LouiseWinner
Member
Twenty years ago the soundbar pitch was one box, no cables, no receiver. Yamaha showed the YSP-1 at Bristol in 2005 running the Ronin car chase and people in that room were genuinely looking around for hidden speakers. Someone raised that memory on AVForums this week and I cannot argue with where he ended up.
His situation is ordinary enough. Proper 5.1 in the living room, and in the bedroom an old LG C6 with an ancient LG bar and sub picked up off Facebook Marketplace for twenty quid. It is poor next to the main system, but he uses it every single day for thirty to ninety minutes, which made him think about upgrading. Then he looked at what a good bar actually is now and stopped.
Because a serious 2026 setup is a bar doing Atmos processing, plus wireless surrounds, plus a subwoofer, and some brands will happily sell you separate front left and rights on top of that. Five or six boxes, and a pile of mains sockets for speakers sold as wireless. You have rebuilt a 5.1 system where the bar or the TV is now the receiver. Except it is a receiver with barely any HDMI inputs, no way to swap one speaker for a better one, and a working life tied to whether an app keeps getting updated.
Where I would push back on him though: for ninety minutes a day in a bedroom, the twenty quid bar may genuinely be the right answer. A Q990F is buying living room performance for a room where you are half asleep. The upgrade case falls apart the second you write down the actual use.
Has anyone here gone the other way and pulled a modular bar setup out of a second room in favour of a small amp and real speakers?
His situation is ordinary enough. Proper 5.1 in the living room, and in the bedroom an old LG C6 with an ancient LG bar and sub picked up off Facebook Marketplace for twenty quid. It is poor next to the main system, but he uses it every single day for thirty to ninety minutes, which made him think about upgrading. Then he looked at what a good bar actually is now and stopped.
Because a serious 2026 setup is a bar doing Atmos processing, plus wireless surrounds, plus a subwoofer, and some brands will happily sell you separate front left and rights on top of that. Five or six boxes, and a pile of mains sockets for speakers sold as wireless. You have rebuilt a 5.1 system where the bar or the TV is now the receiver. Except it is a receiver with barely any HDMI inputs, no way to swap one speaker for a better one, and a working life tied to whether an app keeps getting updated.
Where I would push back on him though: for ninety minutes a day in a bedroom, the twenty quid bar may genuinely be the right answer. A Q990F is buying living room performance for a room where you are half asleep. The upgrade case falls apart the second you write down the actual use.
Has anyone here gone the other way and pulled a modular bar setup out of a second room in favour of a small amp and real speakers?
