Why Do Some People Hate Soundbars?

Dude stop asking people for sub like whatever so. If they like or sub to your content, they will.

They're junk compared to separate surround sound 🗑️

Not interesting in soundbar as my Stereo Active Speaker are enough for my Entertainment activities. And I actually feel peaceful, away from HDMI ARC/eARC issues 😂

There's always those self proclaimed audio aficionados that can't grasp that for many people a soundbar is a really good compromise. In their point of view either you go all in or satishfy with your TV speakers. Also they don't like the heavy use of DSP in many higher end sound bars. Not only to get the most of it but also play psychoaccoustic tricks to allow surround without decidated speakers. Sure dedicated speakers are more accurate but they also take up space and usually requires at least one cable.
Yeah Sonos is a special case - in more way then one they're very much like Apple. Personally I doubt I'll ever buy a Sonos. Sure they do sound great but so does many others. But they like to sue others for basic software features that imho should be considered too simple to be patended (ditch software patends - remember that doesn't mean free copying of intelectual property). Add to that I'm not at all impressed with many of their past speakers - having a quite high standby usage and pwer supplies that are not well designed. All in all not something I want to support.
And then there's the sub. Many systems come with a sub. With most of the systems the sub isn't invisible - in more way than one. It takes up space but it also isn't invisible sound wise and you can hear where it's located. A sub has to be really large and ideally portless in order not to be noticed sound wise. It gives an odd weight to the sound field if it's placed to the side - which it usually is. Personally I've gone for a Sony without sub. Has more than enough bass for me so I don't want to bother with another box - in fact I often thinks there's too much bass in a cinema for my taste.

Soundbars don't necessarily suck. They're a good solution if you have a lack of space like an apartment. But they're not better than a receiver and speakers.

The ONLY reason I have a soundbar right now is lack of space and living in an apartment. If it wasn't for those factors, I'd still be enjoying the hell out of my sadly departed and oh so sweet sounding home theater system.

I have a quality mindset

running wires is no excuse. you can easily hide them in crown molding.

You don't need big speakers for cinema audio. It's just an effect which is handled by small speakers better. The low end is handled by a separate amplifier in a subwoofer. The AV receiver was just a bad idea. The sound quality was very poor for music and unnecessary for Cinema.

And what do you mean by a Dialogue problem, and these are too expensive, I just want to be able to hear what theater sound systems and audio encoded for them have stole from us?

I had a traditional 5.1 system for many years. I went through several receiver and speaker upgrades. Not wanting to upgrade a bunch of equipment ti buy, more clutter in the living room etc, I bought a Sonos Arc and Sub and am very happy with it. Super simple to use and it sounds great.

of cours classic stereo is better than soundbar ... example : make a test new soundbar vs old technics dv 290 :) Coast for used technics: 50-200 e :) nice day for all :)

I don’t hate them they have a place but i would not personally have one for my main home system but many people are happy with it

I find that those who become unhappy with their sound bar is because they want to expand to a more capable systems that supports the latest fomats and can't without tossing the investiment in the soundbar. I have a very modest traditional denon avr setup that I started in a 3.1 configuration and over the years moved into a 5.1.4 configeration just by adding speakers. My friends and neighbors that have sound bars see what I have and how I did it try to do the same only to find out that they can't become rather discouraged. So I would never advise anyone to get a sound bar, you get so much more capability with a basic budget level AVR then with a standard soundbar, things like video upscaling, HDMI switching, music streaming, multi zones and traditioal stereo HiFi capabilities, you know a place where you can plug in your 8 track player, turn table, casset deck (to make mix tapes :o), CD player and good old fashion AM FM tuner.

I don't want a bunch of speakers or a sub. It's overkill, if it's not one thing then I can't be bothered. And I sure as hell will never spend this kind of money for sound systems

The higher soundbars will satisfy 95% of people. I had a Onkyo 5.1 surround sound system before. I now have a Samsung 930 Soundbar. I would go with the Soundbar. It is just so much easier to use for everyday use. The lower end, and even mid tier soundbars are not that great. The higher end stuff is.

