Soundbar vs separates?

willhub

willhub

willhub

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Considering the soundbar route, however, what is the quality like compared to separates? Will a quality soundbar eclipse the quality of my CEOL Piccolo DRAN5 amp and Wharfedale Diamond 9.1's with the BK Monolith plus?

Their speakers in these soundbars seem dinky in comparison?
 
IMO soundbars are mainly for people who don't want AV receivers/speakers littering the room, separates would be better unless you're comparing a top end soundbar to run of the mill separates.
 
Let's take the sub out of the equation for the moment because no soundbar comes with a sub anywhere near as good as the Monolith+. What's left then is the CEOL Piccolo and Diamond 9.1 speakers. This may not be what you paid, but based on the current market rates then the system has a value of around £400 new.

Can you buy a soundbar that would beat this for music? IMO, the answer is Yes; but there's a caveat. It won't be £400, or anywhere near that price. Double, treble the price? Yes. Not £400 new though.

I'll be straight with you; I think your speakers (and the sub too) are way better than your source amplification. The Diamond 9.1s could rub shoulders with far more expensive amplification and a separate streamer without embarrassing themselves. They'll never produce the extra bass weight of larger speakers (obviously), or the additional degree of insight from the best speakers in the £400-£600 range, but neither will they ruthlessly expose the shortcomings in the gear driving them. That makes them a good match for micro systems.

My bet is that relatively few owners have heard them at their best because, being sub-£150 bookshelf speakers, they'll be plonked in places that compromise the speakers' ability to perform. On a pair of open stands and with a bit of space to breathe, the 9.1s would surprise many folk with their precision and lack of colouration. Coupled with the Piccolo you'd get a hint of that. Given some better amplification though, the Diamonds would really shine.

Bringing this back to a soundbar - or something close to it - you're right in a sense about the small drivers. They do limit the performance in a similar way to how small bookshelf speakers don't quite match the scale and authority of bigger speakers. That's physics for you. To counter some of this, the better quality sound bars make use of active amplification so that power isn't wasted in passive crossovers, and the bass speakers are ported in a way to create the illusion of bass power. It's not strictly-speaking a sound bar or a sound base, but if you want to hear something very musical, then the Naim Mu-So is about as close as you'll get to Hi-Fi in a single-box speaker product. Mu-So (Gen II) is £1299, but there are some refurb' Gen Is available for around the £550-£600 mark. You can't connect a conventional sub to it though as there's no low-level subwoofer out socket.
 
My 9.1's are around 6 meters apart. They sound great but the one think I notice with these that I never did with my Logitech PC speakers is that songs on Spotify, some of them are horrendously crackly, and on Spotify Samsung TV app most songs have degraded quality. Perhaps I need a better amp?

I do keep umming and arring upgrading the amp for extra features like adjustable crossover and better quality.
 
willhub said:
My 9.1's are around 6 meters apart. They sound great but the one think I notice with these that I never did with my Logitech PC speakers is that songs on Spotify, some of them are horrendously crackly, and on Spotify Samsung TV app most songs have degraded quality. Perhaps I need a better amp?

I do keep umming and arring upgrading the amp for extra features like adjustable crossover and better quality.
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Six metres apart?! What have you done, put one of them next door? lol

Seriously though, you and each of your speakers should form a triangle where each side length is the same distance. Where your apartment/flat is big enough that the distance from you to each speaker is also 6 metres then fair enough, but they'll never image properly if you've got them at what amounts to being either end of a wide corridor.

Bear in mind too how sound dissipates over distance. This is the inverse square law. You'll be asking the amp to run much harder to compensate. The little Denon claims to output 2x 65W, but that's a bit of a fib. The total (maximum) power consumption from the mains socket is 55W, and since a Watt is a Watt is a Watt, then all any amp can do is convert 240V mains Watts in to low voltage audio Watts without losing too much in the process. Therefore, if the maximum power drawn from the mains is 55W, and let's be generous and say we lose only 20% of that to heat and running the device itself, then we have 44W to split across the two speakers. That gives us 22W per channel max as a very rough calculation.

