Sound Bar Thoughts

[Steve R.]

LG SP8YA 3.1.2CH Sound Bar and Subwoofer with Dolby Atmos (2021) ​

I am looking at the above soundbar for potential purchase. Besides being more technically up-to-date than my existing soundbar, it would be more compatible with my LG TV. Additionally, the soundbar is only 2.2" tall. The base of my TV is 1.5" above the stand, the current sound bar is 3" tall. That "blocks" the TV from directly receiving the signal from the TV's remote. The "fix" for that is to bounce the remote's signal off the ceiling. Always a workaround.

As a side note, amazing how fast your gadgets can become outdated. Over the past year we slowly introduced new stuff. We replaced our old Amazon Firestick with a Roku, that was a significant improvement in picture quality. Also found-out that reusing our old HDMI cables was a "bad" idea. Display Cables - An Overlooked Issue When Upgrading.

Now that the Christmas buying season is over, I was hoping that the soundbar would go on-sale. So far that has not happened. Just keep waiting.

 

[Minty]

My Sonos ARC sound bar has an infrared repeater from the front to the back, although both the new TV and digital box now use Bluetooth remotes, which are so much more convenient.

That looks good though - Not in stock anywhere reliably in the UK at the moment.

 

[CaylinBR]

Try to look for a Bose Soundbar. Bose is famous for their sound quality, the price might be a little bit higher as you expected, but the quality deserves it. I am owning Bose TV Speaker, its the best one for a TV, also you can connect via Bluetooth if you want to listen to music or some YT videos from your iPad or iPhone

 

[Steve R.]

Amazon put the LG SP8YA on-sale, so I bought it. Now I have an up-to-date system, at least until tomorrow when the next cycle of enhancements will be announced!!!!

As a very quick impression, can't tell the difference between the old sound bar and the LG SP8YA, Oh well.
The old sound bar did "refuse" to play some sound formats, so I had to configure the ROKU and TV to stick with simple stereo.

The new sound bar is feature rich. One feature, it can be used as a home entertainment sound system to play music. I don't know if I will do that.

One nice feature of the sound bar, it turns on when the TV is turned on. This capability to automatically turn-on a chained devices is old technology, but for some reason was not included in the old sound bar.

The new sound bar, unfortunately, is too easy to accidentally disconnect from the TV. It has sensitive control buttons on the top, accidentally touch it the wrong-way and poof. But there is a status display screen that makes it fairly easy to recover.

 

[Gasman]

A friend just bought that Bose TV Speaker and well pleased with it.?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I had some trouble synching the sound bar to the program. Sounded like an old, badly dubbed sound track from an old Japanese monster film from before Toho Studios started putting together productions to a higher standard. The words and the lips didn't match.

 

[Gasman]

I had some trouble synching the sound bar to the program. Sounded like an old, badly dubbed sound track from an old Japanese monster film from before Toho Studios started putting together productions to a higher standard. The words and the lips didn't match.

I have that issue with a BT tx/rx device that I use for my TV.
Fortunately it is mainly used for audio, so not that much of an issue, but if using for video, would be dissapointed, to say the least.

 

[Minty]

Some of the more sophisticated devices have delay settings that can help you fix such issues, might be worth looking around the menus. I know both the Sky TV Box and my TV have them.

 

[Ryanmat]

Sony is my all time favorite one!!