Recommendation of speakers for my living room - line arrays or?

[ErnieM]

I maxed out the demo volume of a Samsung soundbar with sub at the store the other day. Very impressive. I could easily live with it for casual listening.

 

[pelanj]

Yes, a soundbar would be a good option - but the problem is, that I do not know, what features should it have, what price level, etc.

 

[indianajo]

music is recorded in stereo, because that's how it is meant to be played back
in mono, lots of information is lost
tv, on the other hand, full of monologue, can tolerate mono
so its completely opposite in my opinion to what you state

With the advent of HDTV, PBS is putting out Great Performances with true stereo sound recorded with condenser mikes. VIenna Phil, NY Phil, LA Phil lots of great orchestras. Even bluegrass sounds better with the mandolin on the right and banjo on the left. Bluegrass is recorded by KET, my local PBS affiliate, with Shure KSM27's or something that looks like them. Full frequency mikes.
I don't watch too many soap operas. Some Masterpiece Theater are tolerable, some are stupid. Amazon, Netfilx, Hulu, Nbc, Cbs, Abc, who needs them?
Sound on my 32" Samsung flat screen TV was so bad I bought a farnell HDTV tuner and ran line level into a Peavey PV-4c and a coupla 6.5" whizzer cone drivers in bass reflex boxes. That was stolen so now using mono PA amp in one $2 speaker, until I can afford something better. And recapture the TV room from from the piles of files & books the burglar left in there on top of the overturned furniture.
In the realm of non-black speakers there are a pair of Klipsch Heresy in Vermont For $420 on ebay this week. Have two horns each for accurate HF projection. But won't mount on poles over your head like a real PA speaker.
If you bi amp you can cross over @ 800 or 1200 and put two Peavey RX22 horns in any color box you want up near the ceiling. The 54-800 hz can be one woofer down near the floor, since the ear doesn't locate those frequencies. But you'll need a mixer to mix the right & left 45-800 feeds.

 

[AllenB]

The line array doesn't do its controlling in the horizontal where you want it. I'm getting that a floor to ceiling waveguide probably isn't what's appropriate in this case.

I wonder if you could approach this one from the ground up, by devising a bass arrangement, a multiple sub scheme that brings you up to a frequency from where you can begin controlling directivity with less stress.

 

[pelanj]

I actually bought a Samsung soundbar with a subwoofer. Happy for TV and movies. Loud and clear enough.