SONOS 5.1 Home Theatre System Bundle setup or better

lostone98

lostone98

lostone98

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https://d1b6tx2agdphz5.cloudfront.net/sonos-en/attachment/d272de21-db69-4b72-9af3-7fd5270661ae.png

The image is my living room, I have a small rented flat and I was wondering with this awkward layout if there is any point to have a 5.1 setup (consisting of 2 of SONOS PLAY:1, 1 of SONOSPLAYBAR , 1 of SONOS SUB and set of floor stands) I also have an issue with the sub and where to put it as the tv sits on a cupboard and the doors would be in the way to put the sub in the middle (its a normal vintage cupboard that i took the legs off) Or is there a better simple setup that dont need a amp and cost around £2000

I know it’s odd but I mainly use my beanbag (I really don’t care for a sofa lol). I don’t have much room but I was wondering if it can be connect wirelessly (speakers, sub and sound bar) i really don’t want to bother with wires unless it’s for the power.

I will be getting an Xbox one (which model I’m not sure??) to play 4k too. Is there anything better then the xbox with the same price range?? total im willing to spend (4k player and sound) is £2000

Kind regards
 
https://www.avforums.com/news/best-soundbars.14391

Pick from that list.

Sonos is overpriced and only worth buying if you want speakers in every room of your house.

For a home cinema set up they are stupidly expensive for mediocre sound.

Do you plan on expanding the system to every room within the house?

If not then I'm willing to bet a £1k soundbar will beat a £2k Sonos setup in terms of sound quality with ease.

Sonos selling point is wireless multi room. Not home cinema.

Get a decent soundbar. Also in a flat do you really want to make enemies by using a subwoofer? They are for detached homes only IMO
 
From what you're describing, I'd say that Sonos is a pretty close fit already. The sub would live in the space between the cabinet and the wall with the windows. That, or pull the cupboard forward 10" to hide the sub behind, but you might feel that that would encroach on your room too much.

I think the idea of trying to do everything - including connecting 4K UHD sources (if that's what you meant?) - is a non-starter with any quality sound system. Sub; wireless. That's fine and pretty standard with soundbar installations. Even if there's a soundbar that doesn't use wireless for the the sub connection, there are wireless link kits available.

Rear speakers, that's more difficult. Sonos does it, but that's because they've come at home cinema surround from a background in whole-house wireless music. It was a relatively small step to add home cinema capabilities to an existing wireless ecosystem where they'd already cracked the wireless connection issue with the house Wi-Fi rather than built-in RF/Bluetooth and sending decent quality sound reliably.

Premium quality home audio electronics and speaker brands looked at wireless rears but found that the tech' wasn't up to the job or it became cost prohibitive. The only company to get their teeth in to it properly were KEF, but the solution was £600 for the mains powered receiver box and two speakers, and it still involved wires from the box to the speakers. It worked really well, but at the price it was too much for the sort of buyer who wanted that kind of quick fix.

Mass-market electronic brands such as Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic had no qualms accepting the sonic limitations of on-the-fly encoding and Bluetooth transmission for wireless rears. In the main, the rear speakers weren't/aren't good enough to show up the limited sound quality, so they don't need to worry about the wireless bottleneck and audio compression issues. Even then, their solutions still required one or two speaker wires across the back of the room; so, not really true wireless then.

There's only one company I'm aware of that does true wireless rear speakers. It's Philips. Their Fidelio B5 soundbar has a pair of detachable speakers that can be used either for wireless multi-room music, or as wireless rears. The speakers are truly wireless because advances in rechargeable battery technology means that they can operate stand-alone for up to 10 hours.

Alternative rears: The virtual speaker.

Almost 20 years ago, Yamaha used their formidable room acoustic expertise to develop a technology to beam sound and bounce it off flat surfaces to create virtual speakers. Other companies - most notably Bose - have been using reflected sound for decades, but in a more general and diffuse way. Yamaha's solution is far more precise. Their multi-driver array speakers create a focussed beam of sound for each rear speaker. During set-up, these beams can be moved and aimed very precisely to hit a suitable flat reflective surface such as a wall or cupboard door. Twenty years later, dozens of manufacturers are adopting similar principles with their up-firing speakers for Dolby Atmos.

Yamaha launched this tech with the YSP-1 back in the mid-2000's. The current range of YSP speakers starts with the YSP2700 at £600 inc sub. This is a fully-fledged AV receiver built in to a sound bar. You get 4K pass through, ARC, high def' audio decoding, multiple HDMI / optical / coax and analogue inputs. It even supports multi-room music with the Yamaha Musicast range of speakers. Further up the range there's the YSP5600 @ £1,300. With a room like yours, I think these should both be on your short list.




