Now there are more avenues for Samsung to shove bloatware down our throats. I have a modestly high-end home theater and it is utterly maddening waiting for devices to “boot” and “handshake”. And after the wait, I’m presented with another “User Agreement” to sign that insists on shoveling ads down my throat and harvesting data.
How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience? Just like every retailer has embraced usury with their credit card programs, every technology company has decided they are in the data harvesting business. I’m so over it.
> How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience?
Not much. Buy used. Buying new stereo equipment is an activity of the wealthy. Everywhere I've ever lived, CraigsList is overrun with excellent used speakers and receivers at reasonable prices.
I won't inundate you with brand-flexing, but I'll say I'm very happy with my home theater system. 4K OLED TV, big ol' tower speakers, and a pretty nice home theater unit. All from reputable brands. All used. Under $400 all together. No shitware.
I have a NAD 3030 from ~ the 70's. Very glad to see their new unit keeps (almost exactly) the same look. Great equipment
Edit: Immediately after posting this I scrolled down and saw "The C 3050’s industrial design was inspired by the NAD 3030 Stereophonic Amplifier, a 1970s classic" which explains the look!
"How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience? Just like every retailer has embraced usury with their credit card programs, every technology company has decided they are in the data harvesting business."
isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that
Originally yes, but now this is a complaint forum for pessimistic big tech worker bees to vent their frustrations while never actually having to invest time, money or effort on actually doing anything.
Generally though, consumers have already spoken with their wallets on this topic and they have told many thousands of doe-eyed founders loud and clear: “we will happily sacrifice our time and privacy to save a $3, bring on the ads”
Hence why YC focuses on B2B Saas for B2B Saas companies who sell to other B2B Saas companies.
>> isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that
NO! I've been here long enough to remember PG saying to build something people WANT. YC has become less about technical founders building an MVP and more about the investors finding something they can make money from. The later often depends on "monetization" which has become the driver of enshitification, which is precisely the opposite of what people want and the antithesis of what YC once was.
AppleTV running Apple Music connected to my Marantz AVR. No ads. No privacy concerns. I get lossless stereo where available and Atmos on selected tracks. It's great.
What exactly are you waiting for. I have two Dolby atmos systems, denon receivers, Apple TVs, OSMC boxes on both, and LG Smart TVs disconnected from the internet. Start up time is less than a second.
I use a Frame and don't have any of the issues you describe in the slightest.
The power button turns the TV on with a 0.5 second animation, and immediately I see the Roku interface with no popups or Samsung branding or anything.
Probably the ONLY complaint is that by default my washing machine puts an alert on the TV every time it's finished.
I would probably find the setting to turn it off but honestly part of me finds it very cool for my washer to creep onto the TV because it knows I'm watching.
EDIT: maybe you are using wifi? It's the only thing I can think might be different in my setup. Try running RJ45 and see what happens? All I can say is Works On My Machine unless you add some details
ROFL - Are you seriously telling me a device running Roku software is trouble-free? Sell this lie somewhere else please. Devices running Roku software, TVs especially are a straight up dumpster fire.
On top of that, its harvesting the hell out of your data.
Stop being a sucker. Toss that Roku powered shit out of the window.
Thorens 166 turntable, Fischer tube amp from a flea market, and homemade speakers. I left that stuff in storage many years ago and have no idea where it is now. Come to think of it, that had a boot delay too (waiting for the tubes to warm up) but it never really bothered me.
You have to believe that the market for even mid-range audio/home theater gear is rapidly shrinking. I had my house cleared out because of a kitchen fire/smoke mitigation and I'm not sure--even assuming everything is declared OK--how much effort I'm going to put into hooking everything backup as I really didn't use it a lot. (Have a new TV/soundbar/subwoofer in another room.)
> How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience?
For me, I reckon less than 5k overall. JVC DLA-X5000 projector, Yamaha A1020 receiver, Focal Aria 936 speakers, SVS SB1000 sub, Raspberry Pi 2 with Kodi on it, a NAS with 16TiB of storage and gigabit networking to connect it all. All the AV stuff second hand, of course. No load times, no ads, just a system that works for me.
I do not accept technology into my life unless it works for me. If the latest nK formats and 1000 channel surround doesn't work without equipment that works for someone else than I'll never have it in my home. Simple as that. I'll read a book instead.
Which one of those replaces a Denon AV receiver to accept a bunch of inputs in various formats (HDMI, phono, optical, etc) including Dolby Atmos and ARC support to drive a multi-room 15.4 speaker system?
This is why I love vintage audio. I’m sitting here listening to classical on FM radio on my Marantz 2215B made in the 1970s and it is what you are describing and sublime.
Back in the mid 80s I spent way more than was sensible and bought myself seperate NAD pre/power amps, Boston Acoustic Speakers, and a Rega turntable for my birthday. I not only still have and use all that gear, but have since bought more of the same brands 2nd hand mostly from the same era, so I now have 5.1 surround in my lounge room, and stereo amp/speaker sets in my kitchen, office, bedroom, and guest bedroom - all NAD/Boston Acoustic, and all capable of doing Apple AirPlay via Apple TV or old Airport Expresses.
Vintage hifi is great. You will probably need to become the sort of person who can replace all the electrolytic capacitors in your amps and speakers crossovers, or at least know someone who can. And you'll become the sort of person who'll hunt the internet for someone who can ship you replacement drivers for your speakers, styluses and drive belts for your turntable, and hifi grade capacitors (and you'll probably stock pile all of those those). It's at least partially a hobby instead of just appliances you own.
Same here. Listening to Sibelius right now using a Marantz 2220b with equally old KLH 6 speakers, and a raspberry pi + dac to use internet radio. Sounds great, and pretty amazed it's still just working even though it's already more than 50+ years old.
The only issue is volume control, due to not having a remote for lazier folk. I can control it digitally but don't like "shaving" off bits to control volume.
I'll try to explain this from the point of view of someone who has tried to bring a bloatware-free hifi system to market:
Chinese copies + Amazon = flood of shit
It takes years to design, test, build prototypes, measure, re-design, re-build, calibrate, certify and produce a good hifi audio amp. That means you start your product journey with $500k in debt and unless you can show how you're going to sell enough units to recover this, your project is dead before it ever started. You typically need to sell at 8x of your real costs, because shipping companies, import agents, wholesalers and retailers all want (and need) their margins. If I expect to sell 2,000 units per month (which is A LOT already) for 2 years, then I need to add about $10 to my costs per unit to recover the R&D expenses. And that means as long as Amazon is happy to turn a blind eye on IP-infringing blatantly obvious clones that typically even re-use my product images or slogans or brand names ... then my "original" product will be undercut by $10x8 = $80 in price by Chinese clones. They don't have R&D to recoup because the can just buy my product, x-ray the PCB, and then make duplicates. And trying to get Amazon to follow the law is like playing expensive whack-a-mole with lawyers. It won't help to recover money.
