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Soundbar recommendations?

PaulyT

PaulyT

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I'm going to be going out to Santa Fe to see my dad, and one of the things he wants to look into is a better sound system for his TV. He has an older tv and some sort of soundbar I think but I'm not sure if/how they've been set up. Anyway he wants a new tv at least, and hopefully I can find something decent for sound. I think we need to keep it simple; unfortunately his room is very open with high ceilings and a lot of echo, so "proper" placement of real speakers probably isn't feasible. So if I can find a good soundbar that works decently for voice (he watches a lot of football but is having trouble hearing it), that would be good. Especially if it's something I can get at the local Best Buy. ;)

Any thoughts? Sorry this is sorta vague but I won't know much better what I'm dealing with until I get out there (next week).
 
Honestly for the sake of simplicity I’d see if a store like BB would give the the best deal if you package everything from the same brand….Sony, LG, Vizio, etc
 
Randy the “CheapAudioGuy” just reviewed the new Wiim soundbar, first I’ve heard of it. It’s $475, don’t know if that meets your price range but Wiim seems to be killing the Price/Performance market so it may be worth looking into.


There's a lot of tinkering you can do with the lauded Wiim app, your Dad may not be up to that but you may be able to set things up so it sounds good to him. I'm jealous you're going to Santa Fe, I need to take a few days and go down there to reconnect!
 
Ok thanks, that wiim looks interesting and is within budget, I will definitely check that out. And yeah I considered headphones too, may ask dad if he'd be interested in that.

Right, whatever I set up has to be pretty simple for day to day operation; dad is capable but his mental fitness is declining... it's a difficult situation.
 
PaulyT said:
Ok thanks, that wiim looks interesting and is within budget, I will definitely check that out. And yeah I considered headphones too, may ask dad if he'd be interested in that.

Right, whatever I set up has to be pretty simple for day to day operation; dad is capable but his mental fitness is declining... it's a difficult situation.
Click to expand...
They want 700Cad for a wiim soundbar here...that's nuts.
Any chance you have bluetooth headphones your dad could try? Turn on...auto connect to tv...boom...done.
 
No... I have not "tested the waters" at all with BT headphones... mostly because I have "real" headphones :rofl: and the only ones I tried long ago (actually earbuds) had such horrid latency that they were unusable. I'm not sure my dad would be interested in trying headphones, or using them for extended periods, but I will ask.
 
I ordered the wiim bar, it'll be here (I'm in Santa Fe) on Friday. Also got him a 55" TCL QM7L ($700), which seemed like a good upgrade from what he's got, bright enough to see in his bright room, but not super fancy - I'm here because he went in for cataract surgery today, so a high end display is not a thing he needs... Will post some impressions once I get everything set up.
 
I was brought here when I heard cataracts.

guess my job sometimes follows me.

I was also going to say I am super happy with my sound bar, a 5.1.4 Hisense ax700 I think from Costco.

in fact, been using this a lot in our guest room.
 
So far pretty happy with the wiim. DId the basic calibration which uses the phone app (and the phone's microphone), seems reasonably balanced in this room now. Dad says he can hear things a lot more clearly now, so it's fulfilled its purpose. I don't have much to compare it too soundbar-wise but I'm happy with it. Setup was easy and dad doesn't have to control it separately from the tv, it's all done via eArc.
 
Tangentially, I also hooked dad up on my spotify family plan so he has a wider variety of music to listen to. It's great, but it's a somewhat bewildering array of how to control spotify - via tv, via computer, via phone, even directly via the wiim... Yes it's flexible but the downside is there's not one single way that's totally straightforward... I think he's capable enough still to figure it out but it's not a small problem.
 
PaulyT said:
I ordered the wiim bar, it'll be here (I'm in Santa Fe) on Friday. Also got him a 55" TCL QM7L ($700), which seemed like a good upgrade from what he's got, bright enough to see in his bright room, but not super fancy.
Click to expand...
Pauly went cutting-edge, Caleb hasn't even reviewed it yet!


(Nice "strip-tease" there, Caleb! :rofl:)
 
It's not as good as my LG B5 I think (although I certainly don't claim to be an expert TV reviewer), but it wasn't as $$ either.
 
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