Relating that back to sound dissipation over distance, if the distance from you to each speaker was 6m, and say you listened at a volume equal to using 20W per channel, then halving the speaker-to-listener distance would reduce the power required by a factor of 4. We could get the same level of volume (sound pressure in dBs) at a 3m listening distance with just 5W/ch from the amp compared to needing 20W/ch at 6m. Drawing 5W/ch from the amp leaves a lot more power in reserve to cope with loud peaks in the music. A better amp would give you more power in reserve

Speaker distance from the back wall and being away from corners is important too. Corners are crap places for most speakers. They're never really happy there. Try to be at least a metre away from the corner for each speaker.

Your 9.1 speakers use the back wall to boost the bass response from the bass-reflex port. The optimum position for them is something like a 20cm gap between the back wall and the rear face of the speaker.

As far as Spotify goes, it uses the lossy compression format OGG Vorbis which does give the audio quality a bit of a kicking. On top of that, Spotify also uses a very low bitrate for the free version of its service. Both those things combined is what @hornetstinger was referring to. He's right. Crap audio source. Your Denon can play FLAC and also WAV at up to 192kHz/24bit. Try some hi-res audio files and test if you can hear a difference.

Your Logitechs lacked the audio resolution to let you hear what was going on with the sound. They might have been good for PC speakers, but Hi-Fi gear is a whole different ball game.

Forgive me if this comes across as blunt, but at the moment you sound like you've lost your way a little. What I mean is that you're not really sure what it is you want.

On the one hand, you've spent a load of time and a bunch of cash pursuing better audio fidelity. Upgrading from the Logitechs to the Denon/Wharfedale combo, and then going through the process of buying the XXLS400 and finally swapping that out for the daddy of the BK range; all of that is the sort of journey that someone might take who wants to get more from their music.

On the other hand we have your choice of source. If it is mostly Spotify because it's free, then that's your Achilles heel.

Any move to better gear will certainly let the quality of good recordings shine through, but at the same time it will expose the weakness of poorer sources. You can't 'fix' a bad source with better audio gear; only downgrading to worse gear again will mask over the cracks. Is that really what you want?
 
The 9.1's have the ports front facing, so will the wall still help them?

Maybe it's not 6 meters I'll use the tape measure, the sound just seems clearer now, whilst they're not in the adequate position for the tidiness and organisation of my living room it's better where they are at the moment. But I can't get more optimal than already in my room (crap room for speakers I guess). They're a couple of meters away from me just they're 6ish meters apart from each other

I keep thinking of trying Tidal, but the cost is higher and then I'd be loosing all my saved songs/albums, really wish Spotify would come up with a lossless service.

I want good sound quality, I think I may be "outgrowing" the 9.1's and the amp, but at the same time, I want to avoid any more significant outlay as focus on life priorities such as mortgage and paying some CC debts off and try enjoy what I have more. If I can make some gains without much outlay then that'd be good.

Probably 30/60/10 (movies, music, games) split at the moment.
 
Do you want the best sound? Seperates

Do you want no wires, no multiple speakers, etc? - Soundbar

Can a soundbar offer great sound? Yes but those ones aren't cheap the YSP 2700 is the cheapest I'd recommend. And the Samsung N950 is £1500 for the newest version which is Q something or other.
 
Pretty much whats already been said, want decent sound without cables and cost? Soundbar.
But you will get far far better immersive sound out of a decently setup but not overly expensive separate system.
 
Depends what you class as separates. Proper av separates are big money especially on the av pre amp side.

Power amps aren't too expensive and you keep them for 20 years or so.

Show me a avr that matches that ATI 6000 series. Hell even flagship avr can't match ATI 1800 series. Most avrs melt burst into flames if you ask them to drive (11?) 4 ohm speakers
 
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I wouldn't go back to avr (in the main system) I have a mid range yahama avr in the the third system, pc audio rig.

Even flagship model from arcam or anthem have lousy output figures.
 
hornetstinger said:
Depends what you class as separates. Proper av separates are big money especially on the av pre amp side.

Power amps aren't too expensive and you keep them for 20 years or so.

Show me a avr that matches that ATI 6000 series. Hell even flagship avr can't match ATI 1800 series. Most avrs melt burst into flames if you ask them to drive (11?) 4 ohm speakers
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I had to google that you were on about, some serious power there, 2 power switches lol. I bet for spotify it sounds no different:p. If he's connecting to a TV, he wouldn't be able to use that type of amp would, or do you get adapter cables?
 
willhub said:
The 9.1's have the ports front facing, so will the wall still help them?
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Unless a pair of ported speakers are designed specifically to be used on-wall then really, whether front ported or rear ported, they need some space. Front ported can live with a smaller gap, but they still need the correct spacing to get the right amount of bass boost.