Wireless AV connections: TBH, with a room layout as compact as yours, I wouldn't bother. The TV is sitting on top of a cabinet, so unless for some bizarre reason you plan to have the games console somewhere at the back of the room then why make life complicated?
 
I like my Sonos setup (Playbar, Sub, 2 Play 1 rears) but lacking DTS decoding is frustrating so I'll soon likely move it to the play room and do a 'traditional' proper setup in the main lounge again.

Reason I haven't so far is the ease of use and wife-friendliness of the Sonos setup.

I would be careful with the Sub in a flat though, I turn it down eventhough my nearest neighbours are quite far away!
 
lucid said:
I think the idea of trying to do everything - including connecting 4K UHD sources (if that's what you meant?) - is a non-starter with any quality sound system. Sub; wireless. That's fine and pretty standard with soundbar installations. Even if there's a soundbar that doesn't use wireless for the the sub connection, there are wireless link kits available.
Click to expand...

Sorry I am not sure what you mean non-starter, I will just start with the sound bar for now and connect it to the xbox one. Does the YSP5600 have a bulit AV receiver ?

Also is the YSP 5600 hard to set up As I heard the YSP 2700 is hard to set up on richersounds.

I'm confused with the HDR, DTS audio support, it just flies completely over my head. I will be watching blu rays, 4k but I dont care of audio support of the DVD and music is also not important as I have a hifi in my bedroom.

Hope I make sense
 
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lostone98 said:
Sorry I am not sure what you mean non-starter, I will just start with the sound bar for now and connect it to the xbox one. Does the YSP5600 have a bulit AV receiver ?

Also is the YSP 5600 hard to set up As I heard the YSP 2700 is hard to set up on richersounds.

I'm confused with the HDR, DTS audio support, it just flies completely over my head. I will be watching blu rays, 4k but I dont care of audio support of the DVD and music is also not important as I have a hifi in my bedroom.

Hope I make sense
Click to expand...

hard to set up? you plug it in and turn it on.

you can download the app to your phone and then input your room dimensions. it then sets it up for your room.

if that is hard then they should maybe think about going back to primary school.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
hard to set up? you plug it in and turn it on.

you can download the app to your phone and then input your room dimensions. it then sets it up for your room.

if that is hard then they should maybe think about going back to primary school.
Click to expand...

Thanks a bit rude, Im not saying its hard for me. I never ownd a sound bar, do have learning difficulties so it does play into factor but hey I setup my sono and my hi fi in my bedroom...

Anyway this was the one review on it:

Pursuit of surround and complexity lets this down - check the manual first
All the professional experts loved it but for me it didn't produce surround sound, and I spent a lot of time on configuration.

The setup options to remedy this are too complex - you are unlikely to hit the sweet spot doing it yourself - you almost will want a calibration expert - and will always doubt of you are getting the best sound.

There are restrictions on positioning, so check out the manual before buying.

The sub is not a sub at all. It is part of the sound stage and needs to be positioned facing into the room.

I accepted that I might not get the surround sound, but thought that the audio would be good still but the sound feel like it is compressed and dialogue and sound stage fluctuates. Maybe as a result of surround efforts.

I got too frustrated in the end and returned it. I will walk away from any pseudo surround products - I want to hear the sound as intended.
 
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lostone98 said:
Thanks a bit rude, Im not saying its hard for me. I never ownd a sound bar, do have learning difficulties so it does play into factor but hey I setup my sono and my hi fi in my bedroom...

Anyway this was the one review on it:

Pursuit of surround and complexity lets this down - check the manual first
All the professional experts loved it but for me it didn't produce surround sound, and I spent a lot of time on configuration.

The setup options to remedy this are too complex - you are unlikely to hit the sweet spot doing it yourself - you almost will want a calibration expert - and will always doubt of you are getting the best sound.

There are restrictions on positioning, so check out the manual before buying.

The sub is not a sub at all. It is part of the sound stage and needs to be positioned facing into the room.

I accepted that I might not get the surround sound, but thought that the audio would be good still but the sound feel like it is compressed and dialogue and sound stage fluctuates. Maybe as a result of surround efforts.

I got too frustrated in the end and returned it. I will walk away from any pseudo surround products - I want to hear the sound as intended.
Click to expand...

Referring to whoever thought it was hard to set up.

It's a speaker not a business.

You plug it in and it works. The app can be used to fine tune settings.

It's really simple
 
lostone98 said:
Sorry I am not sure what you mean non-starter, I will just start with the sound bar for now and connect it to the xbox one. Does the YSP5600 have a bulit AV receiver ?

Also is the YSP 5600 hard to set up As I heard the YSP 2700 is hard to set up on richersounds.

