hello all,
i'm a bit late coming in on this but if you get a really good sound bar it
can be as good as a wired surround sound system.
i have both a sound bar in the front room and a wired surround system in
the dining room
they are both made by yamaha and the soundbar sounds every bit as good as
the wired system including you hearing everything around and behind you.
the soundbar i have is model yamaha ysp40d.
admittedly the normal price of this was £1500 or roughly $2500 but i got it
when it was being replaced with a newer model so got it for £500 roughly
$830 but it is a very impressive bit of equipment.
it is about 40 inches long and has 42 individual speakers in it which fire
off the sound in all different directions.
when you set it up you plug a microphone in to it on a long lead and place
it level with the centre of the tv screen and 6 to 8 feet away then tell it
to auto setup and go out of the room and close the door.
from outside it sounds like something from the movie close encounter of the
third kind as you can hear all these odd sounds being bounced off of every
surface in the room.
when it's finished it has programmed all the speakers to give off their
sound fractions of seconds apart bouncing the sound off of the walls,
ceiling, and furniture to give you a full surround effect.
when it sets itself up it can even tell weather you have soft furnishing
and carpets in the room and takes this into account.
it also has a mass of different connections which means you could
have 10 or 12 pieces of equipment all connected to it at the same time.
i prefer this sound bar to the wired systems as obviously it's neater and
you don't need to run wires everywhere, but i do think you need to get a
sound bar that has this type of auto setup with multi speakers in it.
i've seen several over the last 5 years since i got mine that have this
capability but not with as many speakers but they have also been at a much
more reasonable price.
pete.
