TVs are lonely. A beer-soaked barstool at 2 a.m. kind of lonely. They cry out for companionship, their tinny, bass-less voices difficult to hear, even harder to enjoy. When they were young, they held so much promise: high definition, good times, low cost. How quickly came the onset of disappointment?
A search, a hope, a late-night call for help. Four suitors — less "Diamonds and Gold" and more "Small Change" — sauntered in: the Valley vixen, Harman Kardon’s Soundbar 30; two Seoul singers, LG’s NB3520A and Samsung’s HW-E550; and Vizio’s VHT215, glossy black from head to toe and fluent in Mandarin.
The tip jar at the bar may not hold quite enough, but enough is all you will need to hold: Just a few hundred dollars is what you’ll pay for this play. In tow with each soundbar: a faithful wireless subwoofer to nip at the heels and bring bass to the table where none was before. Half the bars are HDMI-friendly, and all of them come with remotes for you to dial in your choice of 11 p.m. loud or 4 a.m. loud.
But now it’s a quarter to three, there’s no one in the place, ’cept you and me. Let’s find one for your baby, and three more for the road.
To test the performance of the soundbars, I first did frequency response measurements on both the soundbars and subwoofers. Then I did CEA-2010 output measurements on the subwoofers.
Soundbar response measurements were done on the left channels only, with all surround, EQ, and volume management modes deactivated. I placed the bars atop a 2-meter stand and placed the microphone at a distance of 2 meters, enough to incorporate the contributions of all the drivers and diffraction from the front baffles of the soundbars. I averaged responses at 0°, ±10°, ±20°, and ±30°, then smoothed the result to 1/12th octave. These measurements were good down to 300 Hz. I then did ground-plane measurements (smoothed to 1/3rd octave) of the soundbars to get their <300 Hz response, then spliced the ground plane to the quasi-anechoic response to get the curves you see here. All subwoofer frequency response measurements were done using 1/3rd-octave-smoothed ground plane sweeps at 2 meters. I used a Clio FW analyzer in MLS mode for the quasi-anechoic measurements and log chirp mode for the low-frequency measurements.
I measured the Samsung HW-E550 in both configurations: soundbar (horizontal) and stereo speaker (vertical).
CEA-2010 measurements were done at 2 meters, then scaled up +6 dB to simulate results at 1 meter as required by CEA-2010. Averages were performed in pascals, according to the new but as-yet-published revisions to CEA-2010. An “L” appears next to those measurements in which the device reached maximum volume without passing the CEA-2010 distortion thresholds. With most subwoofers, this indicates the presence of a limiter that actively restricts maximum output, but with low-cost products like these soundbars it may simply reflect the manufacturer’s chosen maximum output level. — Brent Butterworth
Thank you for finally doing a review on some sound bars. I am moving into a house finally. I have been given the basement to do whatever with, but the living room needs to be clean. I immediately start looking into everything out there, which is daunting.
I had almost settled between the Harman or the YSP-2200 and then realized that my room acoustics were going to be pretty poor with the location of the television. That is when I decided I just wanted something that would sound decent for music and boost television listening levels. That is where the Vizio comes into play.
I am a big Vizio fan due to the bang for the buck I have gotten with their TVs. I had heard recommendations of this sound bar but nothing comparing it to several others like you have done here.
One question I have, is there any thoughts on reviewing the sound bars from Polk?
So, which one is "left standing" ??
@sofast1 — it was a close one, since they all have their strengths, but the Vizio provided the most bang for the buck, and gets our Certified+Recommended stamp (see the second page of this piece)
Thanks, I was looking for the "winner" and skimmed to the end. Sadly, most readers will miss the most important part; " As with all soundbars, the fidelity isn’t as good as what you’d get from a decent pair of bookshelf speakers". Compare any of these to something like the Energy Take 5. Convenience is now more important than performance. Bummer.
Nice article. I wish I had seen it before I bought the LG soundbar. The 3D processing sometimes sounds "thin" to me. Are the frequency response graphs included in the article measured in stereo mode or in 3D mode? Were you 1 meter away?
@nyquist: All measurements were done in stereo mode, with any surround virtualizers deactivated. Because virtualizers take advantage of head-related transfer function (HRTF), the response of the signals is designed to sum inside your head with contributions from both ears, not at the capsule of a single measurement mic. So if you measure them with a mic, you get a lot of frequency response anomalies that you don't hear.
All measurements were done at 2 meters, because the bars are long and I wanted to capture the diffraction effects of the entire bar. CEA-2010 figures were scaled up +6 dB to provide the equivalent of 1-meter measurements.
Full details on the measurements, plus full CEA-2010 numbers, have been added.
Got an email from an engineer at LG that they've fixed the stereo-swapping problem. So that shouldn't be an issue.