I'm confused with the HDR, DTS audio support, it just flies completely over my head. I will be watching blu rays, 4k but I dont care of audio support of the DVD and music is also not important as I have a hifi in my bedroom.

Hope I make sense
Click to expand...

Yeah, there was a word missing. No wonder it didin't make sense. It should have read "I think the idea of trying to do everything wirelessly- " My apologies.

So, to be clear, the idea of trying to send 4K UHD from a console to a TV or AV system wirelessly, especially when the distance can be measured in inches rather than feet, is going to make your life a nightmare. If you wish to retain your sanity, abandon this part of the plan. It's just not feasible. Doing the rear speakers and sub wirelessly is okay with some gear, but trying to do that with 4K pictures is the non-starter.

As for the YSP2700 and YSP5600, yes, they have the features and inputs of an AV receiver built in. You don't get as many inputs or all of the features of an AV receiver, but compared to the vast majority of sound bars, these two models as streets ahead in terms of connectivity and features.

When you say you're not bothered about audio support for DVD, I get your point, buy you're missing the bigger point. Here's why. You want to play your Blu-rays. A lot of those have DTS-Master Audio. The foundation for that is DTS.

In my view, life is considerably simpler if your audio system caters for as many of the different sound formats as possible. That way, it doesn't matter what you play, you'll rarely (if ever) be left with no sound or basic stereo converted to a fudged surround effect.
 
lucid said:
Yeah, there was a word missing. No wonder it didin't make sense. It should have read "I think the idea of trying to do everything wirelessly- " My apologies.

So, to be clear, the idea of trying to send 4K UHD from a console to a TV or AV system wirelessly, especially when the distance can be measured in inches rather than feet, is going to make your life a nightmare. If you wish to retain your sanity, abandon this part of the plan. It's just not feasible. Doing the rear speakers and sub wirelessly is okay with some gear, but trying to do that with 4K pictures is the non-starter.

As for the YSP2700 and YSP5600, yes, they have the features and inputs of an AV receiver built in. You don't get as many inputs or all of the features of an AV receiver, but compared to the vast majority of sound bars, these two models as streets ahead in terms of connectivity and features.

When you say you're not bothered about audio support for DVD, I get your point, buy you're missing the bigger point. Here's why. You want to play your Blu-rays. A lot of those have DTS-Master Audio. The foundation for that is DTS.

In my view, life is considerably simpler if your audio system caters for as many of the different sound formats as possible. That way, it doesn't matter what you play, you'll rarely (if ever) be left with no sound or basic stereo converted to a fudged surround effect.
Click to expand...

I got one issue, my TV stands on a cabinet and the sound bar will cover the screen if I lay it on top in the centre of the cabinet. I really don’t want drill it onto the wall due to its weight and it’s a rented house but could I drill the sound bar on the wall (as that lighter) and leave the lt on the cabinet or would it look dumb? I was also looking at the RFIVER Universal Pedestal Table Top TV Stand but someone in the review it broke and smashed there TV.

Also This was my set up but the viewing distance was greater than 8"-10" feet away from the Tv and the chair, which I would say that’s too far away. I could not put it by the window as there is a heater and the opposite way is a window which would just reflect the window (viewing distance would be 8 ft.)


So I put it in a smaller room which is now around 4-5 ft. away is this a better layout or is this to small?


46375381_10210151882073243_1768102065688543232_n.jpg
 
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Whilst you could put the sound bar on the wall above the telly, I foresee a couple of problems. The first is drilling the walls. Even if you're a dab hand with the old DIY, you've still got the landlord to contend with.

The second issue is the angles. You like to sit very low, so the sound bar would have to sit very high on the wall behind for the sound not to be blocked by the TV screen. That'll make the install look very odd when walking in the room.

Have a think about a TV riser platform such as something along the lines of a Charles Jacobs Monitor Riser Stand. It's inexpensive and very simple to install.
 
lucid said:
Whilst you could put the sound bar on the wall above the telly, I foresee a couple of problems. The first is drilling the walls. Even if you're a dab hand with the old DIY, you've still got the landlord to contend with.

The second issue is the angles. You like to sit very low, so the sound bar would have to sit very high on the wall behind for the sound not to be blocked by the TV screen. That'll make the install look very odd when walking in the room.

Have a think about a TV riser platform such as something along the lines of a Charles Jacobs Monitor Riser Stand. It's inexpensive and very simple to install.
Click to expand...

The problem is that there is no centre stand it runs all the way to the edge: https://www.panasonic.com/content/d...B/TX-55CX802B-Product_ImageGlobal-1_uk_en.png
 
You can get brackets which use the mountings for attaching a TV to a wall, to instead attach a soundbar to the TV - either sat above or below.

Google soundbar brackets.
 
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