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Looking for a soundbar

aisle9

This is for my father in law, who's currently fuming because his old JBL took a shit and just died. Here's what he's looking for:

  • Budget under $1k
  • His current setup has a soundbar + subwoofer
  • He watches rock concerts, baseball, some movies, and a lot of golf
  • This is a fairly large room with a high ceiling
  • No JBL. He's angry at JBL.

Any ideas on good units to check out?

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I don't have any recommendations, but I figured I should ask:

What model JBL soundbar and subwoofer did he have? Just so we have a better quality baseline of what he was using.

 

$1K is a pretty decent budget, so you're gonna get a fairly wide variety of recommendations.

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8 minutes ago, saint_louis_bagels said:

I don't have any recommendations, but I figured I should ask:

What model JBL soundbar and subwoofer did he have? Just so we have a better quality baseline of what he was using.

 

$1K is a pretty decent budget, so you're gonna get a fairly wide variety of recommendations.

Cinema SB400, I think? There are a lot of posts out there on the internet about the board just dying, but I'm pretty sure he's had it since 2015 or so, so I'd consider that to be a good life.

Aerocool DS are the best fans you've never tried.

 

Hypnotoad's RAM is dying, his motherboard is acting like the 6-year-old AsRock it is, a couple of SATA ports have just stopped working, but the RGB remains. The RGB always remains. Hypnotoad lives. All glory to the Hypnotoad.

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For a grand, a soundbar should be completely out of the equation. An acoustically inept design is not a good base. Get some tower speakers, and an amplifier. JBL Studio 570's or 580's would probably be suiting due to you father-in-laws familiarity with the JBL house-sound.

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Yeah you're wasting money buying a sound bar for $1k. If you don't want tower speakers, consider the KEF LSX (original model). It's a short stretch of the budget, but the returns are absolutely worth it. They just release a second iteration and I have no clue what the differences are. But you might be able to find a good set of the original on the used market. I have the larger set called the LS50's at my desk with a basic Yamaha amp. Cost me about $1k for a used set of speakers in 2017 and $250 for the receiver. I guarantee it blows away 95% of sound bars on the market. The LSX's are powered speakers with a remote, the LS50's are passive and require a receiver. I still recommend the LSX for a living room setup for ease of setup and equipment.

 

You might even be able to reuse the subwoofer from the JBL set.... don't quote me on that. Depends on the JBL consumer f**kery. Sometimes these products are like buying e-waste from day 1 smh

 

I second the vote for larger speakers... but idk about this familiarity with JBL house sound lol There's no similarities between a sound bar and a 570 or 580 with an amp... I would say maybe you can argue about timbre matching if you had other speakers and you wanted to integrate more speakers, but not otherwise.

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Going to second the "don't bother with soundbars" if you don't have to bit.

For $1000ish you can get some pretty SOLID stuff.

For a 2.1 set up, assuming looks matter

Aiyima A07 amp - $70
Polk ES15 (can be flush mounted to a wall with a screw) $220-300 (I got a pair "used, scratched" off amazon for my SO, I don't think there was a scratch - they're "pretty", they're white. They match) (if looks matter less - Emotiva B1+ and some stands, could be useful as it'd allow better angling)
SVS SB1000 (PB1000 if size isn't a problem).  $250-500 ($250 used)

Misc wire - $10-20

This would absolutely blow away what he had before. Bigger drivers (and the speakers being spaced out) help with sound quality along with sound stage/imaging a fair bit.

One thing to try as well - see if his soundbar "died" due to something small and stupid like the power brick going or a TV config setting.

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4 hours ago, OfficialTechSpace said:

For a grand, a soundbar should be completely out of the equation. An acoustically inept design is not a good base. Get some tower speakers, and an amplifier. JBL Studio 570's or 580's would probably be suiting due to you father-in-laws familiarity with the JBL house-sound.

I know, but it's his money, and he wants a soundbar. Did I mention he's stubborn?