The Wharfedale 9.0 are the smaller sibling to your 9.1, and they still need a 10cm gap for a balanced sound even though they're front ported too. Your 9.1s are larger, and designed with a bigger gap in mind.



willhub said:
Maybe it's not 6 meters I'll use the tape measure, the sound just seems clearer now, whilst they're not in the adequate position for the tidiness and organisation of my living room it's better where they are at the moment. But I can't get more optimal than already in my room (crap room for speakers I guess). They're a couple of meters away from me just they're 6ish meters apart from each other
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I'm not going to get bogged down in the distance thing, but I will say that I think it's physically impossible for you to be 2m away from a pair of speakers that are 6m apart. The maths just doesn't work. The closest you can be to them is 3m to each, and that would put you slap bang in the middle of a straight line between the two speakers.

willhub said:
I keep thinking of trying Tidal, but the cost is higher and then I'd be loosing all my saved songs/albums, really wish Spotify would come up with a lossless service.

I want good sound quality, I think I may be "outgrowing" the 9.1's and the amp, but at the same time, I want to avoid any more significant outlay as focus on life priorities such as mortgage and paying some CC debts off and try enjoy what I have more. If I can make some gains without much outlay then that'd be good.

Probably 30/60/10 (movies, music, games) split at the moment.
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I can't foresee Spotify coming up with a high quality version of its streaming service. That's not what the brand is about. Wishing for it is a waste of time. The rest of your post is a bit of a contradiction of itself: You're saying you want better quality gear and a better quality source, but at the same time you don't want to leave Spotify and you don't want to spend much money. I know it's stating the obvious, but you can't have it both ways.

Really though, we're getting ahead of ourselves.

First off, I don't think you need better speakers. Not yet, anyway. The ones you have at the moment are plenty good enough to see you through one or maybe two upgrades of the streaming and amplification package. Besides, from your descriptions, it sounds as if the speaker locations are a compromise to fit in the room, and so going for better (bigger?) speakers could make things more complicated and end up sounding worse. You don't need that hassle.

Second, there may be a case for upgrading the electronics, but you're not ready for that yet. The reason you're not ready is two-fold at least. #1, you haven't yet said if you've tested a better quality audio file through the CEOL N5. Without doing that, you really don't know how much difference there is between the quality that Spotify uses and what might be on offer with FLAC or WAV files.

#2 Unless you spend some cash on (a) a better streaming service, and (b) the gear to access it, then it's all moot anyway.

You said it yourself, you have some other priorities for spare cash right now, so you should really stick with the gear and services you have. When you're finally ready, then that's the time to change the streaming service and either add a streamer to the CEOL N5 that can run Tidal, or change the CEOL for a better amp and a more versatile streamer.
 
I'm going to get my tape measure out and check the length and possibly see if I can give Tidal a go.

Just checked, 2.2 to 2.7 meters away and about 3 meters between the speakers

So my estimates were way off, before they were 1.5 meters apart and the clarity does seem better now. I'm connecting it to my PC using the HDMi then optical to TV, not sure if it would be beat optical straight from PC to amp but both still a digital signal so difference would be negligible?
 
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Your distances make more sense now. Thanks for the update.

Re: the quality from the laptop versus going via the TV; the only real way to know for sure would be to test it.

In theory, both HDMI and TOSlink optical are quite jitter prone. Personally though, I would concentrate on answering the question about how much difference you can hear between Spotify and some other source at either FLAC or WAV 192/24 quality. Worry about signal paths and "what ifs" regarding iternal or external signal conversion at some later date.
 
hornetstinger said:
I think jitter only matters and bad for cd audio, DD/DTS is a bitstream and is not effected
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In the context of this thread, the amp can't decide DD/DTS, so what's the relevance of your point?

60% of @willhub's listening is for music. Jitter affects (correct word) digital signals. They don't have to be just from CD, they can be from streaming too.

The industry has progressively better solutions to address the issue of jitter. It's part of the reason why asynchronous USB exists and is used on some high-end DACs.

As I said in my previous post though, worrying about this right now is a waste of time. There are bigger fish to fry.
 
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