Harman Kardon SB 16 soundbar

It’s a sad fact that as the picture quality of flatscreen TVs have been steadily improving, their audio performance has been dropping off. This is mainly due to the fact that TVs are becoming slimmer and slimmer, leaving less room for decent sized speakers. If your other half won’t hear tell of a surround sound systems and all …

[dogged]

Cool.

Paired with a decent telly and an AV receiver, it should do the job really nicely.

Thanks.

[mittfh]

Interesting model name...

Especially considering most of us are probably familiar with a very different SB16 dating back to June 1992... :)

[Anonymous Coward]

[snigger]

Sounds a bit like "hard on".

[Anonymous Coward]

So.....

I can splash five hundred queen's heads on a huge honking bar thing with half an amp built in. Or, alternatively, I can buy a real surround amp and speaker rig that sounds better and costs less.

Am I missing something here? Or am I just paying for the 'Karman/Hardon' sticker on the front?

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly

Yes, you are, it stops your sitting room looking like a branch of Dixons. Nothing looks quite so stupid as an average UK size sitting room with speakers stuffed everywhere.

[Sky]

HDMI control is useful

I have a yamaha sound bar, it is not bad. It connects to a sony TV, and the HDMI interface is used to control the volume. That way the Sony remote sends signals over HDMI to directly control the sound bar.

[Giles Jones]

Floored more than flawed

Tv speakers have never been that great though.

The biggest problem now is how they are aimed. Many TVs have the speakers facing the floor when they should be pointed at your head.

[Brian]

SB16?

Next they will release an AWE32.

[mittfh]

AWE32?

Then possibly, a few years down the line, decide to release a version called Live! (after all, the processing between the TV output and the speakers is probably a negligible period of time...)

[Stuart Duel]

Soundsticks

I'd really like to see Harman Kardon update their gorgeous Soundsticks system with 7.1 digital surround sound, remote and wireless speakers. I'd pay a $1k for that!

[Chz]

Can you add delay to it?

Many TVs (*cough* Samsungs) dump unprocessed sound out of the digital out port, which tends to end up being 80-90ms ahead of the TV. Samsung argues that any half-decent home theatre system is able to add a delay to the sound. Is this thing capable of that without being connected to an A/V system (and thus defeating the point of it)?

[druck]

Re: Can you add delay to it?

I wish my Samsung dumped the unprocessed audio out of it. 5.1 can go in via an HDMI input, but it only outputs stereo via HDMI or optical. So if I want 5.1 from my Humax HD Freiview box I have to feed that in to my surround sound amp (also Samsung) directly via optical. Both those units have the ability to ad a delay to the audio to match the picture, but it's a pain having to switch audio source and use a separate remote for volume (a good all-in-one remote is on my wishlist).