Soundbar or stereo amp and speakers

[Pete112]

I was hoping someone could give me some advice on how to get the best sound from my tv without having surround speakers all over the room

I have £1000 to spend and am not sure whether to go for a soundbar like the focal dimension / dali kubik one or buy a tv friendly stereo amp like the nad 3020 with some bookshelf speakers.

Thanks

 

[NS496]

If it was me I would get a D3020 from NAD and speakers of choice, depending on room size and requirements. Dali are said to work well, but most popular speakers should be fine, the higher sensitivity is better for the NAD. Upgrade with a sub later.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

If your use is primarily, nay, overwhelmingly, for watching TV, I would say a sound bar, as this keeps the audio focused on the TV screen.

In my experience using a "plain" stereo for TV audio sounds too much like, erm, listening to your TV through a stereo. You will notice the left and right fine, but voices become detatched from the screen.

Just my tuppence's worth...

 

[nws56]

I was hoping someone could give me some advice on how to get the best sound from my tv without having surround speakers all over the room

I have £1000 to spend and am not sure whether to go for a soundbar like the focal dimension / dali kubik one or buy a tv friendly stereo amp like the nad 3020 with some bookshelf speakers.

Th anquote]

You will get a much bigger sound from a widely spaced stereo system, but you really need full range floorstanders to appreciate all that meaty sound encoded onto blu ray discs. I use some old TDL RTL3 's ,picked up for 85 quid on fleabay ; they create a huge soundstage driven by antique Naim amplification. This simply transforms any film experience, but I don't think game shows and soaps warrant the effort, the sound quality of terrestrial and satellite broadcasts is lamentably low.

If the quality of the hi fi is high enough you won't have any problem with centrally placed voices; neither will the sound appear to originate from the boxes either side of the TV.

 

[NS496]

Or just get something like the Yamaha rx-v379 or equivalent from any manufacturer, and a Stereo pair speakers. Easy to update to 3.1 system or 5.1 later.

 

[Cynic-al]

I have both. The sound through my amp and speakers outshines my sound bar in every way.

Speech is clearer and the stereo image locks speech/dialogue directly to the screen. Amazingly you even get the feeling of surround sound when cars/bullets are flying around. Bass is thunderous when it needs to be and if there is music in a TVs or film it sounds like it's playing through a good hifi, funny that.

However, my Mrs and kids don't want to be using 2/3 remotes just to watch a bit of tv so that's where my soundbar comes in. It works of same remote as TVs/Sky and gives a far superior sound to my nasal tv.

 

[Deleted member 116933]

I have both. The sound through my amp and speakers outshines my sound bar in every way.

Speech is clearer and the stereo image locks speech/dialogue directly to the screen. Amazingly you even get the feeling of surround sound when cars/bullets are flying around. Bass is thunderous when it needs to be and if there is music in a TVs or film it sounds like it's playing through a good hifi, funny that.

However, my Mrs and kids don't want to be using 2/3 remotes just to watch a bit of tv so that's where my soundbar comes in. It works of same remote as TVs/Sky and gives a far superior sound to my nasal tv.

Completly agree with the above as I ended up buying naim uniti and yes if set up well you get a fantistic center dialouge and you also get a placebo type surround with out of phase segments getting sent to back of the room

BUT i would seriouly consider listening to yamaha new top of the range sound "projector" the rest of the sound bars i wouldn't bother with now as im sure there on the cusp of releaseing the 4k compliant versions over or just after christmas. Yamaha being one of the first. Though the Dali kubix one would not be affected by this as it has no Hdmi ports (most of the reason to going back to hifi for me at least being fed up with the rat race of changing spec every few years).