In this post, we're gonna talk about how to choose the right soundbar for you. Before we get into the how though let's, talk about the why. Most TVs come with you know they're tiny, they're thin, right?
They look beautiful What we do though is we pay the price with tiny, horrible sounding speakers.
This is an actual speaker from an actual TV you can see just how small it is, Of course, it doesn't sound good. Any soundbar is going to sound better than that even a very inexpensive soundbar all the way up to a high-performance soundbar designed to give you surround sound, so good it rivals any home theatre system.
Soundbars have come a long way over the years. It used to be simple you find either a powered or a passive soundbar and you get it the right size and so it looks good with your TV and that's all you had to think about. Today there are almost a hundred soundbars to choose from with lots of interesting differentiating features and that's what we're gonna talk about how to get them right soundbar for you.
The first thing to consider is what kind of performance are you looking for? Are you simply looking to make the sound from your TV a little bigger a little brighter a little bolder to enhance the dialogue on your TV screen and the shows you're watching?
Because that's not expensive, that's pretty easy to do. Or are you looking for a high-quality sort of two-channel audio a system that's going to also be good at playing your music that costs a little, bit more? Many soundbars do surround sound either using the wireless rear speakers or a lot of speakers in the bar itself to create the overhead and back surround effects and many of them are designed as a music solution on allowing you to play any music you want from your phone or the internet.
Alright, let's, talk about powered and passive soundbars. A passive soundbar, there's only, really a handful of these available they are what you would call a three-channel sound ba,r they're designed to connect to the speaker outputs of a home theatre receiver.
That means they don't have any amplification built-in. They do not include a subwoofer they're simply designed to replace the front three speakers, the left-right and centre channel speakers, in a home theatre system. If you use one of those bars you would still want to add rear surround or, Dolby Atmos or a subwoofer in addition to them.
The nice thing about them, though is they take up frequently less space than three actual, separate speakers in the front of your home theatre and most passive soundboard, is considered pretty high performance. They're not super cheap.
These are what, you get when you are really trying to set up a very nice home theatre and you, just need to save some space. Powered soundbars are very different, they have, amplifiers built-in. They do need to be plugged into the wall for power and, connected straight to your TV instead of using a home theatre receiver.
Now how do they connect to your TV? There are many different ways. For one, you could use an HDMI connection from your TV using the Audio Return Channel. HDMI with ARC allows the sound from whatever you're playing on your TV to be sent over an HDMI cable back to a soundbar so this is great when you are watching the built-in streaming apps or an over-the-air antenna on your TV or anything that you might have plugged into your TVs such as a cable box or Blu-ray player.
Using this style of connection also usually takes care of how you control the sound from your soundbar because when you use your TV's remote it will probably because of that HDMI cable tell the soundbar to go up and down when you hit volume up and down.
You're going to notice that many powered soundbars have multiple HDMI inputs and this is for when you want to connect your sources like your Blu-ray player your cable box things like that directly to the soundbar, and then just run one HDMI cable from the soundbar to the TV.
This might be preferable if you're using a high-quality surround sound soundbar with surround sound decoding built-in it might do a nicer job of decoding and giving you separated sound from all the different speakers in the soundbar, to give you better surround sound.
Still, the most common way to hook up a soundbar, to a TV is to simply use an optical digital cable. That is a fibre-optic cable that goes from the optical audio output on the back of the TV down to the input on the soundbar. Most soundbars are also great music solutions almost all of them have Bluetooth built-in so that you can send music to a soundbar, right from your phone and have it be your music solution in addition to being your TV audio solution.
Some of them though, take it to the next level. Many soundbars can connect to your Wi-Fi network and become part of a wireless multi-room audio system. Soundbars from companies like Sonos, HEOS Yamaha MusicCast Bluesound Apple AirPlay to speakers with Chromecast and DTS PlayFi your soundbar might be one zone in your whole- home music audio system which means through an app on your phone you can decide what to play from whatever streaming service you want or maybe songs from a computer that's, also on your network and you can play them to your soundbar that way.
Many of, these soundbars especially if they have Wi-Fi built-in include a control app that you can download to your phone or tablet so that you can not only have basic control of the soundbar but you can dial in the sound and the settings and the EQ and all of that.
And if you happen to use Google Home or Alexa at your house, many soundbars include Google Home or Alexa or both built into the soundbar so that means it has the microphone and all of the power of your home assistant right there in the soundbar.
Some of them are simply compatible, meaning if you have a Google Home or an Alexa in the same room as your soundbar you can speak to that and tell your soundbar what to do. Let's talk about bass.
Any home theatre system, of course, uses a powered subwoofer to give you that boom, that thunder that oomph you want in a, surround sound system, and soundbars are no different. Now if you're just going for dialogue enhancement you might not need a subwoofer for that and many soundbars now do not include subwoofers because they're simply not needed when you're just trying to make your TV sound a little bit bigger and fuller than those tiny little speakers.
Most powered soundbars are compatible with a wireless subwoofer, many of them include the wireless sub and many of them it is an option so you can decide if you need that extra oomph that extra bass. Also, many of these soundbars have a subwoofer output so that you could use any sub maybe you have a powered sub already and you'd like to use it with a soundbar make sure you get a soundbar with subwoofer output Let's talk about wireless rear surrounds.
They are an option for many soundboards and included with a small handful of soundbars. Keep in mind wireless speaker still needs to get power so you're either going to need to plug them into an outlet in the back of the room.
They'll still get the music and the sound from the soundbar wirelessly through the room you just got to get them powered.
There are even a few soundbars that include, wireless rear speakers that are battery-powered. Now think about, that you don't have to plug them into the wall you can simply put them in the back of your room and have them firing at you at your listening position while you're watching a movie and when the batteries need to be recharged you just attach them to the soundbar maybe while you're sleeping overnight let them recharge and then when next time you go to watch a movie you put them right back where you want them.
If you're looking for surround sound from just the soundbar and maybe a subwoofer no rear surrounds, no extra speakers anywhere but the soundbar and the sub it can be done. There are plenty of soundbars available with lots of speakers built-in and surround sound decoding and processing so that it can do a nice job of giving you centre channel left/right surrounds even Dolby Atmos and DTS:X sounds which sound like they're coming from speakers mounted above your head. These soundbars typically cost a little bit to do a really good job you kind of get what you pay for here.
They're available at a lower price but the more you spend the better it will be putting you in the middle of the action. I know that's a lot to factor in when you're choosing the sound bar that's right for you that's why we've got all those filters on the website so if you're looking at the page on Crutchfield.com with all of our soundbars look over on the left side and use the filters.
The filters will help you find the right soundbar if you're looking for dialogue enhancement or if you're looking for one with surround-sound decoding, wall-mounted or not, do those wireless speakers come with it or not there are filters for almost everything and they're really helpful in helping you find the right soundbar.
Then filters are almost as great as giving Crutchfield a call. If you call into Crutchfield or chat with us online or
send us an e-mail you'll be talking with an adviser who has a lot of experience with soundbars of all types.