It used to be that you had to spend a lot of money on a receiver and convince your uncle to show you how to run cables through the wall in order to be an audio engineer. Soundbars, especially those with dedicated rear surround speakers, have gotten so good that most of the time there is no need to spend a lot of money.
The systems that sound like your traditional high-end home theater are ones like the HW- Q990B. All you have to do is set it up with four power outlets and a short HDMI cable, and you're good to go.
You will be engulfed in object-based surround sound in less than a minute. There are dragons, aliens, bullets, and even James Earl Jones in the center channel. It is difficult to get a system that sounds good in most living rooms unless you are willing to spend more time and money.
There is a tent setup.
The inside of the black-on-black HW-Q990B features a lot of cool and interesting technology, but the outside is boring and easy to hide below a TV screen. The bar has a long hexagonal shape, with corners that bounce sound off the walls, and large surrounds that spray sound up and bounce it down.
The Wireless Sub is the most nondescript of the bunch, a simple rectangular shape that can easily be hidden in any corner of my studio. Stand the surrounds on them. They need to be plugged in with the sub. Plug the main bar into the power and send it to your projector or TV. You go to the movies after that. It's that easy.
The main bar could be mounted by those with higher-end systems who are picky about their interior design. It can be done with a few screws and a drill.
There is a price of entry.
It might seem foolish to spend more than you should on a TV. Do you remember the last time you bought a new pair of speakers for your computer? Audio gear tends to last longer, so you don't replace them as frequently. Good sound isn't a static enterprise but it isn't developing as quickly as image processing and screen technology are
I would expect the soundbar to last through at least two TV generations if you get it. The price per year is the same as if the quality of the TV is the same.
More-immersive audio brings me closer to the action than a high-end screen. Even though it might sound sacrilege, truly engaging surround sound is one of the few things that most theaters do much better than we do at home. A good audio system brings you back to that movie theater.
The sound is one of the most important parts of movies and TV shows. If you only see shows on a cell phone, have you heard the full sound of them through good speakers or headphones? It's possible that maybe not.
It's epic Fidelity.
I have heard excellent center-channels before, but I have never heard a bar with such excellent surround speakers. The large two-way surrounds pump out more volume and better fidelity than I have ever heard from a bar-plus-speakers setup. I swore that a real fire alarm was behind me as I watched the latest movie. It's just the movie.
Everything from big boomy action movies to sexy vintage detective movies with theater-like ease can be accomplished with the help of the bar, sub, and surrounds. The bass is small. Not enough apartment dwellers need fear from their neighbors because you get enough rumble from the included speaker to hear and feel each step of an evil monster inStranger Things.
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