Jake's reaction to the first segue killed me, the boy is learning well. As much as I love these home improvement videos, I hope this solution just works with no issues in the future so you can relax and enjoy it.
I'm an audio guy and you guys did a great job with your setup. It was smart to include the wife to get that WAF approval number as high as possible. I especially like that you figured out that using the TV speaker for a center speaker was a terrible idea. The stand alone center speaker is where you will get your clarity for dialog. Ninety percent of TV/movies is dialog and 90% of dialog comes out of the center speaker.
exactly what I was going to point out. Movie night ruined by not watching it in your 250.000 $ movie room in the first place. I mean what is the point of having a dedicated Home Theater room if you are not gonna use it 😂😂 .
@@URAZKIVANERhe said in a video a while ago his family mostly doesn't like going down to the theater room to watch movies, the living room is most convenient, minimum viable product is all that matters for a lot of people!
@@RWDtechTotally understandable and I would be just like them if I had the choice. But that theater room is a complete waste. And that's a shame, no more, no less.
As person who owns a theater room and a family of 3, sometimes you like to use different rooms and different systems in your house... I'm 27 and yes this is a flex
Yvonne getting final say even though there's a literal room full of audio professionals and technical professionals in the room is the most hilarious thing in the world and I love it.😂
I work in residential HVAC, it's pretty common for the wife to be the one who has final say. I even did a job for a contractor who told his wife, and we told his wife that putting the AC from the closet inside to the attic was a bad idea. Guess where it went? In the attic. Lol.
As someone who has worked with RF for over 30 years, I have *always* advised people to use wired for reliability and wireless only when something has to be in motion.
I'm the same with anything, whether it be audio or data. If you can wire it then you definitely should. The only reason I haven't got cables for my internet is because I'm in a rental. Thankfully, mesh systems have gotten really good and I can get full speed gigabit internet around the house with a mesh kit. My surround system is cabled though. Not the neatest but audio definitely works better over cable.
if it doesn't move (a lot) just wire it basically the only things that make sense wireless are phones and mice, and when it comes to charging phones do better wired anyway
I rarely comment on things but you have touched on one of my hobbies. Sound. Some fun little notes from playing around with home theatre systems. If you are using the receivers powered outputs instead of using external amplifiers, you are missing out on a lot of sound and detailed precision. Sound quality and volume will always come down how much power you have to drive your speakers, and how efficient your speaker is. The more watts you can power your speakers with the better listening experience you will have, unless your speaker is super inefficient at reproducing sound. Also, your center channel speaker on a receiver, will always need decibles increased in the equalizer to make it sound good, unless you have a dedicated amplifier for the center channel. The center channel will always be the hardest speaker to drive in a home theatre system. Side Note: The thing that destroys speakers is distortion from the audio source, and clipping from the amplifier. Very rarely send more power to your speakers will destroy them, but this is rare.
That Sony AVR is a good sounding unit and you can increase the output to the center channel as you suggested. The downside which Linus discovered is that the built-in room correction software on-screen display is clunky at best. It's the same stuff they used ten years ago and it's never been updated.
the way the audio works on this is fantastic; you guys have really upped the production value -- so interesting to listen with headphones and have a surround experience in a simulated manner
Too shame its not surround but only stereo, real ears can detect way of incoming soundwaves. Thats why we use surround speakers instead of just stereo.
@@Cowayger I think you don't understand why this is stereo. We have two ears, so we always hear in stereo. Their method of recording using a human-like figure translates the sound delays between the ears that you would get from surround to our headphones. That allows us to hear what they hear rather than the actual surround channels. Remember, they aren't trying to show us the surround demo. They're tryna show us how the surround demo sounds on their system.
If only setups like these weren't extremely expensive. I'd love an LTT video about best bang for your buck home theatre setups. Like the best cheap reciever to do surround, and what speakers to pair with advantages and disadvantages. That would be really interesting
and as you get older and older your hearing gets worse and worse and get to a point where this super expensive setup is from a personal perspective.. worthless.
My best advice for that would be to check pawn shops. I picked up a nice 4k Denon receiver for $90 and I also found a nice pair of 100 watt 3-way floor stand speakers for about $80 or $90 as well. Otherwise I just asked people I knew if they old speakers they didn't need anymore for my center and side channels. Those speakers you get in those all-in-one box theater systems make for beautiful center and side channel speakers. An episode where they have to coble together the cheapest theater system would be kind of cool.
