Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

you are being unnecessarily disingenuous

gp is most likely using a display that quickly boots into "source" mode – think hdmi input

IMO more than startup times, a reason to not connect your TV to the internet is ACR (automated content recognition). Note that ACR works irrespective of the video source.

Old article for background but if anything it’s even more common now: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/18/you-wat...

Yes

You could perhaps consider looking at some of the class D amps coming out of CN. Remarkable stuff considering the price and power output.

SMSL has some good, well reviewed products; as do WiiM and quite a few other brands.

The Audio Science Review forum (1) has objective measurement based reviews of many of the newer amps, standalone and integrated.

I’m using the SMSL AO300 to drive Boston Acoustics VR3 floor standing speakers in a study, and they’re sound as good as they did when they were on an older Yamaha amp, or a Denon integrated amp.

Edited to add: most (none?) of the class D integrated amps can’t do Dolby -(licensing, I suspect, is the main issue here), so you’ll need to get a receiver in the middle for HTS though.

Edited post edit (sorry!): turns out Wiim streamers can now do 5.1, so some options are slowly emerging. (2)

(1) https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?forums/am...

(2) https://faq.wiimhome.com/en/support/solutions/articles/72000...

Get an integra pre amp or receiver

Just pick better brands for your receiver.

I have an Anthem pre and an LG TV, both of which are blocked from accessing the internet, and I have none of these issues.

I’d think there would be a market opportunity here. I have an old 70’s amp, and the switches/knobs are a bit noisy.

Sure, I spray it down with contact cleaner, and it fixes it for a few years each time, but the dial light bulbs are starting to burn out.

Most of its internals are hand soldered and switches /relays/etc that would be cheaper, better and more reliable with modern technology.

Even though it was hand wired, it didn’t cost much new (inflation adjusted), so why can’t anyone manufacture something with a similar amplifier but an automated assembly line and better control circuitry (and maybe a rpi header for electronic control) for, say, $1000 in 2025?

MiniDSP? https://www.minidsp.com/

I used their stuff for a four-speaker audio setup but they do affordable home theater devices as well.

Licensing is definitely strangling the market for Atmos decoders. If you have particular requirements you can always do it with ~$2k in Dolby software licenses and also ~$2k in converters. You cannot, unfortunately, DIY hardware for Atmos without an HDCP license. If you have one of those you can actually DIY something around a DSP like the ones Analog Devices sells preloaded with the IP. Then again if you have those kinds of resources you probably already work for Harman or something.

> 90+% of the things people complain about would no longer be a problem if they got a traditional A/V receiver, plugged all their sources such as streaming boxes and game consoles into the receiver, and just used the smart TV as a monitor (and as a tuner if they watch OTA television).

The problem there is the terrible UI of those A/V receivers, designed by committee that upholds long-standing traditions. It takes a lot of fussing with the complicated remote to get to where you want, which is perhaps fine for geeks, but annoying in a family setup, where all household members would like to know how to watch Netflix.

BTW, these traditions are ridiculous: as an example, my DENON receiver has two monstrous knobs on the front, like most AV receivers. The one on the left I will never use in its entire lifetime: it is for manually sequentially switching input sources, which nobody does anymore. And yet they still place it as the most prominent feature/control on the front panel.

The buttons that I'd like to use are small, black-on-black with dark gray labeling in 8pt type, so basically impossible to use unless you use a magnifying glass and a flashlight.

You can have the TV still be a dumb monitor by using a TV box, but handle the switching of inputs if you have more than one input.

The problem is that as video technology has advanced, it makes less and less sense to pay for video processing technology on a receiver. Your new TV supports HDMI 2.1 with 120hz and VRR for your new PS5.

Does your receiver? Are you willing to spend $1000 to upgrade your receiver to simply correctly pass through that video signal, with little meaningful audio upgrade?

I don’t understand what an A/V receiver is for. Our setup:

- An old LCD TV with 4(?) HDMI inputs and a few legacy ports.

- linux box with hdmi out

- apple tv with hdmi out

- console with hdmi out

- line out cable from TV to 1970’s receiver’s line in.

- line out from sonos to another line in on the receiver.

- roof antenna, with a Y to the TV and receiver

- turntable

- two extremely nice speakers

(Before someone asks, the TV has some sort of multichannel digital audio out. I don’t care. If I did, that’d give me surround sound. Similarly, I could get a subwoofer if I wanted.)

This is completely fine. The apple tv and console auto-switch the tv to their output, and sync the power buttons. The linux box doesn’t, but probably could if I decided to RTFM. The apple tv can be controlled with the tv remote, but its native remote is nicer. We only use the TV remote to access linux.

We only touch the receiver to switch between TV, turntable, sonos and radio.

How would an A/V receiver possibly improve this? (Note: I want the analog radio and record player with their nice mechanical switches and warm FM sound, and will run the sonos s1 app until the cloud side of it dies.)

The problem isn't the number of boxes plugged in, its that the TV has its own OS and built-in apps that people want to use that doesn't work with anything outside the TV.

I don't think too many people have, for example, a Samsung TV and a Firestick and use the 2 interchangeably for different apps.

I had this problem until the Samsung interface got too unbearably slow (6 year old tv), so I just bought a Google TV and that goes through my receiver's HDMI in port. Before this update, I was using optical out from the TV into my receiver, but the quality was noticeably degraded. I'm lucky I also don't use the radio function or a record player since that would just add to the chaos.

For a wall-mounted TV, it's still pretty essential to get a single cable run to it, vs needing to plug in each device individually. That said, it's curious how the multiplexing and audio amp functionality ended up in the same box.

