SONOS PLAYBAR TV Soundbar and Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music
SONOS PLAYBAR TV Soundbar and Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music Reviews
This is addition to my Sonos enabled home, so you can also read my reviews of other Sonos products. Sonos makes amazing home audio solutions, so whenever I add a component, I always write a review... Summary : I was so excited by the concept of a Playbar. I have Sonos speakers in two other rooms of my house, but it is unfortunately not integrated in my two rooms with surround sound speaker systems. I would kill to have Sonos wireless music in those rooms, but seamlessly integrate with my existing A/V setups. That is what Playbar is for. Super exciting. While the setup experience and audio quality of Playbar is great and up to the usual Sonos quality bar, it unfortunately doesn't work with my Sharp Aqous TV, and I think that might be the tiny Achilles heel of this product. It probably works with most, but not every HDTV, due to a basic setup assumption. I love the Playbar concept, and it probably works great for most people! Review : I got this product to integrate into my main living room A/V experience. My LR is about 20'x16' with no separation from another 20'x16' dining room. Relatively big space to fill with audio. I've got a relatively generic 5 speaker setup, with no sub because everyone else in the house complains about the noise level when it is enabled ;-) I mounted my Sharp Aquos 46D62U on the wall, and ran HDMI and component in-wall between a lower cabinet and the wall plate behind the Sharp. Pretty standard. I've got a number of HDMI sources running into a Onkyo amp, then one HDMI from the amp to the TV through the in-wall wiring. My goal in adding Playbar was to disable the existing room speakers, and use the Playbar as the audio source. I would get full Sonos integration plus audio from my existing PS3, Xbox 360, and AppleTV. Wee! The out of the box experience was mostly to Sonos's standard quality level. I've come to expect that setup is very easy, and it was. They've added the steps needed to check audio coming from your TV source, and to configure your remote control to change volume on the Playbar. This all worked well for me. The sound quality was also up to the high Sonos standards. I loved having my music collection seamlessly stream into my living room, finally. And as I'll explain in a minute, when I tested with an alternate TV, the audio quality for game (PS3, Xbox 360) and movie sources was quite good. I think for bigger rooms you'll want to add the Sonos Sub for depth, but for smaller rooms the sound was high quality and bright. There were two big gotchas that will not affect everyone, but affected me. I think it is important to understand them before purchasing a Playbar: 1 - If you have an in-wall installation for your TV, adding/retrofitting Playbar into the environment is not hard, but requires some manual dexterity and a longer digital audio cable than ships in the box. Most people with an in-wall installation do not think of putting optical audio cables into the wall during the initial buildout. Audio was supposed to transfer via HDMI in the new world order. This means you have to difficultly get behind the TV (most of the time flush mounted), plug in an optical audio cable, then run this unsightly cable down from the TV to the Playbar. I went in-wall because I wanted a nice aesthetic, but that cable ruins the clean visual experience. The optical cable that ships with the Playbar is way too short for most runs from the back of a wall mounted TV to the Playbar. Most TVs have their connections in the back to one side (right, often), so you have to run the optical cable back to center, then straight drop it to the center of the Playbar where its connectors are. If you don't want an oddly angled cable running from the Playbar to the TV, this involves a few 90 degree bends, which adds to the required cable length. The Sonos supplied short optical cable was in no way long enough for this, but as a bit of an audio geek, I had extra optical cables of various lengths. If you don't have extra optical cables of longer length, be prepared to buy one to finish this install. This is a rare "fit and finish" miss for Sonos. 2 - The basic premise of the Playbar solution is that you run all HDMI to the TV, then an optical audio cable from the TV to the Playbar. This is a huge assumption about the age of most people's TVs. New TVs have plenty of HDMI ports and the assumption that there is a working audio optical out is probably ok. What I learned is that my older (sold in 2006-2008 at high volume) but still good Sharp Aquos 46D62U has that optical audio out, but it was designed only for ATSC (over the air HDTV) audio. It is not a generic pass-through audio port. Translation, the Playbar does not work with my TV. But I had no way of knowing this when I got the Playbar. There is no list I could find of TVs that will not work with the Playbar, but I can guarantee these exist. It took me three hours of super geeking to learn all of this, buried in manuals and AVForum posts. In this way I'm not the average Sonos customer, as less of a geek would have gotten frustrated and taken something back well before this. I trust Sonos, and assume that the vast majority of TVs work with this digital audio pass-through model. I grabbed a newer Sony TV I had stored and hooked it up outside my home theatre room, and it worked well. Maybe mine is a rare case, but I wonder with less expensive or older HDTVs, will Playbar work every time. Hopefully FAQs will quickly appear documenting the few TVs that won't work with Playbar, so you don't have to order something that has a very low but possible chance of not working with your TV... All in all, I really love the Playbar concept, and wish, oh wish, it had worked in my main home theatre room. The sound quality is great and setup is a breeze. Now to convince my wife I need a new TV for the living room?!. this is my SONOS PLAYBAR TV Soundbar and Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music reviews
SONOS PLAYBAR TV Soundbar and Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music Specs
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- Price for all three: $1,047.00
- Buy the selected items together
- This item: SONOS PLAYBAR TV Soundbar and Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music by Sonos $699.00
- SONOS BRIDGE Instant Set-up Solution for SONOS Wireless Network (BR100) by Sonos $49.00
- SONOS PLAY:3 All-in-One Wireless Music Player with 3 Integrated Speakers (Black, NEW) by Sonos $299.00
SONOS PLAYBAR TV Soundbar and Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music Best buy
SONOS PLAYBAR TV Soundbar and Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music. SONOS PLAYBAR TV Soundbar and Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music will.. (Read More)
SONOS PLAYBAR TV Soundbar and Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music,
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