Audio is just as important as visuals. Don't believe me?
Well, here's some 480p footage with great audio,
and here is some crisp 4K with bad audio.
That is why so many of you invest in upgrading your TV speakers.
But here's the thing, thousands of you every month are doing it wrong.
When we looked at the Bose TV speaker a couple of years ago,
we concluded that it was okay, but also that if you have this kind of money to spend,
you can do much better. How much better?
How about a dedicated AV receiver? How about six-channel Dolby audio?
How about all of that for less than the price of one of these?
Don't believe me? Just watch. Step one is to rip out my bougie sound system.
Step two, plug in the Bose TV speaker for a before test.
I'm still apart of the family, my little girl.
And I'm fine, I'm totally. Just like this soundbar.
Fine. Not a lot of bass, but what do you expect?
It's fine. Yep. Step three is to hit up the local Facebook marketplace
where we found a total of three solutions that we think have a solid crack at beating our Bose.
And look at this, we also found this segue to our sponsor.
Marketplace solution number one is the Sony HTSF2300.
It may be a lowly home theater in a box kit,
but it includes a dedicated, only semi-proprietary receiver
that's gonna unlock a lot of options for us. These non-standard speaker connectors
will be a minor thorn in our side later, as will the HDMI 1.2 connector,
when we need to grab a separate remote in order to change TV inputs or adjust volume.
But for the better quality, I think the trade-off is going to be worth it
compared to our TV speaker. We'll be hooking this up using the same optical link
that we used for the Bose TV speaker. Originally, we had hoped to find a receiver
that would handle video switching for us as well, but it turns out that even the worst ones
that will handle 4K would have immediately blown our budget. Man, TossLink was so cool.
The data rates started low and stayed low, so it can only do 5.1,
but it's not susceptible to any kind of interference, which is pretty cool.
Now comes the part where we actually set everything up. Ah, I guess, how not tedious.
Thankfully, he included the cables for those proprietary clips, nice.
You might have noticed, by the way, that we cheated and totally did not take my gear out of here.
Yeah. That's where we're ending that.
We're needing to get a little bit creative about speaker positioning here,
but that's one of the drawbacks of a setup like this.
By the way, this kit originally came out in July of 2007
and was around $500 back then, or 750 adjusting for inflation.
Thankfully, we only paid 40 Canadian rubles for this.
Wow, that's a great value, I have high hopes. I mean, it even includes the stands.
Oh, and they're height adjustable.
That's pretty cool. Yeah.
A convenient thing about these kits is they typically come with all the cables you need, though.
I suspect in this case, you'll probably want to cut it a little short.
Like, how far back are they expecting you to put this thing?
But one thing that was missing from our kit, even though it came with it originally,
is a calibration microphone. The good news is it should work
with any omnidirectional mic, so we brought one from the office to give it a test.
Oh. Yeah, that's not good.
Okay. We might have to just manually measure everything. Okay, we'll give that a try.
I thought I'd try. Cool. Yeah. Did you put batteries in the remote?
No, sir. Oh, wow, these expire in 2014.
They're aged. Like fine battery wine.
Obviously, we could have spent a little bit more time on cable management,
but in terms of just getting everything connected and powering the thing on,
that was only about five minutes. I'm fine, I'm not fine.
I can't move the laptop. I can already immediately notice
the room being more full than the sound bar. Well, yeah.
I mean, there's only so much that you can do with computational bouncy nonsense.
Having dedicated speakers, especially if you're going for an older
or a more basic setup that is not going to be as modern,
there's just no substitute for it. Yeah. This is immediately more immersive.
I didn't expect it that easy.
40 bucks. Now, I do think that there's probably
some things we could tune. Whoever was using this before
had their subwoofer at minus five, their surrounds at plus five.
So I think they just really wanted to hear a lot of surround. So I just need to find a factory reset.
Clearing, nice. It takes about 30 seconds to clear it. Cleared.
That was a very fast 30 seconds. Yeah, that's what she said.
God, I'm gonna kill it rolling.
Now I hear that twice. Little bit of manual setup in terms of making sure it's configured
to the right setting, but all right.
Should we try listening again? Yes. We should probably set the distances
for the speakers though. Remember we factory reset it.
We need a measuring tape.
Okay. Oh, dude, is this tape measure not long enough?
Oh, I think I broke it. No, I'm good. I'll be right back.
Only a six foot tape measure because it's only five foot two. It doesn't matter.