Not sure if LTT is the right channel for that, but as they mentioned here: rear speakers and surround effects are only needed for the atmosphere, not as much for sound quality. If you're on a tight budget always prioritize getting a good quality stereo setup over a mediocre surround setup and add the flavor speakers afterwards.
Tons of channels like that - that will do a better job than LTT. LTT is a mile-wide-inch-deep kind of channel. If you need something indepth, you best look elsewhere.
As others said, buy used. Start with stereo, and depending on the size of speakers you start with, maybe add a sub as the first upgrade. If you go with big speakers, add a center speaker instead. Stereo speakers, center, and maybe a sub is actually great for most people, and if you have the space, you can add back/side speakers later on, and maybe dedicated Atmos speakers if you want to go wild. Most people say that it's best to stay within the same brand and line of speakers, at least when it comes to stereo and center. You don't need to be that picky when it comes to the sub and back/side speakers, but aim for the same "quality" of speakers all around. Staying at least within the same brand adds to the aesthetics of the setup, because they often use the same color schemes across lines of product. But if you go for all black or white, that might not be an issue at all. I have the first series of Dali Ikon for stereo and center, and Dali Concept as back speakers. I found that because I have pretty big front speakers, the sub was actually not doing that much work, and I moved away from it. Dali is a Danish brand, not that it's super cheap in Denmark, but as far as I know it is fairly pricey outside of Denmark. So you might wanna look for a local brand. And just look around to begin with to see if there are some brands / sets you keep seeing on the used market - like entry level hifi is often sold really cheap, and can still be a great option, because if people dip their feet into hifi, they often upgrade after a while to get whatever they are looking for. Don't go overboard! It's tempting to drop a lot of money, but as with everything else, you will get diminishing returns the more money you spend. Sure, the $10K might objectively be better than a $500 speaker, but is it worth your money, and if you get the $10K speaker, then you also need to get the super expensive receiver or amp, and then drop thousands of dollars redoing your living room, so that you can experience it the optimal way, and so on and so forth. Most important part: always listen to the speakers, as in, go and listen to them so that you can figure out what you like. I used to have a friend who was perfectly happy with a plastic setup that he'd bought for next to nothing at the supermarket. When that broke he asked me for advise, and we went to a store and listened to a few things. He could immediately spot the difference between his old setup and what he ended up buying, which was the entry level Denon receiver, and a matching set of speakers made of actual wood. In short: you don't need to be an expert, just trust your ears.
This is pretty much why I never rely on wireless for anything. Companies always seem to think everything should be wireless, but there is so much radio traffic in the world today that you can never expect it to always "just work".
Man even wired barley works hdmi arc driving men insane because 20% of the time it wont work for absolutly no reason at all the damn thibg always refuse to work whenever i invite ppl over
@@kingzor100 I turned off eARC on my setup, and just went back to having my setup as I did before I upgraded my receiver. To be fair, it probably works perfectly fine on my Denon receiver, but my LG TV drives me insane because it kept auto switching to inputs I didn't want to change to, and tried to enable the remote features, with no option to just pick one setting and not having the TV mess with it. It's probably totally fine if you have a soundbar, only use it for TV audio, and only stream using the TV's apps. I don't use the apps, I don't stream a lot of TV and movies, and my setup is mostly used for watching movies on discs, or listening to music on Spotify, vinyl, or CD.
I'm actually really impressed with highend wireless mice. I've never had a connection cut out on me. (Cheap wireless mice tend to be far less impressive and I've encountered a fair few with flaky connections.)
Convenience is underrated I guess to how strongly people actually like stuff sometimes 😂. That and living rooms are super cozy sometimes too. Having a home theatre must be incredible though for when watching a big movie it'd be an actual dream
I love Linus’s house content - honestly my favourite series on the channel and I say this with nothing but love and respect for his entrepreneurship and work ethic and well deserved success. All things I look up to. So I say this with love when I say Linus, you can’t say “movie night ruined” when you’re watching a movie in your kitchen adjacent open plan awkward shape living space when you have a HOME MOVIE THEATRE right there 🤣😂
You might get the audio input, but those speakers must send much more than just the audio signals for those surround shenanigans. You may be able to reuse them as normal speakers but then you are probably better off using normal, better sounding, speakers.