That means as the manufacturer, I have exactly 1 way left to recover R&D expenses:
I lock down the software. And then I either shove ads in your face, or I bully you into a subscription. Or if the ads pay too little, both.
I hate the situation as much as you do, but I also see no better way forward. Nowadays, you need to plan for the flood of shitty clones on Amazon a week after launch. (Or in some cases, even before the original product clears import customs.) And that means you treat hardware as cheap and disposable, because your competitors do that and unless you join them, you're at a huge market disadvantage, because the average customer cannot tell the difference between a low-quality and a high-quality capacitor. (And Amazon doesn't care.)
Buy a used Braun A1/A2 amp (100-200$). There are maintenance handbooks online for both. Replace the two main condensators, which cost about 10-20$ each. Buy a pair of Canton GLE 200 or their presuccessors (100-350$). They didn’t change much in the last 20 years. Still very good, neutral and enough bass for a small living room.
Hook your Technics 1200 MK2/5 (1000$) with an all round needle (100$) to the Phono-In Cinch connectors.
Select your favorite vinyl from your collection, put it on the plate of the 1200. Move the arm on the first track of the vinyl.
Enjoy completely analog music without distractions.
The A1 boots in under 100ms, so does the Technics 1200.
Total costs 1670$.
Beats any Sonos etc. setup in sound quality and convenience.
Disclaimer: I have booth systems in parallel and I feel disgusted and disappointed every time I have to use the Sonos system now.
> How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience?
Beyond the speaker and amplifier of your choice (both dumb! or dumbed down) a few hundreds of USD and couple of weeks or months of learning and tinkering with low cost hardware and open source software for HiFi use. Some Raspberry Pis and matching DAC allowed me to have a very decent experience I needed (around KEF speakers). There were dead-ends, confusions, restarts, dubious or closed down solutions offered but you will rely moslty (not completely) on your own in the end if done right, and not exposed to the mercy of ruthless conglomerate assoles that much.
For my stereo setup, around $4000 for everything. It's also used for game emulators, kids to watch movies and cartoons, wife to watch whatever she feels like, etc.
Projector (Optoma laser) - $1200
110" powered retractable projector screen - $100
Mid tier PC - $600
DAC (Schiit modi 2) - $180
Amp (Behringer A500) - $100
SVS prime towers - $1000
SVS Sub - $750
All of my music is running off Jellyfin. I have a turntable that barely gets used but that's because I don't have enough space for it to keep it out of the reach/ damage radius of my kids.
You can of course do this for much less if you don't spend 2 grand on the audio part.
I’ve been into electronics for over 35 years and the basic audio amplifier topology hasn’t changed since the invention of the transistor, the only thing that had been improved is efficiency, beyond that it’s just added features as a selling point. That’s why vintage amplifiers are very sought after.
Why on earth do you say that? :))) I got a nice Samsung 12" tablet, and a nice Samsung (work) smartphone. After 20-30mins of disabling bloat/crap-ware their batteries last a week on stand-by.
Not sure what you are complaining about, I have Samsungs surround soundbar, they are amazing for the price (apart from fuckup with forced updade bricking the bar, but I'd never ever update soundbar or similar tech if it just works... why? There is never any gain just potential risks, I don't do ebanking via soundbar ffs).
My TV is just a rather basic chinese 75" TCL, and I have absolutely 0 zilch ads anywhere apart from actual Google products (youtube of course but thats a terrible experience anywhere without ublock origin or similar, and OS showing on the background in main menu ads for their paid movies - the place I spend maybe 3s during start if at all and they don't even look like ads just background). If I launch straight ie netflix 0 nanoseconds spent seeing ads. If I play from USB there is nothing. And this is rock bottom chinese stuff.
Turning on TV which is in sleep mode is like 2s max, another 2s and soundbar is on automatically via eArc.
I used to have B&W towers with Pioneer receiver (bought for peanuts, older tech sounds 100% as new one) but then I realized they add friction to whole experience and I prefer a small notch lower sound quality to convenience and surround. Samsung soundbar with that TV does that 100%. Apart from playing music only I don't even notice the difference.
Is this maybe region specific behavior? I live in Switzerland, US consumers are widely known to accept way more ads than other western countries, plus there is a lot of wealth in that single market.
Have a 10TB movie collection on an external HDD (mostly 1080p x265 rips and few 4K ones) but its less convenient and I have to download new stuff myself. Plus I love standup collection Netflix has.
Total price cca 1.5 years ago - cca 1700$ and a proper cinema experience.
High end in what terms? Most options will sound the same (to me? to most?), so the option with the better user experience is really the high end option.
Go to any large retailer and they will ask you to user their branded credit card. They will also ask you do if you want the extended warranty on anything not obviously consumable.
I hate to be that guy but how on earth do you have a "high-end" system (your words) that does all this?
Sure, there is some boot up time to warm everything up, but there are no ads and no user agreements etc on mid to high end systems.
Even my entry level system (denon avr, lg c1 oled, appletv4k and ugoos as media players) does not take more then 10 seconds from totally off to showing the menu / plex interface, and no user agreement popups or ads
My system is very similar to yours. I’ve got a UHD player, XBox, Plex Server, and a half-dozen retro gaming systems in the mix. But apparently I'm not as patient as you (and others that responded) are.
I find 10 seconds to be intolerable and unnecessary. I’m old enough to have been spoiled by the analog world where power meant you were ready.
Not only is the time-to-wait painful, occasionally the HDMI handshake fails or the TV powered on quicker than the receiver’s signal was output and its input selection “picks” the wrong input or wrong display settings. So now you have to consider the order you’re powering things up, because the TV is “smart” and if you tell it to choose an input that isn’t ready, it’ll self-select one it thinks is ready.
And if I’m using HDMI-ARC, which I frequently do when using an over-the-air signal, if the TV powers on sooner than the receiver, the TV falls back to its own speakers. So now I’m stuck navigating the TV menu to get the audio through my SVS speakers instead of the ones in the TV.
Occasionally my TV has an “update” and then its apps have updates and then the update presents a new “user agreement” with all the data harvesting options pre-selected. If I don’t use my system frequently, two of the devices in the chain may want to update!