 

4 hours ago, johnt said:

Yeah you're wasting money buying a sound bar for $1k. If you don't want tower speakers, consider the KEF LSX (original model). It's a short stretch of the budget, but the returns are absolutely worth it. They just release a second iteration and I have no clue what the differences are. But you might be able to find a good set of the original on the used market. I have the larger set called the LS50's at my desk with a basic Yamaha amp. Cost me about $1k for a used set of speakers in 2017 and $250 for the receiver. I guarantee it blows away 95% of sound bars on the market. The LSX's are powered speakers with a remote, the LS50's are passive and require a receiver. I still recommend the LSX for a living room setup for ease of setup and equipment.

 

You might even be able to reuse the subwoofer from the JBL set.... don't quote me on that. Depends on the JBL consumer f**kery. Sometimes these products are like buying e-waste from day 1 smh

 

I second the vote for larger speakers... but idk about this familiarity with JBL house sound lol There's no similarities between a sound bar and a 570 or 580 with an amp... I would say maybe you can argue about timbre matching if you had other speakers and you wanted to integrate more speakers, but not otherwise.

Hm. If I can talk him out of a soundbar, the LSX looks promising. He's not going to let me run wires to his TV from across the room, but wireless speakers (even if they still need power) might be doable.

 

3 hours ago, cmndr said:

One thing to try as well - see if his soundbar "died" due to something small and stupid like the power brick going or a TV config setting.

I spent a couple hours troubleshooting before coming to the conclusion that it's dead. It wouldn't play audio from any source despite definitely being plugged in and powered on. Last time I troubleshot for him, it was a "broken" Blu-Ray player that it turns out he'd just never actually put a disc into. I was very thorough in making sure this soundbar is actually dead lol

Aerocool DS are the best fans you've never tried.

 

Hypnotoad's RAM is dying, his motherboard is acting like the 6-year-old AsRock it is, a couple of SATA ports have just stopped working, but the RGB remains. The RGB always remains. Hypnotoad lives. All glory to the Hypnotoad.

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3 hours ago, aisle9 said:

Hm. If I can talk him out of a soundbar, the LSX looks promising. He's not going to let me run wires to his TV from across the room, but wireless speakers (even if they still need power) might be doable.

They can be used wirelessly, but that's not the best method for long-term use. The second speaker still requires a wire to the first speaker for signal. I believe it uses a generally weird RJ45 (ethernet) connection, so you could get a custom length wire to connect the speakers if the included cable isn't long enough.

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6 hours ago, aisle9 said:

Hm. If I can talk him out of a soundbar, the LSX looks promising. He's not going to let me run wires to his TV from across the room, but wireless speakers (even if they still need power) might be doable.

It'd be like 1-2' of wire exposed on each side of the TV. 0' visible if you just jam speakers exactly next the screen and keep the amp behind the TV.

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14 hours ago, aisle9 said:

Hm. If I can talk him out of a soundbar, the LSX looks promising. He's not going to let me run wires to his TV from across the room, but wireless speakers (even if they still need power) might be doable.

Can you submit a picture of the setup? Make sure it's a reasonable wide picture to give us a good field of view of how a typical person will experience the setup from a seated position.

People are recommending you move from a soundbar setup to a bookshelf speaker setup, but that comes with its own complexities like cable management and setting up the height correctly so that they can sound their reasonable best.

Some people place them on the TV stand if the TV stand is reasonable wide enough.

Some people (including myself) place bookshelf speakers on speaker stands - this can be a rabbit hole.

Some people mount their bookshelf speakers on the wall adjacent to the TV.

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here's some HT setup pictures. As a rule of thumb it's exactly one wire per speaker (two for subwoofer) since the "data" and the power come from the same cable.
As stated before you can literally mount (some) speakers (Polk ES15, ELAC Debut 2 OW4.2) flush against the wall and butt them RIGHT against the TV so any wires would be hidden by the TV.


"wireless" speakers have the same number of wires going to them (for power) the main difference is it's sometimes easier to place them (electrical outlets permitting) and you can stream/cast to them with a phone or tablet (though you can usually do that to a TV anyway so that's kind of a wash in terms of utility).
 

 

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