Home theatre setup (beginner)

[Ram Satesh]

Hello there everyone, I am fairly new to setting up a home theatre system, my expertise are definitely not in the audio department. 

 

I am been using the stock speakers on my TV (Sharp GB254WJSA) and I am using the Mi Box S 4K for all my streaming needs (mostly Netflix & Disney +).

 

As stated in the mi box's website, it supports Dolby audio (Dolby digital (DD), DD plus, DTS) and not Dolby Atmos. 

 

I am planning on getting any reasonably priced (please recommend) Samsung sound bar (with sub woofer) that supports Dolby Atmos. Will a Dolby Atmos supported sound bar be able to play the full array of the DD plus format? 

 

Why am I getting the Dolby Atmos supported device? I am looking to upgrade to the Nvidia Shield TV Pro in the future (supports Atmos). 

 

Also, with the limited amount of ports available on the mi box, I am not sure how to get it to connected to the soundbar. Do I have setup as mi box > passthrough > TV > speakers or mi box > audio > speakers & > picture > TV. 

 

I am not sure whether my TV has a HDMI arc to allow passthrough or do I have to get a receiver to do this. 

 

So basically the gist of it is;

1. How do I setup DD plus from my mi box and connect it to the speakers and get surround sound?

 

2. Do you have any product recommendation?

 

Your help is much appreciated, thank you in advance. 

[Bombastinator]

50 minutes ago, Ram Satesh said:

Hello there everyone, I am fairly new to setting up a home theatre system, my expertise are definitely not in the audio department. 

 

I am been using the stock speakers on my TV (Sharp GB254WJSA) and I am using the Mi Box S 4K for all my streaming needs (mostly Netflix & Disney +).

 

As stated in the mi box's website, it supports Dolby audio (Dolby digital (DD), DD plus, DTS) and not Dolby Atmos. 

 

I am planning on getting any reasonably priced (please recommend) Samsung sound bar (with sub woofer) that supports Dolby Atmos. Will a Dolby Atmos supported sound bar be able to play the full array of the DD plus format? 

 

Why am I getting the Dolby Atmos supported device? I am looking to upgrade to the Nvidia Shield TV Pro in the future (supports Atmos). 

 

Also, with the limited amount of ports available on the mi box, I am not sure how to get it to connected to the soundbar. Do I have setup as mi box > passthrough > TV > speakers or mi box > audio > speakers & > picture > TV. 

 

I am not sure whether my TV has a HDMI arc to allow passthrough or do I have to get a receiver to do this. 

 

So basically the gist of it is;

1. How do I setup DD plus from my mi box and connect it to the speakers and get surround sound?

 

2. Do you have any product recommendation?

 

Your help is much appreciated, thank you in advance. 

there are apparently at least 3? Mi boxes that I found. The mi box, the mi box 3, and the mi box S. There may be others as well. I could only find a rear shot of the straight mi box which only seems to have some sort of hdmi out, I don’t know which version, making things problematic.
 

One has to be really careful with sound bars.  Most of them advertise having “surround sound” but they do it in different ways and it can be wildly ineffective. Original surround is done with a 5.1 or 7.1 system so effectively 6 or 8 different speakers arranged around the edges of a room in a rather particular way. (The sub can be put in many places not on the edge of the room.  There are a lot of opinions as to where and how.  It’s not considered to be directional though because it only deals with low tones and can actually be derived from 2 channel stereo, hence the .1 designation) A sound bar is sort of a bunch of speakers stuck together as one piece with some pointed in different directions in an attempt to reflect sound off walls to create “surround” without actually having a speaker there.  This can not work very well as rooms tend to be differently shaped and made out of different things. With sound bars four of the speakers are pretty straight forward.  Getting the middle channel and the two side front channels and the .1 sub channel only involves merely putting  3 speakers in the bar with a sub attached.  5.1 also has two speakers that are supposed to be behind and slightly above the listeners and 7.1 has those two plus two more that are farther forward but also on the edges and slightly above.  It is these speakers a surround sound sound bar has to play weird games to achieve. 

[BuzzingBee]

On 6/16/2021 at 3:36 PM, Bombastinator said:

there are apparently at least 3? Mi boxes that I found. The mi box, the mi box 3, and the mi box S. There may be others as well. I could only find a rear shot of the straight mi box which only seems to have some sort of hdmi out, I don’t know which version, making things problematic.
 

One has to be really careful with sound bars.  Most of them advertise having “surround sound” but they do it in different ways and it can be wildly ineffective. Original surround is done with a 5.1 or 7.1 system so effectively 6 or 8 different speakers arranged around the edges of a room in a rather particular way. (The sub can be put in many places not on the edge of the room.  There are a lot of opinions as to where and how.  It’s not considered to be directional though because it only deals with low tones and can actually be derived from 2 channel stereo, hence the .1 designation) A sound bar is sort of a bunch of speakers stuck together as one piece with some pointed in different directions in an attempt to reflect sound off walls to create “surround” without actually having a speaker there.  This can not work very well as rooms tend to be differently shaped and made out of different things. With sound bars four of the speakers are pretty straight forward.  Getting the middle channel and the two side front channels and the .1 sub channel only involves merely putting  3 speakers in the bar with a sub attached.  5.1 also has two speakers that are supposed to be behind and slightly above the listeners and 7.1 has those two plus two more that are farther forward but also on the edges and slightly above.  It is these speakers a surround sound sound bar has to play weird games to achieve. 

Agree, would also like to add that soundbars should be a plan B option incase you can't get discrete speakers for any good reason, like lack of room for speaker placement or wanting to look simplistic for living room.