It almost seemed like a crime (and it was not easy) to stain that nice Ash veneer black. And notice the position, She keeps scooting the, back! But, you know what they say about a happy wife! And they still sound far better than I expected.
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Soundbars sound great when you turn them on their side 🙂.
Kidding aside, it seems obvious that self-contained WiFi/HDMI speakers are going to have increasing market share at the expense of the AV receiver-based systems or conventional "HiFi". It's also clear that the soundbars are going to displace conventional stereo speakers in many homes. That market demand means that these newer technologies are going to evolve, and newer designs like the Samsung Q series with ATMOS are starting to show a lot of promise for immersive high quality listening in a small form factor. I think there are still a lot of untapped possibilities with active systems and soundbars in particular, so I see these technologies as challenges for the DIY'er. I don't understand the dismissive attitude in some of these posts. Sure, there are some really crappy inexpensive soundbars, but that doesn't mean this approach is a dead-end.
Kidding aside, it seems obvious that self-contained WiFi/HDMI speakers are going to have increasing market share at the expense of the AV receiver-based systems or conventional "HiFi". It's also clear that the soundbars are going to displace conventional stereo speakers in many homes. That market demand means that these newer technologies are going to evolve, and newer designs like the Samsung Q series with ATMOS are starting to show a lot of promise for immersive high quality listening in a small form factor. I think there are still a lot of untapped possibilities with active systems and soundbars in particular, so I see these technologies as challenges for the DIY'er. I don't understand the dismissive attitude in some of these posts. Sure, there are some really crappy inexpensive soundbars, but that doesn't mean this approach is a dead-end.
It's somewhat ironic - but I do a LOT of music listening through my TV's commercial soundbar, usually while reading. (..streaming "radio".)
..and to pile on the irony, a commercial soundbar is often advocated for HT - and that is the ABSOLUTE WORST thing you can do (worse than critical music listening for those brief periods when you watch a movie). REASON: while commercial soundbars (even excellent single-bar/box multi-channel DSP types) can be fairly effective with surround sound (even the artificial single-bar stuff), they just can't do dynamics worth a crap - and DYNAMICS are a BIG part of Home Theater, more so than most music listening.
In addition to very "stunted" dynamics, commercial soundbars almost always create this booming effect below about 250 Hz (just like typical Bose demo's), you can become accustom to it and perhaps even like it, but it doesn't sound accurate at all - so for critical music listening (putting most of your enjoyment into listening to the tracks) it's really a non-starter.
..and to pile on the irony, a commercial soundbar is often advocated for HT - and that is the ABSOLUTE WORST thing you can do (worse than critical music listening for those brief periods when you watch a movie). REASON: while commercial soundbars (even excellent single-bar/box multi-channel DSP types) can be fairly effective with surround sound (even the artificial single-bar stuff), they just can't do dynamics worth a crap - and DYNAMICS are a BIG part of Home Theater, more so than most music listening.
In addition to very "stunted" dynamics, commercial soundbars almost always create this booming effect below about 250 Hz (just like typical Bose demo's), you can become accustom to it and perhaps even like it, but it doesn't sound accurate at all - so for critical music listening (putting most of your enjoyment into listening to the tracks) it's really a non-starter.
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Since the majority of that stuff IS crappy inexpensively built plastic and the exceptions seem to confirm the rule. It will therefor be staying and it'll be a commercial success as well. One can tell by the buzz words and the nice names that marketing departments have enough work and that business is booming. Unlike slowly dying stereo audio, that is left for us boomers 🙂
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Looks like a bunch of Schiit in the middle there....
Yup. A SYS a Modi and Mani. Building a Mesmerize B1 right now. Power amp is home brew based on ICEPower 300ASC modules.
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I couldn't agree with you more. Commercial soundbars are a terrible choice for critical music listening. And they were never really intended for that purpose anyhow.
Their entire raison d'etre is for HT purposes.
Who listens to music through their gigantic 100L speakers the size of a fridge anyway?
Nobody but the lunatic fringe 0.1% like us.
Sound-bars are the thing of the 2010s.
Video Killed The Radio Star
CDs killed vinyl
MP3s killed CDs
Downloads killed MP3s
Streaming killed downloads
Most 14-25 yo are happy to watch listen/on YouTube or Netflix or Amazon Prime from their your tiny 5.5" phone screens and 1/2" earphones.
The biggest experience they are likely to get is on their laptop's 13" screen and 1" twoofers.
The modern middle upper class buys a real speaker- like a 2 way with a real tweeter and 4" woofer- like a SONOS speaker. 😆
And that's considered "expensive"
For everyone else the TV sound is good enough.
In the future TVs will have all the sound you need. And cars, being that you can't watch TV whilst driving, even if it has so called FULL SELF DRIVING CAPABILITY, will be mandated such that a driver will be unable to watch a program whilst in control of a vehicle.
