I thought a soundbar might be the best bet for a general improvement, however I've no idea what people would consider 'decent' and since potentially the next TV we get is probably going to be sub £400, is it even worth it? I know on the one hand it being a cheap TV would make it more worth it as the cheap TV is more likely to have bad inbuilt but it depends what constitutes a sound bar worth paying money for I guess.
LCD TVs and generally all thin TVs sound dire. It's the price we pay for the TV being slim. You don't need to go mad on a sound bar, but it will increase the sound quality drastically.
Both @Mister_Tad and me are owners of the Bluesound Soundbar 2i, and both are fans of that. They occasionally come up in open box sales/that sort of thing (I'd not like to pay the full £900 for one, mine was £400ish IIRC) and they are genuinely excellent. It was like night and day swapping it out for the Sonos Playbase which was there before. It's also got a sub pre-out which I might have just picked up a second REL T/Zero to connect to, as well
I mean I'm sure it is amazing, but considering the TV budget I don't think it really matches up From a quick look it seems you can get soundbars with separate subwoofers and some without, general rule of thumb which is 'better'? Might make a thread actually...
You want a sub, scratch that, you NEED a sub. Doesn't matter what the question is, it's always the same answer
I mean yes, generally. Because wub. But in the case of the soundbar question, I disagree - depends on what you use it for and what you expect out of it. I'd rather entirely sacrifice any <60hz output than have a paper driver being pushed past its limits with an undersized port.
Stands ordered. Needed high (80cm) so those Duronic were the best at the price. I would have ordered them from Amazon, but they are £45 on there. £35 on Ebay. Just hope it isn't Spermes.
We bought a Cambridge Audio soundbar with downward firing woofer for our current TV, it fits in the shelves below the TV and looks like an AV component. Way better sound and range than the TV, and no extra wires to a sub. I miss my floor standers, but they had to go as I just didn't sit down and listen to music in the living room any more.
I have a working theory that I have sh_tty mains at my new place :/ Wired up the AV gear last night and there’s an irritating transformer buzz, and even some hum on the speakers. Disconnected everything to be sure it’s not a ground loop, no dice. Tried in other sockets all over the house and no dice. Also tried unplugging a bunch of things in the house, nope. Checked the HiFi amp this morning (being the my only other transformer-based amp), same issue. We need an electrician around anyway to tidy up some messy wiring around the consumer unit and generally health check, so another thing to add to the list. A DC filter or isolation transformer might sort it out, but I ordered a 1000va online pure-sine UPS to test the theory since that’s something generally useful to have anyway - whereas if either of the other two didn’t sort it then they would just collect dust. Hopefully once a professional comes out for a check-up it’s just a case of yoinking out some old junk (like an ancient meter that appears to be still wired in for some reason), as I’d very much like to not have to add a 6kva+ Isolation transformer to the shopping list.
Haha as someone who has never owned a sub I'll take your word(s) for it Idea of spending any kind of money on a soundbar was met with 'but why' from the OH so may take a little longer to get something but since there's no rush anyway no bad thing, might give me a chance to find something decent 2nd hand.
Facts. Subs are key I think. I did try the Soundbar minus it, but for music (and where it sits in the room) it's just lacking in the bottom end. Delighted with it otherwise.
Good/bad news! Good: Neither buzz nor hum running on the UPS. Bad: I’m now in the market for a solution to cleanse a metric buttload of power.
Some Japanese audiophiles are going a stage further: https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2016...-own-concrete-power-pole-for-musical-clarity/
The offshoot of people like that is a problem I'm running into whilst trying to find something to do the job... lots of catastrophically overpriced "audiophile" power gear. I ideally don't want a UPS due to the added cost, bulk, heat, ongoing maintenance that the inclusion of batteries means, but that seems to be the only way to get the AC->DC->AC conversion that I'm after without looking at "audiophile" power regenerators. I think I can get away with a 3kw model now doing the maths though, saving cost on the unit itself, and due to the fact I can just plug it into the wall. My power amp, and any future power amps will have a SMPS that shouldn't care about the mains - so it's just the AVR and a couple of subs that are bothered, and by the time I get a full complement of power amps the AVR should only sip power anyway.
That's a pain about the power - do you think it's to do with the incoming, or purely inside your property?
I'm curious about that too, 'cause the picture didn't make the build look too old, I'd be interested to know the cause of quirky power..
Perhaps a bit of both. The mains runs particularly hot and I've seen as high as 252v, so that won't be helping anything, and I can't see how that would be anything other than what's coming into the house. The rest? Not sure. I'd assume any DC offset would be coming from inside the house - but all my stuff is the same, so that would leave it to one of the built in appliances or utilities causing issues. I might start switching things off one by one later to check it out. It won't be something I can just leave off, but maybe I can isolate that. Still have the hot mains though, and don't think there's anything I can do about that since it's barely within the tolerance stated by the national grid (253v). I've had very little joy with finding an electrician that has any availability at the moment anyway. It's in the middle - at just over 50 years old it's not exactly modern, but it's not particularly old either. There was a significant renovation and extension about 5 years ago and the house was mostly rewired, but not everywhere, and there's a rat's nest of old electrics and wiring around the consumer unit that was never removed for reasons that are beyond me - no telling what's still connected and what's just dead wiring.
I think a few Power Inspired AG1500s units would do the job nicely - a unit from a UPS manufacturer at mainly non-audiophile prices that's tweaked to operate without a battery and at lower temps/noise.