And after all that, if I’m watching physical media I then have to wait for the disc to be read and navigate through forced ads or trailers or piracy warnings. If they aren’t forced, I still have to intervene to skip them and get to the menu. But don’t select anything too fast on the menu! It has its own animations it wants you to watch before it will show you what options you have.
And all of that whining doesn’t even cover the wasteland of options available to remote control and make sense of the Rube-Goldberg AV system. The best option (Logitech Harmony) bailed leaving consumers with nothing but the Chinese schlock that hollowed out the market in the first place.
The thing is, traditional receivers wanted to be the "brains" of home theater, switching video inputs, managing audio, turning everything on.
That role is no longer sensible when used with smart TVs/Apple TV boxes/Android TV boxes.
As a result, traditional receivers are relegated to be being audio decoders and amplifiers. Honestly, I think there's already more manufactured and lying around than the world really needs. It was inevitable that a few product lines would be consolidated.
Really good call out, that the TV now often is the center of the AV experience, where-as the "receiver" (and amplifier) used to be driving the show.
I really really wish there were digital audio decoder/processors available. It sucks so bad that you either buy a semi affordable consumer amplifier with 7.2.2 Dolby Atmos out and ok amplification, or if you want to step up you need a $4000+ processor whose only real job is decoding Dolby formats & turning them into analog outs for amplification. And there's almost no market, just a couple odd products like Emotiva's XMC-2: https://emotiva.com/products/xmc-2-plus-16-channel-9-1-6-dis...
Opener standards like DTS would hopefully have some remedy here but if the source material isn't available it hardly matters. Hoping for actual open standards Immersive Audio Model and Format (iamf) and the Eclipsa Audio Format profiles atop that maybe some day give us good spatial audio that an rpi and multichannel sound out board can help us free ourselves from this vile civilization-scale Dolby tarpit with. https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/introducing-eclips...
Any article posted here about smart TVs draws a large number of comments about limitations and annoyances of smart TV platforms.
90+% of the things people complain about would no longer be a problem if they got a traditional A/V receiver, plugged all their sources such as streaming boxes and game consoles into the receiver, and just used the smart TV as a monitor (and as a tuner if they watch OTA television).
Until that is no longer the case there will be a role for traditional A/V receivers.
eARC or whatever it is really changed this. I don't need a receiver with buttons anymore, I just need one that handles eARC gracefully.
We're about five years away from "no remotes" anymore, imo. As it is I only need to find the TV remote when something goes really wonky - and even then I can reset it by using the smart app to power cycle the outlet ;)
Yes, but vinyl is making a strong comeback, and with that comes the need for traditional receivers. Even CDs are making a comeback -- as many indie artists publish CDs (and some do vinyl), which implies demand for standalone CD players with a receiver (like those made by the Denon, Onkyo, etc.)
I have a HomePod in my living room and it gets used, but I also have a traditional receiver hooked up to my external speakers, with a turntable and CD player plugged into the receiver.
If you are really into AV they are more important than ever.
Yes at first glance a TV does the switching, and the rest. But a modern receiver can be better. Better switching, better ability to handle multiple speakers ( particularly for Dolby Atmos ) including Room EQ. Alot of TVs only have 2 HDMI ports with all the latest features.
This is one of the things that kept me from getting a proper home theater setup. It always seemed like more complexity than I wanted under my TV. I could do it, but I simply objected to the idea. Not to mention, I like for someone to be able to come to my house and use my TV without taking a class first.
Speaking only anecdotally, when I was in my 20s, I bought a Sony "home theatre in a box" which included receiver, small subwoofer, and small satellite speakers. Over time, I upgraded to an Onkyo reciever and Polk center, surrounds, and subwoofer.
But... then I decided I wanted a more minimal look, and switched to a JBL sound bar + subwoofer, which has detachable surrounds -- but I almost never utilize them.
For sure, the sound is nothing compared to what I had before, but I'm mostly OK with it. All that to say, how popular are sound bars, and how popular are dedicated receivers?
You could estimate it from sales or something, but Walmart has a huge wall full of various TVs, and barely one half of one aisle-side of soundbars, and no receivers/speaker setups.
I suspect something like 80% of people use the TV, and of those who upgrade, use a soundbar, maybe.
And even those with a dedicated theatre room, probably have other TVs that are just TV audio.
Probably one issue could also be that a lot of this stuff is actually pretty well made, and repairable. My old NAD amplifier is more than 25 year old and doing great. I don't need a new one. I've switched speakers a few times, to better fit the rooms as we've moved, but the amplifier just sits in a corner with the CD player and turntable.
I'd agree with others, speakers aren't that concerning. There are niche speaker manufacturers and used or refurbished is still a good option. To be honest, I'd also look to the used market if I where to replace my amp.
Personally I don't have anything against Samsung, but I doubt they'll be a good steward of those brands. Corporate interest and niche high quality audio seems to at opposite ends of the spectrum. I could be wrong, Sony makes nice stuff, maybe Samsung will as well.
Not very popular, but popular enough. If you care about sound more than looks (...and if you get the system set up and have a convincing story for your wife that it must be this way), it's the only way to experience movies 'properly'; mixed with an OLED TV, a proper subwoofer (like PB-1000 or similar) and bluray-quality content the system will be better than your average cinema experience.
Now, whether that means anything when 99% of everything made for watching is just playing in the background while you're reading HN on your phone is debatable. Still wouldn't trade the setup even if I'm watching one movie per month. (I'm not even close to that high of a number...)
There are some exaggerated setups showcased by users on reddit (/r/hometheater)
You can see people with dedicated movie theatre-like rooms in their home. If you follow the discussions they all seem to have started where you did in your 20s and continued in the opposite direction.
AFAIK B&W 800D is used in many mastering studio's. I wonder what they will do with their high-end / pro audio segment, since it's quite different from your average home stereo (or even hi-fi) markets.
I wondered the same thing...FWIW under Samsung the pro/pro-sumer audio Harman brands (JBL in particular) have managed to keep making well-regarded products from consumer Bluetooth speakers up to live PA systems and studio monitors. On the other hand, Lexicon is a former top-shelf audio brand that has pretty much languished under Harman - they no longer employ some of the world's best audio DSP talents, and have been slow to update the highly regarded Lexicon DAW plugins for native Apple Silicon.
I have a Marantz receiver that I’ve been using for around a decade now and it’s been excellent, having done its job well the whole time and it having continued to get updates fixing or improving things (e.g. after Spotify bricked a bunch of stuff by deprecating its old API, Marantz issued an update using the new API).
Given Samsung’s track record with enshittification and support timelines I’m worried that this acquisition means all that will be going away, which is a shame. Guess I’ll be looking at Sony and Yamaha models instead going forward.
