cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/mrlovenstein/p/1660117/volume
cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/nonpolitical_comics/p/1657114/mr-lovenstein-volume
[Mr Lovenstein] Volume
Hey everyone! In case you haven’t noticed, this is a new community focused on NonPolitical Comics (NPCs), which essentially means no gloom and doom of the day stuff. If you like the idea, help out by upvoting, commenting, or even talking about us! Remember, click like and subscribe!
TBF this always ends up with a lot of misplaced blame on the consumer
TV manufacturers decided/figured out long ago that Joe public cares more about a screen being thin, at time of purchase, than it having any semblance of audio quality. And they assume anyone who cares about audio will buy a set of speakers or (increasingly) a sound bar anyway, so they just need the bare minimum included.
This has gotten to the absurd point now where the speakers included in your average TV aren’t much better than a particularly loud phone speaker.
It’s basically impossible to get something that sounds even audible on those speakers, without doing what adverts do and compressing the shit out of the signal, which has the bonus of sounding loud and bad for everyone, there’s no bringing the detail back that was squashed out. Movie studios aren’t going to mix a movie that sounds bad on a system designed remotely properly (e.g. a cinema or reviewer’s TV), so we’re in the current situation.
The unfortunate situation today is you basically need some kind of separate speaker(s) with a TV because the manufacturers all have cheaped out across the board and don’t include anything good enough any more. The consumer shouldn’t be expected to know this and have to pay extra, the TV should come with speakers capable of producing audio properly.
I don’t even understand why they bother to include speakers in high-end TVs at all. Who’s going to buy an >80” TV and then only have stereo sound. For movies sound is at least as important for the experience as the picture quality. No built in speaker system is ever going be good enough, it’s simple physics.
So’s the room. Few people have a good enough room.
How much do you need to spend on a sound bar for something decently better, how much difference does it even make with a fairly cheap one?
Honestly you shouldn’t need to break the bank at all to be better than the built in speakers in most cases. I don’t want to say definitively because I’m sure there’s some basically scam products out there, but pretty much any sound bar will be an upgrade in 99% of cases.
A quick search shows a number of well known brands with offerings under £100, and one from a company I don’t recognise that apparently seems to have a number of positive reviews and available for £40
You’ll obviously get a further improvement if you go above the budget level, but that’s definitely not to say you can’t get a decent improvement over not having one at all.
Its just so hard to know what something will be like and I dont want to spend a lot of money for minimal improvement. While display specs are far easier to read.