@@RAndrewNeal Dont know the exact chip they are using, but its very likely something like an esp8266 with the wifi integrated, no where to tap in. And even if its an external wifi chip, designing and building a circuit that responds exactly like the system is expecting is beyond unlikely that they would ever do that.
I have the HT-A9 and I also initially had wireless dropout issues. In my case, I was able to make adjustments to my setup to solve them (moved my wifi access point and set the HT-A9 speakers to the "prioritize signal over quality" settings), but that wouldn't be possible for everyone. I definitely agree that it's a huge flaw with this product. If they ever do a successor, they definitely need to tack this from both ends: improve the stability of the wireless itself because there's no reason wifi-based audio transmission should be so troublesome, and also provide a wired backup option.
Linus did try all that stuff already, he even moved everything to specific channels, so that there was an obvious gap for the system to use. No dice, it still ended up channel hopping and breaking stuff. It would be fixable if the bloody things allowed for telling them to stay on a specific channel.
@@666Tomato666 as I said. It worked for me but it’s not going to work for everyone. In my case my wireless environment was such that I was able to make changes to solve the problem. In Linus’s case, he was not.
@@lordelliott42 No, since they're IP speakers, but there is no Ethernet connection foreseen. They have digital crossovers and an acoustically fairly how do i put it well it's not a design that is very inherently sound, pardon the pun, they're for sure running a lot of digital compensation, they sorely need that. They should have had Ethernet and ideally a PoE add-on option at a bare sensible minimum for the product, and i'd still call it landfill fodder even if it had that.
It would make so much sense for the HT-A9’s to just have Ethernet as a backup/second option. Put a port on each unit and one on the hub, and if you need to run them wired you just plug in an unmanaged switch and it automatically switches over.
Exactly. Active speakers are a blessing as their internal amplification, equalizing and DAC can be optimized for said speaker, but not having an ethernet port on all speakers beside the routing unit is beyond me. I would never buy a set that doesn't have that, it's just asking for trouble.
@@robinbegley1077 I don't think PoE, even PoE++ (802.3bt) could really keep up with a speaker, not only because of the amount of power required, but especially with the variability of that power. Speakers use power in short bursts, not in a more constant way like a camera or a phone, and I don't think the power supplies in normal switches would like that kind of "bursts" of power demand.
There are large groups of people and even organizations that are pushing to move the entire lighting system of office buildings to PoE++ so it can all be "smart". Its a stupid idea but they are advocating it. With any one speaker being less then 50 watts Id imagine. It might requiter the speaker or a separate brick of capacitors to handle the variability of the load IF consumed power is a problem. I could see needing a special, high end PoE switch to handle the higher load based on what ive seen.@@carlostorrespaz5592
And for me its the reason why i stopped watching LTT regulary. At this point he keeps sabotaging himself for klicks because no tech multi-millionaire can be that stupid with his tech decisions, but for every 1000$ fail he literally earns tens of thousands with clicks and sponsors.
The fact that your room is the typical rectangular home theatre, but you are getting virtual rears is amazing.. That AV receiver sounds like it's going to be my next AV receiver. Great video.
I've had many AVR's over the years, and Sony's AVR's would be a good choice for the introduction into the home cinema world. Denon has better graphics, but Sony's are more user-friendly. Besides Sony imo sounds better with two channel stereo music.
I love that Linus took a similar path to me and ended up in a similar spot with regards to living room audio. Tried wireless surrounds hooked to a AVR and struggled with signal drops and static pops. Finally ripped those out and carefully hid wires along baseboards until I could complete the runs in the wall and ceiling for 7.2.4 Atmos. The SVS Elevate are good and the little 3000 Micro is a tough sub that’s good for filling in bass in position where it might get hit or in the way.
What Sony should have done with the wireless ones is an ethernet jack as well. It would give you the exact same experience and likely not need much of anything on the hardware/software side to make that work.
With them already needing power, and hi-PoE capable of 100watts of power, they really should have more options for the price. I'd be fine with them simply having the option to be wired.
I don't know. A good Ethernet cable is a CHUNKY kind of cable. And if you've got to run fat cables to every speaker... this doesn't sound like it's the "stealth" option.