I rate Denon above Marantz for AV. Marantz looks nicer, but its massively overrated and overpriced, and the sound quality is worse than Denon at the same price point.
Samsung acquired Harman Audio some years ago. Harman owns several well-known brands like JBL, Infinity, and Revel. They've invested billions in audio R&D, and Samsung has clearly benefited from that. Their soundbars now exceed the sound quality of Sonos systems that cost twice as much (or three times as much during sales).
Denon and Marantz are arguably the best AVR manufacturers. It’ll be interesting to see what Samsung does with them. The home theater market is pretty outdated compared to other areas of audio. Car audio, soundbars, and professional systems mostly use active speakers and tightly integrated setups. Meanwhile, home theater is still stuck with passive speakers and a component-based approach.
While some might see this as a monopoly concern, there's a chance Samsung could use its combined brands to modernize home audio. Imagine a fully wireless, all-in-one home theater system with active speakers and centralized room correction. That could be a real step forward.
Sony already does some wireless surrounds. They sound like crap.
The problem with wireless speakers is you can't really stream at a high enough bitrate to them to make for decent audio. Plus to really work, they need a plug nearby.
People without a proper room really can't enjoy surround sound which is a shame. There's this whole world of high end home theater equipment most people never get a chance to hear.
I try to show everyone my theater room to get more people excited. Several friends have run out and bought setups after hearing it. It's not too hard to run wires and mount speakers. I genuinely think most people just don't know what they are missing.
That’s not true about wireless speakers. Compressed audio that is indistinguishable from any loseless format is very small, and even if you compress beyond that, it is really hard to tell. Speakers and room acoustics dominate.
Most people don’t have theater rooms, and they don’t want their living room to look like one.
Most people who hear a Samsung q990x series soundbar are super excited too. I think you overestimate how much better a dedicated speaker setup is, especially if we are talking 5.1.
It's a shame that big box stores (Walmart, Target) / online retail (Amazon) / brand owned stores (Apple, Bose) have all conspired to reduce consumer choice. Even in big cities, there's practically no specialty stores to go to in which I can demo a product category across brands.
Think pre-GFC peak Best Buy & the old CompUSA/Circuit City chains of the past or even Apple before they captured every other product category and actually had entire tables of headphone and speaker brands.
It strikes me as very hard for any new brand to come about in this environment if they aren't already big enough to have their own storefront. As you are generally left shopping online by price (DTC / China alphabet soup branded sop on AMZN) or by known brand (I'll just get a Sony / Apple / Sonos / Bose).
The consumer choice spectrum was pretty rad in the mid-to-late-1980s. I was often in the market for hi-fi stereo equipment, and I did it by accumulating discrete components one-by-one.
In my home city, we had several electronics retailers who sold every kind of component stereo equipment, including car stereo and whatnot. So I could literally walk into a store and see a huge gamut of dual-deck cassette recorders, or turntables, or amplifiers, receivers, etc. And they were all set up for customer demo. It was fantastic.
When the time came for me to shop for a CD audio player, I pre-purchased a few CDs to listen to for the demos. That was a great move; the place where I went for "auditions" had a dedicated listening room just chock-a-block with equipment that could be switched into whatever speaker system fit my home setup. And so in exactly one stop at a retail outlet, I was able to listen to that CD through several diverse systems, make a final purchase decision, and walk out of there with my favorite 7-disc CD changer, which served well for about 15 years after that.
The problem with showrooms is it is easy to go in, see what you need, then walk out and order from the cheaper mail order place that doesn't have retail overhead.
The other problem is walmart with the generic stuff is good enough for most even though it is measurably bad, in a cheap but measurably bad listening environment - but they can thereby compete with online sales. That and a lot of expensive stuff is measurably no better than the "our best" walmark junk and so if you do find such a store there is no guarantee they are not pushing you overprice junk instead of the good stuff.
It goes back to the old tale of "being too poor to buy cheap boots" that US consumerism has forgotten. We are addicted to cheap stuff, not good value stuff. Cheap is not always good value.
We went from being able to walk into a store and actually try stuff out - compare how headphones sound, how a speaker feels in your hands - to now just gambling on Amazon reviews and hoping return policies are generous
I spent several years at B&W prior to the Sound United and Masimo era, so this news makes me incredibly sad. I hope Samsung doesn’t run the company into the ground.
There are lots of good people left at B&W. If they are afforded the autonomy they deserve, everything will be fine. If not…I guess we’ll see.
That if is the question. There in other industries examples of a good small company being bought out and it is for the better - they keep making quality things but now have the advantages of the big company. There however a lot of well known examples of a good small company being bought out for the name which is then put on junk while fooling people who still remember the name.
I feel that sound bars + speakers directly attached to TVs has decimated the "home theatre receiver."
"Back in the day", home theatre receivers made sense when you wanted Radio + CD inputs in addition to the TV input. But radio and CD players are gone. There is just TV. Even when I do audio, I run it through the TV.
Thus why do you need a separate box? It just seems like a waste.
Instead everyone these days are just attaching their speaker systems directly to the TV.
And with wireless speakers, e.g. Sonos and similar systems, a centralized audio amplifier just doesn't make sense at all.
So all that is left is ultra-high end applications and there are few of those.
I feel like this is tied to the overall decline in movie and music quality. Maybe I'm just getting old. There is no more "Titanic" or "Nirvana". Lots of people have noticed the decline in audio mixing in movies as well, which has led to a generation of younger adults who need captions for regular movies. A discrete audio system would probably help with this but for what? How many times are you going to watch latest Avengers?
There are 2 problems currently with movie audio. One is that the channel separation is not as good as it used to be. New movies have 5.1 audio the effect is minimal which no longer justifies the expense on the sound system. People online are saying this is because many movies are made for primarily for streaming and that majority of people listen on their TV or sound bar instead of dedicated surround systems.
The second issue is what you described, the mixing is just bad, sound effects and music are much louder than dialog making it impossible to comprehend without subtitles.
The whole "4/5 speakers around the room" never made sense to me. It always felt overly complicated for a premium price that no one could afford or cared about. I used to hang out with people who had luxury sound systems but it was way too expensive or complicated for my daily use.
For the past 15 years, I have used the same cheap combo of soundbar+subwoofer (Sony but anything goes) and it's perfect for everything I throw at it. The sound is equivalent to what I remember on those expensive sets, it's only $250, and I don't spend my whole time in front of the TV listening to high-quality remasters of classical concerts while smoking a cigar.
The high-end brands have failed to recognize that for most people a decent set of cheap speakers is equivalent to a cinema experience. They should have studied that instead of focusing on incomprehensible technical values and numbers. The software industry is guilty of this too.
