In the end, the setup you choose will depend on whether you want a neat, more discreet solution, or one that’s more glamorous, with very visible speakers. The catch being that fitting speakers into walls and ceilings can result in a pretty extensive – and potentially expensive – installation process.
These let you install as many channels as you like – including, potentially, true overheads – without eating up any room space at all. While surround speaker systems may present more significant installation challenges, they can still be easy on the eye if you can spare the space.ĭon’t forget about in-wall speaker systems, either. Look at the images of the Monitor Audio Silver system shown on this page, for instance.
Many surround speaker systems are super-attractive. But here’s the thing: bigger doesn’t have to mean uglier. Most surround speaker systems are substantially larger than that, of course. For instance, the $1,100 / £599 Monitor Audio MASS 5.1 system features five speakers that measure just 122(w) x 147(h) x 107(d)mm each, while Focal’s $3,999 / £1,799 Dome Flax 5.1 speaker pack includes satellites that measure 172(w) x 144(h) x 143(d)mm. However, you can find surround speaker systems that use pretty small speakers. Also, with a soundbar there’s no need to find shelf space and cabling for an AV receiver. Just imagine how your room would look with that many separate speakers lying around. For instance, Samsung’s Q950A fits seven channels into its main soundbar and three channels into each of its two rear speakers. Plus, of course, soundbar components can fit multiple channels into single pieces of hardware.
In addition, let’s not forget that the whole idea of a soundbar is that it sits under your TV screen, becoming an extension of what’s already a big chunk of technology dominating your room.
After all, while many – too many, perhaps – soundbars and any attendant subwoofers and rear speakers will simply be black boxes, they do at least tend to be relatively small. If you’re looking for a home cinema audio experience that makes as little physical impact on your living room as possible, then a soundbar will be the best option. Even if you find an AVR capable of supporting such a speaker count. After all, as noted earlier, the Samsung Q950A soundbar delivers no less than 16 distinct channels of sound – imagine the cost of adding that many separate speakers to a system. Ultimately, this brings us back to even the more expensive soundbars comfortably winning out on price over most separates surround systems.
( Dolby Atmos soundbars with ‘actual’ rather than ‘virtual’ height channel support, by comparison, use up-firing drivers to reflect Atmos over-head effects off your ceiling).
You might even have to factor installation costs into the equation, if you want to install overhead speakers in your ceiling for true Dolby Atmos overhead effects. Not least because the more audio channels you want, the more physical speakers you’ll need to buy.
The cheapest traditional surround sound systems we found while writing this article were a $499 (about $650) Yamaha YHT1840 package and a $549 / £499 Onkyo HT-S3910 package, both of which comprise an AVR plus 5.1 speaker package.Īdd more AVR power, more speaker power, more audio channels, Dolby Atmos and DTS:X decoding and more premium designs and prices start to escalate fast – faster than they do in the soundbar world. There are specialized models still from high-end audio brands that cost upwards of $1,900 / £1,500 but the point is that while soundbars can improve your TV sound for very little money, the range of quality and sound features they offer is now pretty colossal. The Sonos Beam (Gen 2) arrives at $399 / £339, for instance, while Samsung’s HW-Q700A 3.1.2 soundbar with Dolby Atmos support currently costs $700 / £500.Ībove $650 / £500 is where you’ll find the soundbars from widely respected ‘hi-fi’ audio-focused brands such as Polk, Yamaha, Denon and Klipsch, and up from there you’re mostly looking at higher numbers of dedicated channels and ever more power – all the way up to Samsung’s remarkable 11.1.4-channel $1,499 / £1,299 HW-Q950A, Sony’s ultra-powerful $1,399 / £1,299 7.1.2-channel HT-A7000, and LG’s $1,695 / £1,499 SP11RA 7.1.4-channel soundbars.
While there are of course exceptions, experience suggests that it’s typically only when you get to an asking price of $500 / £400 or so that soundbars begin to get serious on the sound quality front. Although note that this Atmos/DTS:X support is usually only ‘virtual’ at this price, delivered via simple 2.1 speaker setups and clever audio processing. Soundbar models such as Samsung’s 5.0-channel HW-S61A, which offer some sort of true multichannel support, come in around $300 / £300 – the same price point at which you can start to find support for the premium ‘object-based’ Dolby Atmos and DTS:X sound formats.