Oh, look at that. 10 feet, eight inches. I think this bad boy's configured.
Okay, you ready? Let's watch a movie. I'm actually very ready.
I'm kind of excited. What's the magic? Under the surface.
If you listen, it's a type of... Wow. Dude, it crushes.
For $40, it destroys it.
This is what? One fifth the price?
Yeah, well, it's 40 Canadian, right? So...
That's crazy. That's like 30 U.S. dollars. Sine, I call you Sine.
All I need is a chip. It's not amazing.
No. The bass in particular, kind of lacking.
But what it is, is amazing for the price.
Yeah. At a fraction of the cost of the Bose,
it is multiple times better in every possible way.
And we haven't even touched on one of the biggest advantages.
That's modularity. While our ancient optical connection prevents us
from hooking up additional surrounds, a second sub or height channels,
the jump from stereo or an inexpensive soundbar
to a dedicated 5.1 setup, is way more noticeable than the jump from 5.1
to, say, 7.1. And, coming back to modularity,
nothing prevents us from taking those few channels that we do support and swapping out our speakers
for something better. That is, as long as everything is rated
for the same impedance. More on that later. First, let's give it a try by swapping out
our left and right channels for these Philips FWB MC50s.
Just a quick snip job, a little strip.
A little twist, making sure to match up the black striped cable with our black cable.
And finish it off with whatever fastener suits your purpose is. Yes, I know, Maret, suck, I don't care.
It's fine for what we're doing. Once again, we'd obviously do this a little differently
in a final install, but the point is just to evaluate the sound quality.
And we're not accounting for these stands in our budget because we could easily wall-mount these.
We actually got a pretty good deal on these, considering some eBay listings list them for triple the price.
What'd we pay? 40 Canadian just for these speakers. Okay, so now we're at 80 bucks.
Let's see if they improve our experience a lot. I would be lost broken, so it's not.
Those sound a lot better. Yeah, they do. That is almost a bad thing in this case
because it really draws your attention to how bad that center channel is.
Yeah, the clarity. We're still missing the base boom
of a proper powered subwoofer, but the clarity is a night and day difference.
And just having that little wimpy thing mixed into it is like, I don't know,
it's like having someone talking over the person you're trying to have a conversation with.
Again, modularity, you could swap it out though. And you'll probably want to.
Check this out, guys.
I didn't think it'd be this obvious.
But like, even through my lab mic over YouTube,
I bet you guys can hear the difference between those two. And if you can't, well, hey,
just stick with the stock speakers and be happy with better surround.
Speaking of, before we change out any speakers,
we want to upgrade our receiver to give ourselves better amplification
for, you know, future-proofing. We'll talk about the exact one we chose in a minute,
but first, there's two major things you want to watch out for when you're shopping for a receiver.
One is the aisle. If you're looking for video switching,
you need to ensure that at least the output of the receiver supports the minimum revision of HDMI
that can handle the resolution and the refresh rate that your TV is operating at.
Number two is gonna be the impedance rating.
If your speakers are higher than what your receiver can do, you might not get the full volume or range.
Whereas if they're too low, your devices could overheat and even burn out.
There is some wiggle room though, as you're about to see. Have a look at this.
Our STRDA1000DS has a little switch
to go between four and eight ohms. Our speakers are rated for six.
So according to this little label that's handily silkscreened right on the back,
we just need to switch it to four ohms and we should be good to go.
Just from looking at the back, you can tell this is a much higher end product
with way more available inputs. However, you can see that HDMI is conspicuously absent.
So unless you're planning to hook your PS1 up to it, you're not gonna be using the video switching capabilities.
Even the audio hookups are almost all stereo. So they'd only be useful for like a CD changer.
So we're gonna be stuck with 5.1 over optical,
but we're still gonna have a much more potent amplifier.
Oh, don't put this in the video. He cut my marettes off. Do not put this in the video.
People already hate me. On the audio side though, things are a little more interesting.
In addition to the digital input, which is what we'll be using just like with this receiver,
it has a full 5.1 analog input, which theoretically would allow us to use
a third party decoder box to support more modern formats.
Though we still wouldn't be getting height channels
or secondary subwoofers or anything like that, because those analog inputs are only 5.1,
even though on the output side, there appears to be support for more channels.
So we're just gonna use it as a better 5.1 amplifier.
Now we're just about ready to try this thing out, but we realized something.