Soundbars -- and also improved built-in TV speakers -- have eaten the low-end receiver market, for sure, but there are still a lot of other installations. A soundbar and stuff like Sonos are still compromises vs discrete channel speakers, and many people are still willing to pay for better sound. You don't have to go too high end to want better sound.
Marantz gear in particular is great, and Samsung buying them seems really unfortunate. Might be better than some private equity randos though.
Personally I have a Raspberry with Kodi, a Chromecast and a Nintendo Switch attached to my Onkyo receiver and only one HDMI cable going to the wall-mounted TV. Plus two nice (for my taste) big speakers. And I can listen to streaming music without turning the TV on (big big plus)
I have Chromecast, Blu-ray player, Steam Deck, and computer hooked to my beamer. My solution was a HDMI switch with audio extraction capability, so the HDMI audio goes from the switch to a tiny digital amplifier feeding my stereo speakers. And one HDMI out from the switch to the beamer of course. Very compact and modular system, quite happy with it.
Most TVs have downward firing speakers which splat the audio all about -- bouncing around before entering your ears. I wonder if it's easy to detach the speaker and pull it out and face it forward just like my old Vizio did 15 years ago...
I have a Philips TV with awful sound connected to a Marantz NR1200 2.1 AV receiver. More than happy with it, handles all my audio needs and has so many inputs I don't think I'll need to replace it anytime soon.
I think the overall experience with the modern setup is worse in every way than 20 years ago with the exception of picture quality since we have 4K now. (Of course mostly we watch heavily compressed streaming video). 20 years ago I had a 5.1 system and would watch DVDs. The sound was vastly better than TV speakers/soundbar, compression was lower on the video despite being SD. By 15 years ago this was no longer true with a Blue Ray player of course, everything was better. My setup back then even had an audio compressor ("dynamic range adjustment") so you could actually hear the dialog when you needed to turn the volume down at night. No need to use subtitles!
But the old setup doesn't make sense anymore either as you would have had to keep replacing the receiver a bunch of times for no good reason as AV standards changed.
I got rid of my old setup at some point. I have a new system in another room that doesn't do video at all. It's just stereo with a CD player, a Turntable, a digital media player (doesn't get used much) and a Bluetooth input for streaming.
Nearly all TVs have an SPDIF out and can send 5.1 Dolby Digital extracted from whatever input (Streaming, Blu-ray via HDMI, broadcast, etc.) to that output. I’m sure you’re 20 year old receiver already had an SPDIF input and a Dolby Digital decoder.
You could have easily kept that setup with the same level of soundquality the whole time - assuming nothing breaks.
I think large 5.1 just went out of fashion due to the size and cable requirements and the fact that soundbars became good enough.
I have an 7.1.4 Atmos system with a Sony ES receiver.
I can definitively tell you that sound bars to not come anywhere close to the quality of what I have, and at a decent price too (the entire audio setup cost less than my OLED tv).
I think most people are never exposed to real home theater audio so they don't know what they are missing. Similar with high end stereo audio these days (which I also have).
Every time I show Top Gun Maverick in my theater room to a friend, they want to go out and buy a real setup. Several have. It sounds better than an actual theater plus I get to lounge on my couch with my dog.
Most people are basic and have basic needs, and a soundbar suffices in most cases.
I was sort of one of those people, with a soundbar, because it was easy and convenient. The soundbar came with a wireless subwoofer, and that solved the problem of running wires across my living room.
But, I had a gifted B&W 5.1 system with powered sub collecting dust out in my garage for a long time. I recently made the push to dust it all off and buy a receiver to power it, replacing the soundbar+sub we had been using for years.
The difference is really night and day. The soundbar just never got loud enough for when I wanted to crank-it-up when playing music. It was good enough for watching most TV shows, but the sound we get now from a 5.1 movie is incredible in comparison.
I did the work to run completely flat speaker wires to the surround speakers, under the rug in our living room. It took some work to re-route wires and get power to where the receiver is, but it was well worth it.
The new system goes as loud as I can stand it with crystal-clarity all the way up to "11". The soundbar looks like a piece of junk in comparison and is now out in the garage collecting dust.
Yeah proper sound is something you have to experience to understand, otherwise you’ll keep saying ‘I don’t need it’ or ‘a soundbar is good enough’. If you never cross the -30 level, maybe it is…
The most interesting recent acquisition of this kind I'm aware of is the Bose acquisition of McIntosh. As this article [0] notes:
Dr. Amar Bose donated the majority of his namesake company to his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So technically, MIT now owns both McIntosh and Sonus faber, two of the biggest players in luxury audio. (MIT has non-voting shares of Bose, so although the university owns the majority of the company, it does not control business decisions.)
How many people hear "JBL" and think "Bluetooth speaker" instead of "high end stereo gear?"
How many people hear B&W or Harman-Kardon and think "logo on my car's speakers" rather than "high end stereo gear?"
How many people hear "Mark Levinson" and think either "Lexus" or "who's Mark?"
I genuinely didn't know that there were still real, standalone speakers and head units made under half these brands that aren't whitelabeled Bluetooth detritus.
Readit News
How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience? Just like every retailer has embraced usury with their credit card programs, every technology company has decided they are in the data harvesting business. I’m so over it.
Not much. Buy used. Buying new stereo equipment is an activity of the wealthy. Everywhere I've ever lived, CraigsList is overrun with excellent used speakers and receivers at reasonable prices.
I won't inundate you with brand-flexing, but I'll say I'm very happy with my home theater system. 4K OLED TV, big ol' tower speakers, and a pretty nice home theater unit. All from reputable brands. All used. Under $400 all together. No shitware.
Get a Yamaha [0], NAD [1], Rotel [2]?
I would have adamantly said AKAI, but they are no more.
[0]: https://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio_visual/hifi_components...
[1]: https://nadelectronics.com/product/c-3050-stereophonic-ampli...
[2]: https://www.rotel.com/en-gb/product/a11mkii
Edit: Immediately after posting this I scrolled down and saw "The C 3050’s industrial design was inspired by the NAD 3030 Stereophonic Amplifier, a 1970s classic" which explains the look!
isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that
Generally though, consumers have already spoken with their wallets on this topic and they have told many thousands of doe-eyed founders loud and clear: “we will happily sacrifice our time and privacy to save a $3, bring on the ads”
Hence why YC focuses on B2B Saas for B2B Saas companies who sell to other B2B Saas companies.