@@benwu7980 I wouldn't use PoE for an audio amplifier at all but the speakers already have power they just need the data in a more reliable way than the wifi they're using.
@@klaxoncow Cat6 is no thicker than the speaker wire they just ran. We're talking about a digital audio signal maybe a couple for different drivers and the microphone(s), it doesn't need 10 gig or anything crazy. Heck, 10 Mb/s would probably be just fine.
They also make crown molding with hidden cable channels in it. We have it in our house and it was a GAME CHANGER. Wifey finally let me put a 9.2 system! Also if you're going balls out, you can paint your speakers to exact match the wall or ceiling colours. We did that with left over paint and I even ordered custom matched grill cloth to re-cover the grills.
I love these house vids. They are the real world application or the tec and it is super interesting to see how you go about solving issue. EVERYONE has issues once stuff is put into the house, it is super relatable to see issues like, where and how to install stuff so it doesn't look bad in your home against the "best" way to have something set up.
If at all possible I'll always go wired, it just opens unlimited possibilities, I hate being limited. This is nice, I like the calabration, it was fast and effective, can't really ask for more really.
I would have given each of the options a test in that EQ calibration, Engineer looks like it's for an optimized type of room. Not had that feature on a Sony before though to know what the other options would have done to change the sound, and certainly never had a HATS to compare.
@@benwu7980 It said it was tuned for the room the engineers use, which you can guarantee doesn't have a wall mounted TV on a 45 degree angle lol. I think Linus messed up literally EVERYTHING about this setup.
@@st0nedpenguin It is generally a lot easier and less obvious to get power to speakers than to run wires from the TV to them, especially in modern homes which generally have outlets near everywhere. Discretely running speaker wire everywhere can be time consuming and expensive, and may not be feasible in rented homes.
@@st0nedpenguin Yeah, the room the Sony engineers developed it in is almost certain to have pretty much the optimal type of dimensions, layout and likely treated walls.
Just for reference: If you have proper acoustically engineered floorstanding speakers then you should be able to watch movies without a subwoofer, and you shouldn't set them to small. Instead set them to large, combine main(front) and LFE and set the LFE to the point where your speakers fall off the wagon. On our B&W 683 they drop at ~45Hz so I set it to 50Hz, subs don't really enjoy anything much above 50Hz either. It's not necessarily expensive speakers only, but our previous speakers was definitely to the point where the Low-pass filter was set at 120Hz so what Jake says holds true for most of the "regular" surround sound systems, especially the size speakers they're running here.
Yeah as usual LTTs audio tips are not particularly correct. A pair of floor standing speakers combined with a properly setup DSP will sound _really_ goodall the way through the frequenc range. I mean looking at those measurements they got the bass performance leaves quite a bit to be desired, lots of ups and down, and shows that even my book shelf speakers play bass better (but maybe not louder) than this. So I don't know exactly how the DSP in the Sony receiver works or if you can do some manual tuning yourself, but both the bass and the treble could definitely be better, and tbh not that hard to do yourself if you have access to a PEQ.
@@gurratell7326 Well, for small speakers it's perfectly correct, but when you get low-stretching floorstanding then yes, you kinda want to take advantage of that. Heck, I don't even use a DSP, just manually set crossover and the drivers do their thing to make it sound good, and it does :D The previous set of speakers did however require a lot of EQ to be adjusted to just balance the audio profile out. Not a bad tip alltogether, just a bit of a broad statement.
Sure, you can watch them without a sub, but it does cause issues on a good amount of movies. Try watching Shang-Chi just after the opening scene when he is getting out of bed. The bass response without a sub is horrific, no hyperbole. I have B&W 702 S2 with an Arcam SR250 and my bass response goes down to 40hz and that scene is absolutely abysmal. That's not to say my speakers don't have great base responses on a lot of movies, but not having a sub really effects my system in a lot of ways.
@@TheWidowMaker. Also the issue with bass requiring power is almost always and for all of majority of time due to space constraints. Give a subwoofer a big enough enclosure with proper tuning and porting and you could have home cinema bass with less than 50watts that extents down to 10Hz The main issue is that houses aren't made for a 1x1x1meter subwoofer in each corner of the tv-room 😅
Just like the internet, wired connection is still solid compared to wireless, and when you have different devices using 2.4 Ghz around the house, i think there is no surprise that one of the devices may not work as well, that's why so called "audiophiles" trust a wired connection when playing music or movies. Good Job Linus friends and family.
