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For Better TV Sound, Add a Bar

Jonathan Blum

That TV you just bought might be high-definition, but the sound from that set is most definitely not.

If the atrocious retail sales environment has one upside, it is that there has never been a better time to buy a TV. Pick your maker. Pick your store. Everybody from Sony (SNE Quote) to Samsung, from Best Buy (BBY Quote) to Wal-Mart (WMT Quote), is trying to turn our national TV addiction into whatever sales they can.

However, audio nerds like me have a major bone to pick with the cheap flat-panel bonanza: Low-cost TVs that are hot sellers these days almost always come with equally low-fidelity sound systems. If these sets have speakers at all -- many don't, so be sure to check -- they are usually mass-produced, way-offshore jobs that make the AM radio in my mother's old 1968 Caprice sound good.

(Photo gallery: 2009 Consumer Electronics Show)

What is going on here is that electronics makers are angling to get you to bite on an audio package to augment your spiffy new flat panel. Despite the lexiconal abuse, these so-called 5.1 surround-sound systems actually have six speakers: three up front, one of which is by the TV -- called the center channel -- and two on either side. Then there are two in the back, usually overhead. And then one more -- the sub-woofer -- is dedicated to the low sounds.

For sure, 5.1 audio can rock the house. Makers like Harmon Kardon(HAR Quote) and Denon make marvelous multichannel media systems, but there is a major catch. Besides the cost, we're talking six speakers with amps, cables and construction that has to be finessed into your TV room. Which can get to be like Circuit City on a bad day if you're not careful.

Enter the sound bar, electronics makers' answer to the 5.1 surround-sound clutter fest.

Sound bars use arrays of precisely arranged, tiny little speakers, along with digital sound processing magic, to create the illusion of surround sound with just one box. Sound bars are usually flat and long, sit directly under a TV and usually take just a few cables to install.

Yamaha (YAMCY Quote) made the first sound bar of decent quality a few years back. Now many makers compete to offer streamlined home audio sound systems. These include Bowers & Wilkens (BWI Quote), Sony and many others. It is becoming a rare hot area in today's dour electronics market.

I have been testing a new entrant in the sound-bar game, the Z-BASE 550 ($499) from ZVOX Audio. The Swampscott, Mass.-based company makes a nice line of desktop sounds systems that compete with Bose, Boston Acoustics and others.

Easy sound: Put the TV on top of the Z-BASE, plug in a stereo sound connector and power it up.

I have always liked the company's innovation and low prices.

What you get: The Z-BASE 550 offers that fancy new TV of yours a reasonably fast and cheap audio makeover. I tested the unit with a $440 Viewsonic 26-inch TV, a classic, no-sound-to-speak-of flat panel LCD that bargain hunters are lovin' these days. The setup was dead easy: Put the TV on top of the Z-BASE, plug in a stereo sound connector and power it up. And poof! I had a better-sounding TV instantly. ZVOX does a nice job with a simple remote control that lets users manipulate volume, tone levels and the level of illusion of surround-ness that the system creates.

And the price is right: $499 is a decent value. Competing sound bars can run double that. So far, so good.

What you don't get: A truly great TV sound experience.

I know I am a tough customer, but these entry-level sound bars have limitations. I will spare you the full geek logic here, but thanks to the idiocy of the television industry, surround sound is not a properly deployed, standards-based technology. Surround-sound quality varies not only by show, but by commercial. And the digital-signal processing these sound bars depend on to create the illusion of a sound behind the viewer struggles with that variability. So, yes, the Z-BASE can produce good sound for a Giants game. But when the Bud Lite ad comes on, watch out. That ad is using a different flavor of surround sound. And it can sound simply awful.

Also, believe it or not, $499 buys a whole heck of a lot of traditional 5.1 surround systems. So much so, that suddenly maybe a little clutter is not such a bad thing.

Bottom line: Clutterbugs -- and significant others -- may rejoice over the idea of a sound bar. And the Z-BASE is a solid value. But sound bars can sound awful as a product class. So be sure they meet your audio needs before investing in one.