So the electric (and thus silent car) will come stock with fantastic 8.1 systems by eg. Clarion (OEM) or branded eg. Dynaudio, JBL, Harman Kardon or Burmester sound systems.
best regards,
Thanh
former owner and discarder of ill-fated Yarra 3DX soundbar... so bad you couldn't even give it away...
PS. An oldie but a goodie:
Nobody but the lunatic fringe 0.1% like us.
Sound-bars are the thing of the 2010s.
Video Killed The Radio Star
CDs killed vinyl
MP3s killed CDs
Downloads killed MP3s
Streaming killed downloads
Most 14-25 yo are happy to watch listen/on YouTube or Netflix or Amazon Prime from their your tiny 5.5" phone screens and 1/2" earphones.
The biggest experience they are likely to get is on their laptop's 13" screen and 1" twoofers.
The modern middle upper class buys a real speaker- like a 2 way with a real tweeter and 4" woofer- like a SONOS speaker. 😆
And that's considered "expensive"
For everyone else the TV sound is good enough.
In the future TVs will have all the sound you need. And cars, being that you can't watch TV whilst driving, even if it has so called FULL SELF DRIVING CAPABILITY, will be mandated such that a driver will be unable to watch a program whilst in control of a vehicle.
So the electric (and thus silent car) will come stock with fantastic 8.1 systems by eg. Clarion (OEM) or branded eg. Dynaudio, JBL, Harman Kardon or Burmester sound systems.
best regards,
Thanh
former owner and discarder of ill-fated Yarra 3DX soundbar... so bad you couldn't even give it away...
PS. An oldie but a goodie:
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... Since when did 100 litre boxes become gigantic?
Here's my daughter testing daddys little "home office" setup. She looks very smug, you should see her when we put them out on the lawn and she gets to DJ a bit.
100 litres, pwah...
She's using both headphones and speakers there btw, headphones for better localization and speakers for a bit of "immersion".
Attachments
If anyone around here demanded that I paint black over my DIY soundbar they'd be required to leave! Life is too short to put up with people like that - especially when they clearly have neither taste nor any appreciation of what goes into such things. And no - this soundbar isn't the way of the future. It weights over 50Kg. LOL
What most don’t understand is that the best sound bars on the market are more sophisticated than you think. At Bose (also at Yamaha and Sonos) we made 3 axis beam steered arrays that decoded to 3 channels and fed them to very directional left, center and right arrays (all sharing the same drivers). Very cool that one assortment of drivers could simultaneously radiate in 3 independent axies.
With such an array you could get wider stereo than normal 2 speakers as all the sound bounced off the side walls (typically plus minus 75 degrees). You also got better center than normal 2 speaker because the center is real, not virtual.
I did a lot of music listening on 3 axis soundbars and liked the effect. L & R were wide and totally off the soundbar, and center was solid. The listening area was also very wide.
We tried to convince marketing that there was an audiophile opportunity but couldn’t drum up the interest…
With such an array you could get wider stereo than normal 2 speakers as all the sound bounced off the side walls (typically plus minus 75 degrees). You also got better center than normal 2 speaker because the center is real, not virtual.
I did a lot of music listening on 3 axis soundbars and liked the effect. L & R were wide and totally off the soundbar, and center was solid. The listening area was also very wide.
We tried to convince marketing that there was an audiophile opportunity but couldn’t drum up the interest…
That's because I suspect your marketing department understood there wasn't really any opportunity in the audiophile market. And most of that has to do with the basic sound quality of soundbars. Ignoring for the moment whether the wide dispersion of the sound bars was really of any value or not, the simple fact they all sound crappy compared to quality individual speakers is all the is necessary to understand.
An audiophilia nervosa afflicted 
then can buy a soundbar such as Speaker Dave describes, steal all it's DSP guts and install them in a diy soundbar with better drivers/amps/construction (Milsdrewbulch 
?)
George
then can buy a soundbar such as Speaker Dave describes, steal all it's DSP guts and install them in a diy soundbar with better drivers/amps/construction (Milsdrewbulch ?)George
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But what is “the basic sound quality of soundbars”? I’m not sure I would want to generalize about that.
What I am saying is that this particular format (3 axis steered beam) did some things that audiophiles want with a much better result than 2 conventional speaker systems.
What I am saying is that this particular format (3 axis steered beam) did some things that audiophiles want with a much better result than 2 conventional speaker systems.
Yeah, but if the drivers themselves are poor quality with high levels of distortion, then the dispersion doesn't matter at all. I'll admit that I haven't heard most of these sound bars, but based on listening to other speakers by Bose and Sonus I've yet to hear one that I would buy.
(Correction: I actually bought a Bose Soundlink for my wife to use in the kitchen. It's terrible. I can't listen to it. And I only bought it after listening to the Sonus equivalent in the store and it was even worse.)
Soundbars are designed and marketed for an entirely different purpose and different audience than audiophile speakers. They don't fit that audience. Nor do any other Bose or Sonus products fit it either. So, I don't really have any problem generalizing about soundbars from these companies.