@@elucified Haha! Love that. Sort of the same here, but I do like the tech stuff as well as I enjoy following it and often use it when talking to friends about the latest tech news/world events. :P Though, their relationship is definitely a big part of the reason I follow as well. Definitely something I strive to be and look for as well. Maybe one day. It’s a great mix nonetheless
I smile with joy whenever one of Linus's kids gets involved. I only hope at least one of them takes an interest in tech and gaming and continues things eventually
Yeah, true. I just hope it’s not forced upon them. Either by their parents (I’d doubt they would do that, they seem to have pretty great morals) or by the community.
@@OnewheelordealGaming? Most definitely. Tech? I dunno, a lot of people in their 20s and even teens don't know anything about tech, even to the point of not understanding what a file explorer is- work any IT job and you'll learn very quickly how tech illiterate most people are because of all the QOL features put into the most advertised tech to make it dead easy. The vast majority of people are still plug-and-play computer "enthusiasts."
@@Onewheelordealwith gaming sure, but as a 19 year old gen z I can tell you my generation overall, is brain dead to tech How brain dead? My friend had a computer class in HIGH SCHOOL, so where talking anywhere from 13-18, where the class average typing speed was EIGHT WORDS PER MINUTE Not 18, not 80, EIGHT This is because for most of the kids in that class, that was their first time ever touching a keyboard that exsited in the real world and not just one on a touchscreen
I had audio cutting out in my system and fixed it by turning WiFi off in my tv and running an ethernet cable. Setup: - TCL S470G TV (Google TV like Linus’s) - Sony soundbar that connects to Sony subwoofer through Bluetooth connection The audio cutting out was very frustrating. The sub would lose connection intermittently, making people’s voices in shows alternate from very full to very shallow. I read online that WiFi signals can interfere with Bluetooth. Haven’t had a problem since turning WiFi off on the tv.
I also run wired ethernet to my TV direct from the router. I don't know why all these TV's have terrible transfer rates for the TV's built-in wireless.
This is why I setup stereo towers or a nice sound bar... while I like surround sounds, this is just so difficult to deal with, the cost is insane, the benefits for some rooms are better than others, generally rooms need to be designed for the prospects of doing surround sound. Being a rental person, a decent 4.1 soundbar or some full range towers with a decent amp goes a long ways. I don't even buy new stuff half the time, I wheel around town for garage sales, goodwill, thift shops and find a good pair of boss, klipsch, bose, etc then I purchase a good reliable Class-D 2.1 100-200w Amp with/without Optical/ARC support and tune the TV sound settings or the Amp controls. Done, nice sounding stereo. If I want surround, I help the Union at the University I work for and we get free seats to any of the movies they show and lay back in the amazing tuned THX theater we have.
To be honest I think it's quite pathetic to drag your kids in front of a camera to a big audience like LTT has. Your kids should have their privacy and not be displayed public on youtube.
@@Chingy474 Linus has explained that it is always up to the kids if they want to be in videos, and that they are always paid fair market rates for it. As it it a job.
@@ludwiglilienstrom7756 Then he is an idiot tbh. as a public figure who is able to pay millions of ransom, you dont want that people know who your children are and what they look like. its not the desicion of the child if it wants infront of the camera and get fair rates, you as a parent say no and do everything to keep them secret from the public.
I think Linus should do an episode on just how amazing technology is, but how hard it is to apply it to your own personal situation. All these solutions are great, but obviously, they don't work for everyone or every situation. This is the dilemma of what a person should spend money on for their situation.
I had a killer Klipsch 7.1 surround system but ultimately opted for a Bose 700 Soundbar and wireless sub when I moved and didn't want the headache of big system. Does it sound the same? No, but it is good enough and looks so much cleaner.