Deleted Comment
NO! I've been here long enough to remember PG saying to build something people WANT. YC has become less about technical founders building an MVP and more about the investors finding something they can make money from. The later often depends on "monetization" which has become the driver of enshitification, which is precisely the opposite of what people want and the antithesis of what YC once was.
Abusing customers as a business model should not be legal. It's not ethical to begin with, actually, and applauding this practice is interesting.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
I use a Frame and don't have any of the issues you describe in the slightest.
The power button turns the TV on with a 0.5 second animation, and immediately I see the Roku interface with no popups or Samsung branding or anything.
Probably the ONLY complaint is that by default my washing machine puts an alert on the TV every time it's finished.
I would probably find the setting to turn it off but honestly part of me finds it very cool for my washer to creep onto the TV because it knows I'm watching.
EDIT: maybe you are using wifi? It's the only thing I can think might be different in my setup. Try running RJ45 and see what happens? All I can say is Works On My Machine unless you add some details
On top of that, its harvesting the hell out of your data.
Stop being a sucker. Toss that Roku powered shit out of the window.
...I want it.
For me, I reckon less than 5k overall. JVC DLA-X5000 projector, Yamaha A1020 receiver, Focal Aria 936 speakers, SVS SB1000 sub, Raspberry Pi 2 with Kodi on it, a NAS with 16TiB of storage and gigabit networking to connect it all. All the AV stuff second hand, of course. No load times, no ads, just a system that works for me.
I do not accept technology into my life unless it works for me. If the latest nK formats and 1000 channel surround doesn't work without equipment that works for someone else than I'll never have it in my home. Simple as that. I'll read a book instead.
Back in the mid 80s I spent way more than was sensible and bought myself seperate NAD pre/power amps, Boston Acoustic Speakers, and a Rega turntable for my birthday. I not only still have and use all that gear, but have since bought more of the same brands 2nd hand mostly from the same era, so I now have 5.1 surround in my lounge room, and stereo amp/speaker sets in my kitchen, office, bedroom, and guest bedroom - all NAD/Boston Acoustic, and all capable of doing Apple AirPlay via Apple TV or old Airport Expresses.
Vintage hifi is great. You will probably need to become the sort of person who can replace all the electrolytic capacitors in your amps and speakers crossovers, or at least know someone who can. And you'll become the sort of person who'll hunt the internet for someone who can ship you replacement drivers for your speakers, styluses and drive belts for your turntable, and hifi grade capacitors (and you'll probably stock pile all of those those). It's at least partially a hobby instead of just appliances you own.
The only issue is volume control, due to not having a remote for lazier folk. I can control it digitally but don't like "shaving" off bits to control volume.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Chinese copies + Amazon = flood of shit
It takes years to design, test, build prototypes, measure, re-design, re-build, calibrate, certify and produce a good hifi audio amp. That means you start your product journey with $500k in debt and unless you can show how you're going to sell enough units to recover this, your project is dead before it ever started. You typically need to sell at 8x of your real costs, because shipping companies, import agents, wholesalers and retailers all want (and need) their margins. If I expect to sell 2,000 units per month (which is A LOT already) for 2 years, then I need to add about $10 to my costs per unit to recover the R&D expenses. And that means as long as Amazon is happy to turn a blind eye on IP-infringing blatantly obvious clones that typically even re-use my product images or slogans or brand names ... then my "original" product will be undercut by $10x8 = $80 in price by Chinese clones. They don't have R&D to recoup because the can just buy my product, x-ray the PCB, and then make duplicates. And trying to get Amazon to follow the law is like playing expensive whack-a-mole with lawyers. It won't help to recover money.
That means as the manufacturer, I have exactly 1 way left to recover R&D expenses:
I lock down the software. And then I either shove ads in your face, or I bully you into a subscription. Or if the ads pay too little, both.
I hate the situation as much as you do, but I also see no better way forward. Nowadays, you need to plan for the flood of shitty clones on Amazon a week after launch. (Or in some cases, even before the original product clears import customs.) And that means you treat hardware as cheap and disposable, because your competitors do that and unless you join them, you're at a huge market disadvantage, because the average customer cannot tell the difference between a low-quality and a high-quality capacitor. (And Amazon doesn't care.)
https://www.cultofmac.com/news/selfie-stick-iphone-case-gets...
(And please note that these guys even had US patents on the product. Didn't help them, though.)
Too much effort when they can just go to the company making them and get cheaply made copies :)
Disclaimer: I have booth systems in parallel and I feel disgusted and disappointed every time I have to use the Sonos system now.
Beyond the speaker and amplifier of your choice (both dumb! or dumbed down) a few hundreds of USD and couple of weeks or months of learning and tinkering with low cost hardware and open source software for HiFi use. Some Raspberry Pis and matching DAC allowed me to have a very decent experience I needed (around KEF speakers). There were dead-ends, confusions, restarts, dubious or closed down solutions offered but you will rely moslty (not completely) on your own in the end if done right, and not exposed to the mercy of ruthless conglomerate assoles that much.
Projector (Optoma laser) - $1200
110" powered retractable projector screen - $100
Mid tier PC - $600
DAC (Schiit modi 2) - $180
Amp (Behringer A500) - $100
SVS prime towers - $1000
SVS Sub - $750
All of my music is running off Jellyfin. I have a turntable that barely gets used but that's because I don't have enough space for it to keep it out of the reach/ damage radius of my kids.
You can of course do this for much less if you don't spend 2 grand on the audio part.
Why on earth do you say that? :))) I got a nice Samsung 12" tablet, and a nice Samsung (work) smartphone. After 20-30mins of disabling bloat/crap-ware their batteries last a week on stand-by.
My TV is just a rather basic chinese 75" TCL, and I have absolutely 0 zilch ads anywhere apart from actual Google products (youtube of course but thats a terrible experience anywhere without ublock origin or similar, and OS showing on the background in main menu ads for their paid movies - the place I spend maybe 3s during start if at all and they don't even look like ads just background). If I launch straight ie netflix 0 nanoseconds spent seeing ads. If I play from USB there is nothing. And this is rock bottom chinese stuff.
Turning on TV which is in sleep mode is like 2s max, another 2s and soundbar is on automatically via eArc.
I used to have B&W towers with Pioneer receiver (bought for peanuts, older tech sounds 100% as new one) but then I realized they add friction to whole experience and I prefer a small notch lower sound quality to convenience and surround. Samsung soundbar with that TV does that 100%. Apart from playing music only I don't even notice the difference.
Is this maybe region specific behavior? I live in Switzerland, US consumers are widely known to accept way more ads than other western countries, plus there is a lot of wealth in that single market.
