Sound Bar Review

Sound bars vs. component speakers

To recreate a true theater experience at home, you want great speakers to go with your HDTV. Ideally, that means a gutsy home-theater receiver/amplifier system along with five to as many as 11 well-placed, surround-sound speakers and a subwoofer (or two).

Unfortunately, aesthetics and practicality can make that type of audio setup impossible or undesirable. Instead, you could rely on your HDTV's built-in audio system. Although TV sound can be acceptable for the nightly news or sitcom reruns, it will almost always sound anemic compared to even a basic traditional surround-sound system.

Sound bars (also called soundbars) are one way to bridge the gap between built-in TV audio and what's produced by a full-fledged surround-sound system. Sound bars are one-piece, home-theater speaker systems that are sleekly styled and can be hung on a wall underneath a flat-panel TV or placed on a table or entertainment center for TVs that are stand-mounted. They typically contain the center channel and left and right surround speakers, and use sonic trickery -- with varying degrees of success -- to produce a surround-sound field. Many sound bars incorporate an amplifier and radio tuner, and some even have a Blu-ray Disc player to create a complete home-theater-in-a-box (HTIB) solution. Many also include a separately powered subwoofer that connects via a single cable or a wireless link to provide better bass. Some add rear-channel speakers to create a true surround-sound system. Though most have all the necessary electronics built in, others are passive and need to be used with a separate home-theater receiver or amplifier, just like a more traditional speaker system.

Many top home-theater reviewers cover sound bars, with CNET offering the most useful advice. The site covers sound bars in detailed, single-product reports and brings top performers together into a listing. Reviews include ratings that help readers do the product comparisons for themselves. Other helpful reviews can be found at Home Theater magazine, Sound & Vision magazine, HomeTheaterReview.com and elsewhere. ConsumerReports.org does test a fair number of sound bars and provides ratings and rankings, but discussion is very brief and includes sound bars that are now discontinued. User reviews can be found at Amazon.com, BestBuy.com and elsewhere.

Every expert agrees that sound bars deliver better sound than is available from even the best TVs. However, those same experts also agree that most sound bars are a compromise. They are sleek and sophisticated, and most are easier to hook up than a traditional surround-sound system. In the right setting, many can sound excellent -- certainly better than the TV alone -- and even produce a reasonably expansive sound stage. Most of the time, however, whether through less-than-ideal room acoustics or seating positions, or limitations in the technology itself, sound bars -- at least those without satellite speakers -- can't deliver the full surround-sound experience of more traditional solutions. Sound effects -- such as a whizzing bullet flying across a room -- might be inaccurately placed. Or the thunks, bangs and explosions in blockbuster movies could lack the oomph produced in the movie theater or by a more robust surround-sound system.