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During the six years I’ve been writing and editing home theater reviews, the recurring complaint I’ve seen time and again about even some flagship TVs is how awful their sound is. Thanks to their increasingly razor-thin panels, there’s less and less room to squeeze in drivers, so sound is sacrificed on the altar of style. As a result, the stock warning for buyers is: ‘You better also budget for a soundbar.’
But my faith in this particular sacred cow has begun to waver. Having recently upgraded my mid-range TV with a mid-range soundbar, I’ve experienced firsthand how the sonic gap between the two is narrowing fast. So I’ve started to wonder: is the soundbar still as essential as it once was?
This crisis of faith was first sparked when I upgraded my TV to last year’s stellar TCL QM8K. Aside from its seriously vivid mini-LED screen, perhaps its most headline-grabbing feature is its sound. I’ll admit, when I heard my new TV had sound designed by Bang & Olufsen, I was skeptical. Surely even such a giant of audiophile-grade audio couldn’t eke a high standard of sound out of a TV, given their notoriously tinny sound?
Let me tell you: my cynicism was misplaced. Thanks to its chunky rare-earth neodymium iron boron drivers, the TCL QM8K has really compelling sound that rivals the best TVs, offering both clarity and a pretty credible low-end. On top of this, B&O’s signature tuning allows you to tweak the TV’s audio along two axes of bright/warm and relaxed/energetic to reflect your personal preferences.
As a result, rather than the mewling, timid sound many TVs dribble out, the TCL is capable of rendering dialogue crisply while granting the soundtrack a decent sweep and heft. It’s honestly a little too effective sometimes: every time I pull off a counter-attack on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the impact feels appropriately seismic but also causes my girlfriend to flinch like a pet on July 4th. For native TV audio, it really doesn’t hold back.
And it’s not the only TV that’s trying to buck the trend here. For example, the Panasonic Z95B offers a 160W, 5.1.2 channel, 160W sound system starring a front external speaker array that offers powerful bass and a strong soundstage. Meanwhile, the Sony Bravia II features built-in actuators that turn the screen itself into a speaker, which allows it to accurately position dialogue and effects according to their position on the screen and produce spacious yet well-rounded sound.
Raising the bar?
Despite this, I was excited to get my first soundbar. While I’m not quite as obsessive as some about unlocking cinema-quality sound in my home, getting even more gravitas for movies is a really tempting offer. And as a gamer, I love spatial sound – the idea of being encompassed in a hemisphere of true Dolby Atmos audio sounds like the perfect way to make my visits to Lumiere even more engrossing.
So when a colleague asked if I wanted to rehome their recently discontinued Samsung HW-Q800D, I jumped at the chance. Yet when I first set it up, I was honestly a bit surprised by how little it was able to improve on the TCL’s already impressive sound.
With the soundbar operating in isolation, it was able to achieve a slightly more spacious sound – thanks to its side-firing drivers, the width of its soundstage is far more substantial than the QM8K is capable of. But it also sounded thinner: lacking the larger diameter drivers of the TV, its output didn’t feel like it had quite as much substance as the sound I was used to. Dialogue still maintained a decent level of clarity, but soundtracks felt more neutered, taking me out of the moment as I watched Hijack or The Night Manager.
However, it is important to note that there are some things that a soundbar like the HW-Q800D can do better. While it sounds meeker in isolation, once it’s paired with its packaged sub… oh boy, is it able to achieve some gravitas, with spaceships in Avatar: Way of the Water sounding like they were literally landing in my living room. And while the HW-Q800D’s upfiring drivers can’t achieve quite the ceiling-bouncing spatial effects of more premium soundbars, it does a good job of situating sounds in the right area of the screen.
Still, though, after many years of accepting it as a given how necessary soundbars are, I was a little surprised by how marginal some of the improvements were. Don’t get me wrong: adding a soundbar of a decent enough spec can definitely unlock superior sound, particularly as your budget increases. But my experience here does show that the gap is narrowing here, and rather than getting a soundbar as a default, it is becoming more important to consider where your sound is in most need of improvement and whether a given soundbar will deliver it.
Because, honestly, it may be time that the assumption ‘TV sound is always terrible’ is laid to rest.