Right now my audio solution is a Pioneer VSX-832 receiver, Audioengine P4 stereo speakers, and am Audioengine subwoofer. It sounds fine but is kind of a cable management nightmare and the speakers don’t actually fit on our TV stand right now so it looks a mess.
I’m considering replacing that setup with a soundbar and small subwoofer. I know real home theater nerds sneer at soundbars, but realistically we’re not going to do surround sound. Our living room is super narrow so the sofa is only about 6 feet from the TV and that’s with it up against a wall, so there’s no putting rear speakers in here. When we tried we hated it. It just doesn’t work well in the room.
I’m okay with basically a 2.1 system but I’m wondering if I could do that in a way that’s compact, looks nice, and has a center channel so we can hear some goddamn dialog occasionally.
Would a nice soundbar actually be an upgrade from this situation?
Sound-wise, I think you will not see a huge improvement. Are you able to go to a store near you to test the soundbar?
Realistically probably not. I think the only place around here that carries the ones I’m interested in is Best Buy, and I don’t think testing something in a Best Buy would give me much insight to how it would sound in my house. :( I’m looking at like $800-1200 stuff and the local fancy home theater place mostly carries $2000 stuff.
I understand. Maybe it would be possible for you to order it online from some store with a reasonable return policy. 1000 USD is a pretty penny so you need to be sure the upgrade is worth it. But I really would wager a 75% chance that you will be ‘meh’ about the soundbar.
Might just wait until we move house (fingers crossed for sometime this year) and move the AVR into the media room and then decide what we want to do audio-wise with the living room TV.
I just wish I could find speaker stands that weren’t ugly or meant for tiny satellite speakers. Right now they have to be either behind the TV or on the floor, neither of which is ideal seeing as they’re bookshelf speakers.
I never bought anything from Best Buy but I visited one near me to preview a few speakers that I eventually bought from accessories4less for my 5.1 setup. I was using a soundbar for years before that and I’ll never go back. Just my recommendation based on my experience. I have a 2.0 setup also that I just upgrade my AVR for and am very happy with it.