Our kit subwoofer doesn't use a standard connector.
This is a bit of a spoiler for later. We did buy one more kit that had this chunker of a sub.
We're just gonna use it now. Okay, perfect.
Let's do it. I can tell just from the weight that this is gonna be one heck of an upgrade.
Wait, are we still using this for our center channel? Right.
Okay, we'll upgrade that later. Oh, but easy.
Don't even, don't even worry about it.
It's a Wii sensor bar. It's worth noting, by the way, that if your TV for whatever reason
doesn't support optical out, you can also get these little arc to optical adapters
for about 20 bucks, allowing you to use an older receiver like this
with a more modern HDMI arc setup.
Took us a little while to figure out the interface here, but we've got our speaker setup configured.
Ah, okay, 5.1. And then we've got all of our distances dialed in.
And the sub is not on. Whoa, the sub's working, the sub's working.
The price we've paid at this point
is a little bit complicated because we're using the center channel
and rear channels from our original $40 setup.
We're using our $85 amp. Is that all we paid for that?
Yeah. Sick. And then we borrowed the subwoofer
from the $200 3.1 setup that we bought.
So, and then we're using the $40 Phillips as well.
We're at maybe a couple hundred bucks? Yeah, and again, that's Canadian.
Hey, I'm still a part of the family, Marigold.
I'm fine, I'm totally fine.
I will stand up. This sound quality is fine, totally fine.
Like, dude, the better amp?
It helps. Freakin' slap. Yeah.
I wasn't expecting it to make that big of a difference with such basic speakers, especially our center channel.
But, I mean, part of what you're gonna get from a better amp is cleaner output.
And this is a very musical section of the song. So, we're really taking advantage
of the left and right channel. This is a beautiful piece, always raining on a beautiful view.
I can see how people get addicted to this. Yeah, the constant need to add the next speaker
or the next receiver or center channel, right? Tweak the next thing.
Yeah. And, we haven't even turned this up yet.
My mind, all this time, all I need to change, all I need.
That center channel is garbo.
So, it's time to jump ahead and get a new center channel
in here, shall we? Question for you as we're hooking this up. These were part of another home theater in a box, right?
I couldn't quite tell, because all of these model numbers on these Sonys
are slightly different. I think the three speakers we got were part of a kit.
The receiver that this seller was selling was part of a different kit.
And, I don't believe this sub was part of that kit either. No, it wasn't, for sure.
So, I think whoever we bought it from also was doing a mixed mash of everything.
Cool. Dude. I just, I just, I just, you versus the guy,
she tells you not to worry about. Exactly. Dude, I am excited to see how this goes.
We're swapping those Phillips bookshelves into our rear channels,
and then we're using our new front channels, which, as you can see, are a little stronger.
This is so good to eat, bro. When you gave us a miracle.
What really blows my mind is that
we have by no means dialed this in properly.
If I gave myself an afternoon to play around with it
and fine tune it, we went at the same price from,
yeah, it's better than the TV speakers, but to good enough.
Like I would never walk into someone's living room
or theater room or whatever, listen to these speakers and go,
yeah, but they could be better. Yeah. Oh yeah.
They're good enough. Our total price was 325 Canadian, or about 240 US.
So, we were actually under the Bose TV speaker.
For our end game setup. For our end game setup that we have right now.
We had enough money left over that we could buy a DVD to watch on it.
Or hear me out, maybe we put that toward a universal remote or something.
Even with those inconveniences, we basically crushed the competition.
Everything from dialogue clarity to music quality to maximum volume to immersion
is clearly better than our soundbar.
So why are soundbars so popular?
Well, if you were watching this going, that looked pretty inconvenient.
You're not wrong. There's all the cabling for starters and even more so the effort of tracking down
the right products that are gonna operate together and the right deal because our answer,
it's not necessarily gonna be the same as yours. The odds that you guys find the exact speakers
and receiver that we use today are slim to none.
But with that said, I think it's safe to say
that if you're looking for a more immersive experience, spending a little bit of time googling model numbers,
looking over user manuals, and maybe even giving them a quick listen before you buy
could give you way better bang for your buck and even save you hundreds of dollars
compared to buying a brand new setup. What you won't have to spend hundreds of dollars on
is the segue to our sponsor. That's free.
If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe co-check out the original home theater video
we did almost two years ago. It was one of my dreams to have this place set up
and those first impressions did not disappoint.