Home Theater Geeks 441 Transcript

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00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I answer a question from Club Twit member, rebecca Dupree, who wants to know if she should get a Sony soundbar to go with her new Sony TV, or maybe use Apple HomePods.

00:16
I do have an opinion, so stay tuned. Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWIT. Hey there, scott Wilkinson. Here, the home theater geek.

00:42
In this episode, I answer a listener question from Club Twit member, rebecca Dupree, who writes I recently upgraded my living room TV to a Sony XR55A75L OLED TV. This is a huge upgrade from my Sony KDL46V2500 46-inch 1080p TV from 2007. I am loving the new TV and I'm considering upgrading the sound. Since the new TV is a Sony, a Sony soundbar is an obvious but expensive choice. I'm also an Apple fan and use an Apple 4K TV streamer. I think that two Apple HomePods might be a good alternative to the Sony soundbar. What are your thoughts? Well, congratulations on the TV upgrade. You're right, it's huge that Sony 1080p TV didn't have. Hdr was smaller. It's not that big a size change, although 46 to 55 is certainly noticeable. But, man, an OLED TV it's my favorite current technology, that's for sure. You're getting so much better picture quality Now. Regarding that, I want to just point out, be sure to select the cinema picture preset or, if that TV has one called professional, which my new Sony A95L has. Don't know if the 75 does, but if it does, pick that one. If not, pick cinema mode.

02:28
Now, as for an external sound system, let's take a look at the two options. The Apple HomePod costs $300 each. So when you mention that the Sony soundbars are expensive, these ain't cheap either. Sony soundbars are expensive, these ain't cheap either. Now, they're mostly designed to be used as a single omnidirectional speaker. They have an up-firing four-inch woofer and five tweeters arranged in a circle, which we can see in the next graphic here, which is a sort of an x-ray view. The woofer is firing upwards and you've got these five tweeters at the bottom arrayed in a circle.

03:14
Now the HomePods can be paired. They can be connected together wirelessly into a stereo pair, but they only use wireless connections. There's no wired connection into them at all. Now, I think the A75L probably has Bluetooth. Certainly, my several-year-old Sony OLED did and my current A95L does. So that could work, but it might not be intuitive to set up and Bluetooth can be a bit wonky. For example, I use a pair of Sony headphones via Bluetooth when I want to listen to the TV without bothering my wife, and sometimes it works, and sometimes I really need to fiddle around with it to make it work. So it's inconsistent and that's quite frustrating. But, worst of all, the HomePod does not seem to have any option for adding a subwoofer, which I think is critical for good home theater audio. So this is not an option that I would really recommend.

04:32
So I looked at Sony soundbars and there's a bunch of them In this price range. I would recommend the HT-G700. Now that's a soundbar from 2020, so it's four years old, but it's still available. You can see it in the graphic number three. There it is. Now this is a 3.1 soundbar, so it has a separate center channel driver, which will give you better dialogue intelligibility, and it includes a wireless subwoofer for better bass, arc or eARC output, both of which will let you connect the TV to it with HDMI, and that's a good thing. It's compatible with Dolby Atmos and DTS-X immersive audio, although it down converts those into stereo stereo, but then it uses its up converter to convert non-immersive audio into a simulation of immersive audio. And it has Bluetooth. So if you wanted to play music from a phone or a tablet or some device, you could do that as well.

06:03
Now it it's well-reviewed by Reviewedcom, also TechRadar, gizmodo and Ratingscom that's R-T-I-N-G-Scom. In fact Ratings called it the best lower mid-range Sony soundbar of the ones they've tested. Now ratings does say that it has a somewhat boomy sound profile and there's a lot of thumping and compression at max volume. My answer to that is don't listen at max volume. You don't really need to. They say it's got enough volume to fill a big room, but I don't recommend listening at max volume anyway. So if you don't, you won't have that problem. And it has various EQ settings, equalization, that include dialogue enhancement, which can in fact improve the sound.

06:59
Now what about the price? The HTG 700 lists for $600 on the Sony website, same as two Apple HomePods, so no problem there. In fact, amazon, last time I looked, had it for $524, so a little bit less, 75 bucks less in fact. Now an alternative would be the Sony HTS2000. It's also a 3.1 soundbar, so it has a left, a right and a center driver. It's 320 bucks on Sony's website, down from 500, it's $398 on Amazon. So that may be a limited sale there.

07:48
So here's the HT-S2000. And also Amazon, I think, had an X-ray view which I thought was kind of interesting. Here you can see the left, center and right channel drivers, and flanking the center are two what Sony calls subwoofers built-in subwoofers. Well, they're not really subwoofers. I would say, if you were going to go that route, I would recommend buying a separate subwoofer that pairs with it wirelessly, and that would be the SASW3, which can pair to the HTS2000 separately wirelessly. That brings the total cost to $670, so it's a little more than the two Apple HomePods.

08:49
Apple HomePods and ratings rates the HT-S2000 a bit lower than the HT-G700, even though the S2000 is a 2023 model. But it lacks an HDMI input, only has an HDMI eARC output, which lets sound from the TV get back into the soundbar. So it would work okay. But again, ratings rated the four-year-old HT-G700 soundbar higher than the newer model. So in that price range that's what I'd go for, and the HT-G700 comes with a subwoofer. So 600 bucks, you're all in. That's a strong recommendation from me.

09:30
I would not go with the Apple AirPods HomePods sorry, because they can't do subwoofer. They're meant to be omnidirectional, which might be nice, but it could screw things up. You can only connect to them wirelessly for all sorts of reasons. So there you go. That's my recommendation. Hope it helps. Now, if you have a question for me, you can send it along to htg at twittv and I would love to answer your question right here on the show. And, as always, we thank you for your support of the TWIT Network. With your membership in Club TWIT, you can listen to this show audio for free, of course, but if you want to check out the video, all you have to do is join Club TWIT and you can see this show and all the other shows that TWIT produces without ads. So I thank you for that and hope to see you in the Discord, where Club TWIT members also get to congregate. Until next time, geek out.