Sound bars primarily for Music?

[Grim5]

Dont do it.

I went from a pretty decent 2.0 strictly music setup.

I got into AV and added a second AV amp and 5.1. I kept my music system but it was speaker and wire central.

I got rid of both systems and purchased a really good AV only setup. Movies were awesome, but music was very lacking.

Then when I moved to a nice new house, I wanted a minimal clean living room. Tried loads of soundbars. Used a Monitor Audio ASB-2 for around 9-12 months. It was OK, but sounded like sound was coming from a box under the TV which it was. It was a huge downgrade.

I recently have gone back to the beginning again. Decent stereo amp, with bookshelf speakers on stands, but this time ive add a REL T5 sub. Music is great again, and movies are surprisingly good.

I dare not add up how much money ive wasted on this audio journey only to return to where I started.

Assuming you go high end and get soundbars that comes with extra surround speakers, then soundbars are a great entry into surround sound - you can get pretty decent 7.1.4 sound for movies and games. They fall short in absolute sound quality which makes music sound subpar. Some soundbars are better than others - Bose and Sonos offer some of the most neutral sounds for music and features multi room streaming and support many apps. If music is the main focus and you had to have a soundbar, the worst mistake you could make is buying anything from LG/Panasonic/Samsung/Sony etc as their soundbars are tuned for movies only and sound terrible for music.

But no matter what soundbar you get, it won’t sound as good as a stand along speaker system connected to a receiver

 

[divuk83]

Update: After a demo in my local dealer I was sold on the Mu-so QB 2. For something so tiny it sounds really good, it's not as good as my old Uniti, but then there was just no easy way to have speakers in this room. I'm really pleased with it and I'm loving having a way to play music in the house that's better than my TV speakers or a cheapo Bluetooth speaker.

Next job is to get/make a speaker stand or small table to get it a little higher off the ground.

Thanks to everyone for your advice and suggestions.