I love soundbars! They dont have a bunch of cables and speaker wire too deal with.

Klipsch reference cinema system 5.1.4 is about $400 right now.. and a dennon AVR- s760h is usually under $400 so for around $800 you can have a REALLY decent atmos system (granted you wont get rear height due to the 7.1 receiver but still get atmos none the less) and it sounds 20x better than my old nakamichi 7.2 soundbar ever did..

I love soundbars

Went with Sonos Arc system to replace my Nakamichi 7.2.4 soundbar. The Nakamichi had wireless subs; but, the rear surrounds were connected with a wire to the subs. That limited the placements of the Nakamichi subs and surround being too close to the primary sitting position. I was able to move the Arc system further away and it sound more immersive with the surround 9-12 feet back and the two Gen 3 subs towards on either side of the Arc 16-18 feet towards the front.

Soundbars are the essential oils of audio. Do with that what you will.

Sound bars are good for one thing, music if you hook it up to your TV and start watching a movie terrible in every, you can barely hear people talking through movies and once guns start blazing. everything is loud again.

Just buy edifier. All the rest is bs ;)

I bought a sound bar Sony HST-40R sound and rear speakers sound is left right centre speakers and rear speakers that plug into wireless adapter you can only adjust the rear speakers either via distance or dB front you can't the sound bar plugs into a subwoofer which is the system operation the centre channel is awful I had Samsung dvd 5.0 system years ago that was great rather have something like that

So they do suck then. 🤷‍♂

Hi Jonah, I'm revisiting this video a year later and I would really like to see a video from you, compering the Sony 7.2 Home Theater (or any other traditional 5.1 home theater) with the soundbars that you have reviewed. I'm constantly debating if I should get a traditional home theater system or if premium soundbar such as q990b or the Sonos Arc should be enough. A video like this would help me tremendously.

What I got from this is sound bar fans are lazy and have low standards. Put more effort into setting up a good sound system and you will get the rewards.

I'd love to have a decent soundbar to hook up to my Fire TV. Unfortunately as a totally blind potential user I'd have to be careful about buying something that may not be either simple to install or to use without functional eyeballs LOL.

I've bought and given away THREE soundbars over the last few years. WHY? Because they ALL sounded like crap. One of them sounded worse than the stock TV sound. One was "Realistic" I think. Another was an off brand, which ironically sounded the best of the three. I forgot the first brand I bought. One MAIN issue is that they seemed to actually OPPOSE stereo separation sound. All three options were about $150 each. I kept thinking the brand was bad or something. But, what I'm pretty convinced about is that younger generations just don't know what the heck they're hearing. They're NOT very picky. They just want EASY. It's the same reason people buy SINGLE "Bluetooth Speakers". They're not a pair and so they DON'T have stereo separation. They're almost all REALLY small and so, while their volume is fairly impressive FOR THEIR SIZE, they still can't come anywhere near a GOOD stereo amp/receiver, with solid box speakers, separated by at least 6 feet.

Just bought one of these and I wanna toss it out, my smart tv wont detect it. I've got an unwanted headache.

before i have some amply, speaker surrounded, many cables, i think is not again with a soundbar,

I kinda agree. I bought a soundbar for the same reasons. However, it spontaneously broke just after the warranty passed. And since the connection to the SW and SBs is proprietary, everything went out of the window. Since then I moved to a new house and I put the effort into setting up a traditional system. The cabeling was solved easily by a remote audio transmitters. So I still see the benefits of the soundbars, but I don't like them due to high integration and "vendor lock in" of the peripherals.

Even a cheap 3.1 satellite system will stomp a sound bar with sub combo.

Since you done a lot of sound bars how would the Sony a7000 compare to the sonos arc?

