I’m all about having the least amount of anything between me and whatever content I’m going to watch. When it comes to apps, I love only dealing with a couple of programs on my Mini and this minimalism is reflected in my hardware too.
The place it’s most obvious is my sound set-up. A few years ago, I got fed up running six different sets of speaker wire out of my Yamaha receiver. So I trader in my true 5.1 set-up for the excellent Yamaha YSP-800 soundbar. While it’s not the same as having speakers mounted behind you, it does a surprisingly decent job at throwing sound all over the room. And it’s one unit – including the built-in DTS/DD receiver. I just plugged it into my existing sub and was good to go.
But I’ll be honest – I miss that rear sound. I just do. And it’s been a few years, so I figured I could find something that looked as good as the YSP-800 but included true surround with rear speakers. Basically, I was looking for a soundbar with left, center, and right speakers that also had a built-in DTS/DD receiver (to skip adding a new component) and worked with rear speakers.
So I was ecstatic when I discovered Vizio VHT510 system. Not only did it hit all my requirements but it also connected to the rear speakers wirelessly. It was only a hair under $300, came with a sub, and had racked up some pretty decent reviews at Amazon.
So I confidently placed my order. When it showed up, I was impressed by the build quality – everything seemed tight. The remote has a bit of spongy action, but I’m universal remote guy so that wasn’t going to be a problem.
But the sound quality was.
I was monumentally disappointed by everything that it sent my way. Music was tinny and felt like it was being blasted all over the place – very little separation to my ears. That’s par for the course with soundbars to some extent, but this felt downright sloppy.
Movies/TV fared just as badly. On the subject of no separation, dialogue felt like it had been spread across all three front speakers. I’m used to dialogue mainly being isolated to the center speaker and that just wasn’t happening. And, no matter how I tweaked the settings, it never felt…solid.
My subwoofer test is always the opening rooftop race from “The Matrix”. When the agent slams onto the roof, my Klipsch sub rattles my ribcage. There was no noticeable sound effect (at all) with the Vizio. Even when I cranked up the sub to 10. Nada.
At that point, my wife (who’s no audio snob) started getting irritated. I was already there – a great price and spec list couldn’t compensate for poor audio quality.
I’m sorry it worked out this way – because there’s no higher-end alternative to try out. I plugged my YSP-800 back in and immediately appreciated its rich sound quality all over again.