Have a 10TB movie collection on an external HDD (mostly 1080p x265 rips and few 4K ones) but its less convenient and I have to download new stuff myself. Plus I love standup collection Netflix has.
Total price cca 1.5 years ago - cca 1700$ and a proper cinema experience.
What does this mean?
Sure, there is some boot up time to warm everything up, but there are no ads and no user agreements etc on mid to high end systems.
Even my entry level system (denon avr, lg c1 oled, appletv4k and ugoos as media players) does not take more then 10 seconds from totally off to showing the menu / plex interface, and no user agreement popups or ads
My system is very similar to yours. I’ve got a UHD player, XBox, Plex Server, and a half-dozen retro gaming systems in the mix. But apparently I'm not as patient as you (and others that responded) are.
I find 10 seconds to be intolerable and unnecessary. I’m old enough to have been spoiled by the analog world where power meant you were ready.
Not only is the time-to-wait painful, occasionally the HDMI handshake fails or the TV powered on quicker than the receiver’s signal was output and its input selection “picks” the wrong input or wrong display settings. So now you have to consider the order you’re powering things up, because the TV is “smart” and if you tell it to choose an input that isn’t ready, it’ll self-select one it thinks is ready.
And if I’m using HDMI-ARC, which I frequently do when using an over-the-air signal, if the TV powers on sooner than the receiver, the TV falls back to its own speakers. So now I’m stuck navigating the TV menu to get the audio through my SVS speakers instead of the ones in the TV.
Occasionally my TV has an “update” and then its apps have updates and then the update presents a new “user agreement” with all the data harvesting options pre-selected. If I don’t use my system frequently, two of the devices in the chain may want to update!
And after all that, if I’m watching physical media I then have to wait for the disc to be read and navigate through forced ads or trailers or piracy warnings. If they aren’t forced, I still have to intervene to skip them and get to the menu. But don’t select anything too fast on the menu! It has its own animations it wants you to watch before it will show you what options you have.
And all of that whining doesn’t even cover the wasteland of options available to remote control and make sense of the Rube-Goldberg AV system. The best option (Logitech Harmony) bailed leaving consumers with nothing but the Chinese schlock that hollowed out the market in the first place.
No Bloatware.
Dead Comment
But! There are relatively few home theater receiver makers, and the Denon/Marantz siblings have been a big chunk of them for decades.
(Sony, Yamaha, Onkyo, Denon. Nobody else covers the low and mid cost market.)
That role is no longer sensible when used with smart TVs/Apple TV boxes/Android TV boxes.
As a result, traditional receivers are relegated to be being audio decoders and amplifiers. Honestly, I think there's already more manufactured and lying around than the world really needs. It was inevitable that a few product lines would be consolidated.
I really really wish there were digital audio decoder/processors available. It sucks so bad that you either buy a semi affordable consumer amplifier with 7.2.2 Dolby Atmos out and ok amplification, or if you want to step up you need a $4000+ processor whose only real job is decoding Dolby formats & turning them into analog outs for amplification. And there's almost no market, just a couple odd products like Emotiva's XMC-2: https://emotiva.com/products/xmc-2-plus-16-channel-9-1-6-dis...
Opener standards like DTS would hopefully have some remedy here but if the source material isn't available it hardly matters. Hoping for actual open standards Immersive Audio Model and Format (iamf) and the Eclipsa Audio Format profiles atop that maybe some day give us good spatial audio that an rpi and multichannel sound out board can help us free ourselves from this vile civilization-scale Dolby tarpit with. https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/introducing-eclips...
90+% of the things people complain about would no longer be a problem if they got a traditional A/V receiver, plugged all their sources such as streaming boxes and game consoles into the receiver, and just used the smart TV as a monitor (and as a tuner if they watch OTA television).
Until that is no longer the case there will be a role for traditional A/V receivers.
We're about five years away from "no remotes" anymore, imo. As it is I only need to find the TV remote when something goes really wonky - and even then I can reset it by using the smart app to power cycle the outlet ;)
I have a HomePod in my living room and it gets used, but I also have a traditional receiver hooked up to my external speakers, with a turntable and CD player plugged into the receiver.
Yes at first glance a TV does the switching, and the rest. But a modern receiver can be better. Better switching, better ability to handle multiple speakers ( particularly for Dolby Atmos ) including Room EQ. Alot of TVs only have 2 HDMI ports with all the latest features.
Speaking only anecdotally, when I was in my 20s, I bought a Sony "home theatre in a box" which included receiver, small subwoofer, and small satellite speakers. Over time, I upgraded to an Onkyo reciever and Polk center, surrounds, and subwoofer.
But... then I decided I wanted a more minimal look, and switched to a JBL sound bar + subwoofer, which has detachable surrounds -- but I almost never utilize them.
For sure, the sound is nothing compared to what I had before, but I'm mostly OK with it. All that to say, how popular are sound bars, and how popular are dedicated receivers?
I suspect something like 80% of people use the TV, and of those who upgrade, use a soundbar, maybe.
And even those with a dedicated theatre room, probably have other TVs that are just TV audio.
I'd agree with others, speakers aren't that concerning. There are niche speaker manufacturers and used or refurbished is still a good option. To be honest, I'd also look to the used market if I where to replace my amp.
Personally I don't have anything against Samsung, but I doubt they'll be a good steward of those brands. Corporate interest and niche high quality audio seems to at opposite ends of the spectrum. I could be wrong, Sony makes nice stuff, maybe Samsung will as well.
Now, whether that means anything when 99% of everything made for watching is just playing in the background while you're reading HN on your phone is debatable. Still wouldn't trade the setup even if I'm watching one movie per month. (I'm not even close to that high of a number...)
Given Samsung’s track record with enshittification and support timelines I’m worried that this acquisition means all that will be going away, which is a shame. Guess I’ll be looking at Sony and Yamaha models instead going forward.
Denon and Marantz are arguably the best AVR manufacturers. It’ll be interesting to see what Samsung does with them. The home theater market is pretty outdated compared to other areas of audio. Car audio, soundbars, and professional systems mostly use active speakers and tightly integrated setups. Meanwhile, home theater is still stuck with passive speakers and a component-based approach.
While some might see this as a monopoly concern, there's a chance Samsung could use its combined brands to modernize home audio. Imagine a fully wireless, all-in-one home theater system with active speakers and centralized room correction. That could be a real step forward.
The problem with wireless speakers is you can't really stream at a high enough bitrate to them to make for decent audio. Plus to really work, they need a plug nearby.
People without a proper room really can't enjoy surround sound which is a shame. There's this whole world of high end home theater equipment most people never get a chance to hear.