I think people who hate on sound bars are close minded. I've gone from a sonos beam to powernode powering Kef q950 and I don't hate on the soundbar. Kef Sound quality is in a completely different league to the sonos but so is the price and space it takes up. It's a compromise so it depends on how much sound, space and price matters to you

I have a sub, beam arc, and a couple play ones by Sonos. I love it for my tv and sounds very nice for when I play music. So I here to say I disagree. I don’t want a huge traditional sound system in my living less is more as far as I’m concerned.

It's very important when I have seen this video I was looking so much now I like so much this video's interest to me thanks 🙏 so much for given me this opportunity

I definitely agree about the convenience part. Running all the wires and configuring all of it is a pain. Especially for an Atmos system. A decent traditional system is going to cost more too.

I think the Sony HT-A9 is good enough for most people. it save you from running the wires and putting down large speakers, yet it will provide you average/very acceptable sound field, the freedom of placement of the speakers and the ease of use (not really, it is still quite a little bit more complicated when compared with an average sounder like the HT-A5000). not everybody have tried an high-end system at their home, they will probably go to an actual cinema instead as it has been calibrated by specialist with the equipment's that they could not possibly afford (like 3DLP projector alone is priced crazy). overall, I think its all upto your needs as not everyone really need the absolute best or they just doesn't really care about that that much(I mean that serious). I do believe both system have their pros and cons which could not be undermined easily.

Soundbar is a only a excuse for bad tv speakers.

Just bought a laser sound bar have a lot of noise coming through the speakers I'll be taking it.

Hi. How do I connect a tv with eArc to a sound bar that does not have hdmi inputs? Thanks

To expensive and not enoth depth

Pretty much hit the nail on the head. For myself, I tended to find the price to performance ratio very undesirable, but that is probably because I've had a $5,000ish plus home theater speaker setup with an Integra DHC-80.3, 5 flagship Polk Audio speakers powered by an emotiva Xpa-5, two 15 inch + two 18 inch subwoofers, the 15s powered by an EPX4000 amp each, the 18s by a Cerwin Vega CV-5000 amp. And on top of being spoiled by having that stuff, I'm the kind of wierdo that actually enjoys having to learn what I needed to in order to do it all myself, and enjoys the setting up of stuff like that, and the running/installing of the wiring of a couple extra circuits into my service panel so as to have the power that I would need.

Yep, soundbars are definitely much easier, and since we live in the age where convenience and ease is supreme, it's a no brainer that they are so popular now.

Sort of side tangent relating to all this: It often baffled me when I would see people that would get huge several thousand dollar TVs, and then end up pairing them with soundbars, AND vice versa. I've seen full size expensive sound setups with just absolutely pathetic TVs. The mis-matches/disunity between things like that just hurts my brain, and don't get me started on what I think about half done sound systems in a car, I mean why does anyone have to hear anything above 100hz in their music? Hey, why not just save money too by buying a smaller less powerful subwoofer, and then just place it right on the passenger seat and have it face you, and disconnect the full range speakers in your car as a bonus to save some more wattage for that sub.

I think that NEC 2030S might still work because it had enough RCA jacks to adapt to at least 1080p with decent aux set-top tuners and pass thru circuitry The only reason it's not running it's due to the conversion to digital broadcast!

Especially if they had a decent CRT NTSC TV, such as my last tube model, the NEC 2030S! my mom, who opposed stereo TVs and VCRs @ their inception, became a stereo junkie once she heard her favorite Mahalia Jackson and Rev. James Cleveland Gospel music playing via cable TV videos!

Forty-two years ago, I had one of those traditional receiver-centered systems so impressive that my audiophile friends dubbed me an audio ayatollah! These days, because of hip-hop & "gangsta" rap, music isn't compelling enough to reconstitute such a system merely for movie soundtracks! Save your shekels for soundbars!

Why Do Some People Hate Soundbars? damn where do i start, well for starters, plastic is THE WORST material to build speakers with, they sound crap and they dont last