is that true of all BD players (mine is a fairly old Panasonic BD30)? I will try this out soon and report back, but thanks for the suggestion.

 

[ALAYTON81]

So even if the disc only has a DTS soundtrack, you can still set the BD player to send stereo via the optical? Is that true of all BD players (mine is a fairly old Panasonic BD30)? I will try this out soon and report back, but thanks for the suggestion.

 

[techgenius]

A guy in a tv shop told me recently that tv manufacturers will start to phase out optical connections. Can't see it myself, but I wonder if anyone else heard anything like this. If its true, then speakers with optical only will be defunked in future. Be interested to hear from anyone in this.

 

[ALAYTON81]

Okay, just to confirm the results of last night's experimentation, you can get sound from Blu-ray with a DTS-HD soundtrack by connecting the BD player directly to the Playbar and then setting the BD player to output PCM via optical whenever the disc only has a DTS signal (it should not be necessary to persistently switch the BD player's output). The Playbar then takes the signal and attempts to recreate the surround effects. Now before the audiophiles start shuting, I'm not saying this is the same as true 5.1 or 7.1, and clearly DTS-HD should be added to the Playbar's capability, but at least it means that Blu-ray discs are not redundant, as many have suggested. I have yet to be able to properly compare the recreated sound with the sound drom Dolby Digital soundtracks, which the Playbar does decode, but I will do so and report back if anyone is interested.

 

[fog567]

Yes! I am interested.I also have a 6 year old bd30 and am very interested in aquring a playbar

 

[The_Lhc]

Okay, just to confirm the results of last night's experimentation, you can get sound from Blu-ray with a DTS-HD soundtrack by connecting the BD player directly to the Playbar and then setting the BD player to output PCM via optical whenever the disc only has a DTS signal (it should not be necessary to persistently switch the BD player's output). The Playbar then takes the signal and attempts to recreate the surround effects.

Good-o, couldn't think of any reason why that wouldn't work but I'm glad it did. Mostly because I get to feel smug about it but at least you can watch your movies now...