Comment on Off topic
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 3 days agoQuality audio doesn’t have to cost a ton. You can get a quality budget Dolby Atmos soundbar for less than $350.
I’m sure that is a good price for the soundbar, but speaking for myself it’s too big, I don’t have the space for it, as I imagine many others do too.
But that is really not the point. Not everyone is a giant movie geek, they just want to be able to understand what is being said.
Yes, of course, it’s only natural to replace a 2.1 or 2.0 HiFi system with the scam that is Dolby Atmos…
Dolby Atmos does jack shit for quality audio; I say this as an audiophile. It is extremely controversial in HiFi, and not some gold standard. Additionally, the sound bar system you linked is just a facil approximation to what Atmos is, and far, far inferior to good passive stereo bookshelf speakers of the same price (I think Elac DB52s cost about $250, plus a $70 300W per channel fosi v3 amp will get you a fantastic setup. Later you could even add a $200 sub for the <60Hz range.)
Here’s a Benn Jordan vid I found on the subject: youtu.be/5Dw3aKbw5Wo
The farthest I would ever go with surround/quadraphonic sound would be something like the Schiit Syn, which is now discontinued anyway. I have two ears: I only need to speakers. If the speakers are good and the track is well mixed, this will always lead to a better result than Dolby Atmos.
Movies like Interstellar are mixed with quiet dialogue for the dynamic range, like you say, and that can make speach difficult to understand. This is a questionable trend in movies led by Christopher Nolan but is absolutely not alleviated by Atmos.
I won’t go into what I think of the trend, but I really want to emphasize that buying an overpriced consumer sound system with Atmos marketing on it will not solve the problem. Please do not invest you money into faux-HiFi! If you are going to spend that much money, spend it wisely, and don’t pay attention to marketing.
There is a lot of text just to bitch to people that probably don’t care about niche differences. We’re talking about budget options here, not “audiophile” snake oil.
I do trust the opinion of places like Rtings and while that is definitely a generic mid-range system, it’s what they recommended for a budget soundbar system. You provided opinion and an alternative that’s twice as expensive for a pair of bookshelf speakers.
I don’t personally care about a random “audiophile” opinion, especially on a random site like Lemmy. From my experience most of those opinions usually are about as good as Monster cables were. 100% when that audio opinion includes absolutely horrendous a things like “I have two ears: I only need to speakers.”
Shiggles@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Buddy you can buy a 55” TV for less than that, it is utterly ridiculous to even entertain the idea that “less than $350” is a reasonable price for passable audio.