Right now my audio solution is a Pioneer VSX-832 receiver, Audioengine P4 stereo speakers, and am Audioengine subwoofer. It sounds fine but is kind of a cable management nightmare and the speakers don’t actually fit on our TV stand right now so it looks a mess.
I’m considering replacing that setup with a soundbar and small subwoofer. I know real home theater nerds sneer at soundbars, but realistically we’re not going to do surround sound. Our living room is super narrow so the sofa is only about 6 feet from the TV and that’s with it up against a wall, so there’s no putting rear speakers in here. When we tried we hated it. It just doesn’t work well in the room.
I’m okay with basically a 2.1 system but I’m wondering if I could do that in a way that’s compact, looks nice, and has a center channel so we can hear some goddamn dialog occasionally.
Would a nice soundbar actually be an upgrade from this situation?
Pioneer VSX-832 is 5.1 capable, you can buy a center channel speaker to improve dialogs.
Sound-wise, I think you will not see a huge improvement. Are you able to go to a store near you to test the soundbar?
Realistically probably not. I think the only place around here that carries the ones I’m interested in is Best Buy, and I don’t think testing something in a Best Buy would give me much insight to how it would sound in my house. :( I’m looking at like $800-1200 stuff and the local fancy home theater place mostly carries $2000 stuff.
I never bought anything from Best Buy but I visited one near me to preview a few speakers that I eventually bought from accessories4less for my 5.1 setup. I was using a soundbar for years before that and I’ll never go back. Just my recommendation based on my experience. I have a 2.0 setup also that I just upgrade my AVR for and am very happy with it.
