F* a soundbar, building a DIY sound system - Update pg 4 - paywalls suck

Here you go.

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'm not an audiophile, so not looking for anything fancy.

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Oops nevermind.

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Will need a budget...

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Flexible. I'd hate to set a hard limit if there's a better value above it, but if pressed I would say $500 is pushing it. But of course, the cheaper the better. For comparison, my old setup was ~$250 and I was happy with it.

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Is the tv wall mounted or not?

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Yes. And I know a lot of people hate this but it's above the fireplace so the bar can sit on the mantel.

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I have a Klipsch sound bar with wireless sub. Love it.

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Something like this?


I should probably mention that the room is 16x26x10, walls all around except for 8ft opening to kitchen.

LINK

I have this....it's Energy, but Klipsch makes them. I forgot I had Energy, and my dad has Klipsch. he's the one that recommended them to me. Got mine @ Best Buy.

You don't want that soundbar. Get something that isn't 10 year old technology. If your soundbar is going to run your TV then look for 4k pass through, HDR, and Atmos.

This is the future of audio and video.

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Flexible. I'd hate to set a hard limit if there's a better value above it, but if pressed I would say $500 is pushing it. But of course, the cheaper the better. For comparison, my old setup was ~$250 and I was happy with it.

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If you are a vet or know someone who can buy from AAFES, the PX has Sonos on sale for 499.

I've been looking at the Yamaha sound bars for quite a while. I've been impressed with the older ones we have in our conference rooms at the office. Thanks for the recommendation I'm going to pull the trigger on the YAS-209.

I bought the definitive technology micro a while back. It sounds excellent and have the ability to add the w7 speakers later on is a plus.

Thanks for all the recs, but I'm taking this in a new direction now.

I ended up buying a soundbar + wireless sub, but it had a critical flaw for me. It has a power save feature that turns itself off after 15 minutes of no audio, and no way to disable it. The majority of our TV use is my two young kids watching stuff via Roku, so everything needs to work with that one remote (it has TV volume and power buttons, but doesn't control soundbars). It all works fine via HDMI ARC, so the TV speakers are off and the Roku->volume controls adjust the soundbar this way. Problem is the kids tend to pause for long periods, then when they return the soundbar has gone to sleep with only two ways to turn it on: the soundbar's own remote (shitty), or power cycle the TV (shittier). And it's a 10 second wait for sound after that. It's just awful, and I don't understand why any manufacturer would add such a feature with no way to disable it. After stumbling across this feature which is only disclosed in one sentence in the manual, I started digging through negative reviews of other soundbars and it seems many of them do this. Or it seems that all of them have some other serious flaw like the sub disconnects often or some other stupid thing.

So then I moved on to looking at receivers instead, but the problem there is they are all 12+ inches deep, and my TV is mounted in the taboo location above the fireplace (honestly the only place it can go in this room), and the mantel is only 11" deep. Amps are smaller, but there are not many options.


So now I'm in pissed off geek mode, and I have decided to build my own amp using a Raspberry Pi with a HiFiBerry Amp2 and an Audio Injector. Then I can add a couple bookshelf speakers, and I think it will sound better than any soundbar. The TV volume controls should adjust the volume that it outputs to the RCA audio jacks, right? If not, I can add an IR receiver to my Pi and set it to work on the same codes as the TV and adjust volume that way. Hopefully there is no audio lag.


I'll bump again when I'm finished to report how well it works and the total cost.