Your television has a gorgeous picture and the sound of a hamster talking into a crisp packet. That isn’t you getting old. It’s physics. Modern TVs are so thin that there’s barely room for speakers, so the makers point small drivers at the wall behind the set and hope for the best.
The usual answer is a soundbar. The enthusiast’s answer is a proper surround system with an amplifier, five or more speakers and a subwoofer. One of them is right for you, and it may not be the one the man in the shop wants to sell you.
What does a soundbar actually do that your TV can’t?
A soundbar is a long, slim speaker that sits under or in front of the TV. Inside it you’ll find several small drivers (the parts that actually move air and make sound), plus an amplifier and some processing. It connects to the TV with one HDMI cable, ideally through the socket marked eARC. That stands for enhanced Audio Return Channel, and it lets the TV pass full-quality sound from its built-in apps, Freeview or a streaming stick straight to the bar.
Even a modest £150 to £250 bar is a big step up from built-in TV speakers. The biggest win is clearer speech. Most decent bars have a dialogue or speech enhancement mode that boosts the voice frequencies. If you’ve ever turned the subtitles on for a period drama because everyone mumbles, this is the feature you’re paying for.
Spend more and you get Dolby Atmos. Atmos is a surround format that adds height to the sound, so a helicopter can seem to pass overhead rather than just left to right. Soundbars fake this with drivers angled upwards that bounce sound off the ceiling, plus side-firing drivers that bounce it off the walls. You’ll see numbers like 5.1.2 or 9.1.4: the first figure is the main channels, the second is the subwoofer, and the third is the height channels.
How good can a soundbar get?
Surprisingly good. At the top end, the Sonos Arc Ultra costs £899 and claims a 9.1.4 layout from a single box. Samsung, Sony and Bose all sell flagship bars at similar money, and some come with a separate wireless subwoofer and small rear speakers in the box.
That modular approach is where soundbars get clever. Many systems let you start with the bar and add a wireless subwoofer later, then a pair of rear speakers after that. Sonos, for example, lets you pair a Sub or Sub Mini and two of its smaller speakers as rears. “Wireless” is a slight fib, mind: each speaker still needs a mains socket. But there’s no speaker cable to run round the skirting boards, which matters if you share your living room with someone who has opinions about skirting boards.
The catch is cost creep. A premium bar, a sub and a pair of rears from the same brand can easily go past £2,000. At that point you’re in proper surround system territory, and you should at least look at the alternative.
A soundbar is the best sound you can get without anyone noticing you’ve bought a sound system. A separate surround setup is the best sound you can get, full stop.
Is a full surround sound system worth it?
A traditional home cinema setup has three parts: an AV receiver (a box that decodes the surround formats and powers the speakers), a set of passive speakers, and a subwoofer. A 5.1 system means front left, centre and front right speakers, two surrounds beside or behind you, and the sub. Add height speakers, either in the ceiling or as upward-firing modules on top of the front speakers, and you’ve got Atmos done properly.
The difference is real. Physical speakers placed around the room give you genuine separation that a bar bouncing sound off walls can only approximate. Bass from a decent subwoofer is deeper and tighter. And a receiver isn’t tied to one brand, so you can upgrade the speakers in ten years without binning the lot.
As a rough guide, Atmos-capable receivers from Denon, Yamaha and Onkyo start at around £400 to £600. Add a reasonable 5.1 speaker package and a sub, and a sensible entry-level system lands somewhere between £1,000 and £1,500. Costs go up from there, as the hi-fi crowd will cheerfully tell you.
The downsides are just as real. There are cables to hide. There’s a receiver with a remote and a set-up menu that looks like it was designed by an air traffic controller. Most do have automatic room calibration with a supplied microphone, which helps a great deal. And you need a room where you can actually put speakers in the right places, which rules out plenty of British living rooms with a sofa against the back wall and a door in the wrong spot.
Which should you buy for your living room?
Be honest about how you watch. If it’s mostly news, the football, Netflix dramas and the odd film, a good soundbar is enough. Pick one with eARC, a dialogue mode and, if you can stretch to it, Atmos. Somewhere between £300 and £900 buys something that will make you wonder why you put up with the TV speakers for so long.
If you live in a terrace or a flat, think about the neighbours. A big subwoofer makes bass that travels through walls and floors far better than it travels to your ears. Many soundbars have a night mode that squashes the loud bits so explosions don’t wake the house, which is more useful than it sounds.
Go for a full system if you have a dedicated room or a living room you can rearrange, you watch a lot of films, and you enjoy fiddling. It will sound better and last longer, because you can upgrade it one part at a time.
There’s also a middle path: buy a soundbar from a range that lets you add a sub and rears later. Start with the bar, live with it for a few months, and only spend more if you find yourself wanting it. Many people never do.
One last thing before you spend anything: check your TV’s settings. Make sure the audio output is set to the soundbar or receiver, and that the HDMI port is the eARC one. A surprising number of expensive bars sit there playing tinny stereo because one menu option was never changed.
In short
For most people, a good soundbar is enough: it fixes muffled dialogue, takes one cable and fits any room, with strong options from around £300 to £900. A full surround system with a receiver, separate speakers and a subwoofer still sounds better and is easier to upgrade, but it costs more, takes up space and needs patience to set up. If you can’t decide, buy a soundbar you can add a sub and rear speakers to later.
Sources
Midcent Tech
Alex Innes explains technology for men 45 and over who have seen every gadget since the ZX Spectrum and are not easily impressed. AI and ChatGPT, phones, cars, the smart home, the subscriptions worth keeping and staying safe online – what it does, whether it's worth the money, and whether you need it at all.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to alex@midcent.uk.