Really what it should be is:

- a "remote" multiplexer comes in the box with my TV. It speaks HDMI/CEC to the TV telling it what input is active so that the TV's UI can reflect that and it can do things like switch between movie and game mode picture tuning.

- the former AVR should become a purely eARC box with no buttons, not even a power button— it comes on on command of the TV, and adjusts its amplification volume according to the same eARC signals that a soundbar uses. Any initial calibration or speaker setup is done via a single-use phone app.

eARC is amazing tech - when it works.

I have a recent top of the line Samsung TV, and last year's 5.1 Samsung soundbar and even though both components are from the same brand there are some very frustrating times eARC fails. The rest of the time it works like magic.

I got one recently for a room that was already wired with speakers, and man the ability to control the volume on Apple TV remote app on your phone is amazing. For whatever reason none of my other Apple TV's will allow that (could be the tv's fault, but obviously somewhere along the line they at least expect a speaker bar). I'm sure it's a fault of the HDMI spec somewhere that you can't easily change the volume on the tv itself but you can on downstream devices.

> It always seemed like more complexity than I wanted under my TV.

the receiver doesn't need to be under the TV. it can sit in a basement. the question is if you really want to have proper sound or it's only a nice to have.

> use my TV without taking a class first

this is not an issue at all. HDMI ARC handles this.

I have a somewhat cheap Denon for 5.1 audio and after the initial sound setup, I've never needed to touch the settings other for adjusting the subwoofer volume. It's mostly Apple TV -> AVR -> TV, but I got other inputs like a PS4 and a PC for music. And it has Airplay, Bluetooth and Spotify Connect for anyone that wants to play from their phone.

There's no need for a super-complicated setup for good sound.

Yes, definitely had that experience growing up of going over to someone's house and being unable to operate the very complex tower of black boxes. Could not agree more.

I was going to say something similar - I think there will still be some market for high-quality audio preamp/receiver/mixer-type devices that have actual EQ/tone controls rather than endless menus, and focus on actual fidelity over features. Sony, Onkyo, Sansui & Yamaha are brands I've trusted for this over the years.

That's a really sad percentage of people listening to such subpar sound that they might as well not be. I understand not everyone can afford nice audio, but a soundbar is such a drastic improvement, VHS=>DVD level of improvement, while a soundbar to surround is a DVD=>BluRay improvement. It's great for those with discerning taste, but not noticed by the vast majority.

Granted, I'm not an audiophile, but I've been in/around audio mix bays long enough that I notice shit audio. It's one of those things that once you see/hear it, you can't un-see/un-hear it. Sometimes I really wish I took the blue pill in this regard

People who have a home theater aren’t exactly the core market for Wally World.

There are some nice speakers that can fit nicely in a living room, but rears placement are always a problem. Especially if the sofa is isolated in the middle of the room. But my SO has enjoyed nice sounds so there was no struggle there (It was gradual with a 2.0 setup before the 5.1).

I never had the HTIB, but I had some old school speaker cabinets I got at a thrift store years ago and would hook them up to a broken down Kenwood amp to get nice loud music for house parties.

Just in the past few years I was finally in a position to get a nice center channel, then sub, then surrounds, and then I eventually paid an electrician to pull the wires and do a 5.1.2 setup. It's certainly far from essential and overall is still pretty budget, but I love how it sounds for movies, PS5, etc.

A few months ago I tried a new JBL receiver. It was trash (the worst I have tried and I tried 5 or 6 different ones for my room). I also saw their soundbar and their vintage speakers. I wouldn’t agree that JBL makes quality products, but that is just my experience.

For most people a good 2.1 system vs surround or soundbars is where it’s at these days. As you say most surround mixing is an afterthought now anyway.

The physics of moving air to create sound hasn’t really changed in any meaningful ways; the biggest upgrade is usually larger drivers fed with more power. I think most would experience that as much more of a theatre like experience than 7+ tiny underpowered satellites outputting an already bad mix.

> The second issue is what you described, the mixing is just bad, sound effects and music are much louder than dialog making it impossible to comprehend without subtitles.

The trend of mixing sound effects much louder has been in vogue for longer than star wars exists and not a lot of movies drown out everything in super loud music (Christopher Nolan films being exhibit number 1 lol). I think part of the issue stems from the audio not being adapted for home releases. There used to be special sound mixes for VHS, TV shows and even DVDs (as stereo version of the 5.1 track) that lowered the dynamic range and made everything fairly clear even on your 70s CRT TV speakers.

Nowadays sound engineers probably marvel at how nice and crisp their work sounds on a studio kitted with 1 million worth of audio gear and call it good enough for playback in all systems. Add some directors wanting more "natural" dialog requesting actors to speak softly and the deal is sealed, only the 0.1% can watch anything without subtitles.

I honestly think the solution is for the industry to adopt a standardized audio gain control solution. The only reason we didn't get that in the past was because implementing such things on consumer gear was far too expensive (it was far more cost effective to just pre-process it and deliver the low dynamic range mix right in the medium, with the advantage of the possibility of a custom tuned mix). Today's TVs all have some kind of audio normalization functionality but they are all kinda bad (they alter loudness balance making everything sound tiny, a proper solution requires proper equal loudness contour compensation) and not suited for sudden and constant jumps of volumes like in movie action scenes. It also doesn't helps that every manufacturer does it differently.

You get what you pay for, too. The B&W setup is about $1700 with the amp (I only had to pay $250 for the amp), but the soundbar was about $170. It seems difficult to spend that kind of money when something 10x less will do, especially without hearing it in your living room first. But after hearing it I'd absolutely spend the whole $1700 to get this system. I do get 10x the enjoyment out of it, when it counts.

Next I'm probably going to surprise my wife and install some bass-shakers inside my couch for the full movie theater experience.