I try to show everyone my theater room to get more people excited. Several friends have run out and bought setups after hearing it. It's not too hard to run wires and mount speakers. I genuinely think most people just don't know what they are missing.
Most people don’t have theater rooms, and they don’t want their living room to look like one.
Most people who hear a Samsung q990x series soundbar are super excited too. I think you overestimate how much better a dedicated speaker setup is, especially if we are talking 5.1.
Think pre-GFC peak Best Buy & the old CompUSA/Circuit City chains of the past or even Apple before they captured every other product category and actually had entire tables of headphone and speaker brands.
It strikes me as very hard for any new brand to come about in this environment if they aren't already big enough to have their own storefront. As you are generally left shopping online by price (DTC / China alphabet soup branded sop on AMZN) or by known brand (I'll just get a Sony / Apple / Sonos / Bose).
In my home city, we had several electronics retailers who sold every kind of component stereo equipment, including car stereo and whatnot. So I could literally walk into a store and see a huge gamut of dual-deck cassette recorders, or turntables, or amplifiers, receivers, etc. And they were all set up for customer demo. It was fantastic.
When the time came for me to shop for a CD audio player, I pre-purchased a few CDs to listen to for the demos. That was a great move; the place where I went for "auditions" had a dedicated listening room just chock-a-block with equipment that could be switched into whatever speaker system fit my home setup. And so in exactly one stop at a retail outlet, I was able to listen to that CD through several diverse systems, make a final purchase decision, and walk out of there with my favorite 7-disc CD changer, which served well for about 15 years after that.
The other problem is walmart with the generic stuff is good enough for most even though it is measurably bad, in a cheap but measurably bad listening environment - but they can thereby compete with online sales. That and a lot of expensive stuff is measurably no better than the "our best" walmark junk and so if you do find such a store there is no guarantee they are not pushing you overprice junk instead of the good stuff.
It goes back to the old tale of "being too poor to buy cheap boots" that US consumerism has forgotten. We are addicted to cheap stuff, not good value stuff. Cheap is not always good value.
Deleted Comment
There are lots of good people left at B&W. If they are afforded the autonomy they deserve, everything will be fine. If not…I guess we’ll see.
Only time will tell.
"Back in the day", home theatre receivers made sense when you wanted Radio + CD inputs in addition to the TV input. But radio and CD players are gone. There is just TV. Even when I do audio, I run it through the TV.
Thus why do you need a separate box? It just seems like a waste.
Instead everyone these days are just attaching their speaker systems directly to the TV.
And with wireless speakers, e.g. Sonos and similar systems, a centralized audio amplifier just doesn't make sense at all.
So all that is left is ultra-high end applications and there are few of those.
The second issue is what you described, the mixing is just bad, sound effects and music are much louder than dialog making it impossible to comprehend without subtitles.
For the past 15 years, I have used the same cheap combo of soundbar+subwoofer (Sony but anything goes) and it's perfect for everything I throw at it. The sound is equivalent to what I remember on those expensive sets, it's only $250, and I don't spend my whole time in front of the TV listening to high-quality remasters of classical concerts while smoking a cigar.
The high-end brands have failed to recognize that for most people a decent set of cheap speakers is equivalent to a cinema experience. They should have studied that instead of focusing on incomprehensible technical values and numbers. The software industry is guilty of this too.
That cacophony was considered quality music?
Marantz gear in particular is great, and Samsung buying them seems really unfortunate. Might be better than some private equity randos though.
The sound quality of modern TV is absymal. The digital compression does play its part, but the speakers and the case are crap.
I think the overall experience with the modern setup is worse in every way than 20 years ago with the exception of picture quality since we have 4K now. (Of course mostly we watch heavily compressed streaming video). 20 years ago I had a 5.1 system and would watch DVDs. The sound was vastly better than TV speakers/soundbar, compression was lower on the video despite being SD. By 15 years ago this was no longer true with a Blue Ray player of course, everything was better. My setup back then even had an audio compressor ("dynamic range adjustment") so you could actually hear the dialog when you needed to turn the volume down at night. No need to use subtitles!
But the old setup doesn't make sense anymore either as you would have had to keep replacing the receiver a bunch of times for no good reason as AV standards changed.
I got rid of my old setup at some point. I have a new system in another room that doesn't do video at all. It's just stereo with a CD player, a Turntable, a digital media player (doesn't get used much) and a Bluetooth input for streaming.
You could have easily kept that setup with the same level of soundquality the whole time - assuming nothing breaks.
I think large 5.1 just went out of fashion due to the size and cable requirements and the fact that soundbars became good enough.
I can definitively tell you that sound bars to not come anywhere close to the quality of what I have, and at a decent price too (the entire audio setup cost less than my OLED tv).
I think most people are never exposed to real home theater audio so they don't know what they are missing. Similar with high end stereo audio these days (which I also have).
Every time I show Top Gun Maverick in my theater room to a friend, they want to go out and buy a real setup. Several have. It sounds better than an actual theater plus I get to lounge on my couch with my dog.
I was sort of one of those people, with a soundbar, because it was easy and convenient. The soundbar came with a wireless subwoofer, and that solved the problem of running wires across my living room.
But, I had a gifted B&W 5.1 system with powered sub collecting dust out in my garage for a long time. I recently made the push to dust it all off and buy a receiver to power it, replacing the soundbar+sub we had been using for years.
The difference is really night and day. The soundbar just never got loud enough for when I wanted to crank-it-up when playing music. It was good enough for watching most TV shows, but the sound we get now from a 5.1 movie is incredible in comparison.
I did the work to run completely flat speaker wires to the surround speakers, under the rug in our living room. It took some work to re-route wires and get power to where the receiver is, but it was well worth it.
The new system goes as loud as I can stand it with crystal-clarity all the way up to "11". The soundbar looks like a piece of junk in comparison and is now out in the garage collecting dust.
> So all that is left is ultra-high end applications and there are few of those.
(and yes, I am mostly in that tiny demographic)
Dr. Amar Bose donated the majority of his namesake company to his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So technically, MIT now owns both McIntosh and Sonus faber, two of the biggest players in luxury audio. (MIT has non-voting shares of Bose, so although the university owns the majority of the company, it does not control business decisions.)
[0] https://www.audioholics.com/news/bose-acquires-mcintosh
How many people hear B&W or Harman-Kardon and think "logo on my car's speakers" rather than "high end stereo gear?"
How many people hear "Mark Levinson" and think either "Lexus" or "who's Mark?"
I genuinely didn't know that there were still real, standalone speakers and head units made under half these brands that aren't whitelabeled Bluetooth detritus.