I was watching a film at a friend's house and since I'm a stereo guy, I wasn't concearned about the surround setup he had going on. During the film, I was hearing a speaker directly behind my head, which - as it turned out later - was not there at all. The rear surrounds were so well set up, they could emulate a rear center surround kind of thing. The other thing is in my car. It came with the optional higher quality sound system, with a separate 10 channel amp (driving the front highs, mids and woofers separately, and the rear highs and mids together and the rear woofer on their own). When I bought the car, I listened to the sound system, and assumed there is an extra subwoofer, but as it turned out, there isn't any, it has just the 12 speakers in the four doors and that's it. (it's a 2009 post-facelift Skoda Octavia vRS with the Skoda Sound System, so I don't even know who supplied the speakers :D)
15:35 - Interesting, I initially set my system to be all small, but it felt like for normal TV, it almost never sent anything to the sub (regardless of what I set the crossover to), so I switched my front L/R to large, and now it has a fuller sound when watching sports/TV shows. It's not overly bassy, just fuller, and still retains clarity in the center channel. That being said, the front L/R speakers are the large versions of my speakers, so their f-response can actually produce 40hz
I feel conflicted by the whole small vs large setting. I have a pretty descent setup with good fronts and 5 custom subwoofers. And still cant decide which setting i like best. Sometimes it feels like the small just cuts all the lows from the speakers AND subs. and large sometimes feel like it cuts lows to subs. its weird
Angled rooms are terrible! Glad it worked out for you! I would always get lucky, nice square room with front and surround towers, over sized center 2 subs (one medium, one large), adjust gains as needed, add carpet if needed.
You should consider hiring electricians to run the wires. They may be able to pull put lights down, fish through walls, or find paths through the attic or basement or outside that might not occur to you guys. LTT staff seems pretty competent so I assume they thought of a lot of that already, but it's worth suggesting. You could also potentially get a finish carpenter in and pull that crown moulding down and run the wires in behind, and fish down the walls using the space behind the crown.
Generally you should never hire an electrician to run low-voltage wiring. They usually won't have any experience with it and will treat them like electrical wires, and what's good for electrical wires is not good for things like high speed networking cables. Low-voltage wiring is its own trade with its own tradespeople.
@@guspazthat’s exactly what an electricians job should be is any sort of voltage, I’ve been an electrician for 4 years and I do internet, home theater, residential and commercial. What you mean to say is Linus needs to hire the right electrician not some half ass who only is there for a paycheck.
@@nkinney2000I’ve heard many stories of people having electricians install network cabling and seeing them staple them down or kink them or run them alongside AC wires or do other things that hurts the signal integrity. If the electrician says that they also do low voltage wiring then sure, go for it. But people shouldn’t just assume that they can hire any electrician to do low voltage wiring. For example, I don’t believe that low voltage wiring is covered by the regulations that govern the certification of master electricians where I live.
@@JustSomeGuy009 I agree, it’s like taking your car to a backstreet mechanic thinking they’ll do their best. Any company worth their salt will have the right guys. Plus where I live low voltage is a part of being a master electrician. Haven’t worked at one company that doesn’t do low volt.
Hopefully Sam will take the Sony's to the lab and figure out whether the issue is the speakers, or the house. Never been a fan of wireless over wired for near anything and those videos only reinforced my dislike.
@@benwu7980 same here. I'm lucky in that there's cat5e in every spot i could possibly want a speaker. so, i just convert it to balanced and back on the other end using 1 pair per channel of audio and 1 par for 9v to power the active DI box.
@@benwu7980 The speakers probably work great in an ideal environment but the whole reason they were appealing to Linus, and pretty much anyone, is to fit into a not ideal environment. So the only use case for these is an ideal environment from a wifi standpoint and a sub par environment from an audio standpoint. That's it. And the former is pretty much non existant these days and getting rarer by the day.
The issue is that the speakers are channel hopping. Even when he cleared up channels, the speakers still do it. Its a very clear software problam which might not trigger all the time, but very clearly present.
I think I heard the rope positioning on the old ones a little better. But I see that the bass was much more well-defined on the new one. I guess sony had the best setup from the start, we just wish wireless speakers were not so flaky. My Samsung Q990B has some drops on subwoofer too. It breaks immersion everytime it happens.
i listened to the raws with my hd660s and for me it felt like the soundstage was much better in the old one with the new setup feeling dull in my left channel for whatever reason.
Damn. Thanks for that Large vs Small lesson. I finally fixed my "pure direct" setting in my low end Sony, where it was not using sub at all making it ugly and flat. After setting them to "small" it is using sub!
I think wired home theater speakers are always better if possible. Linus would have been smart to have run the wires back when the house was all open and mostly just studs. I mean I will give credit to him that I have never owned or even listened to the system he is replacing but it sounds like a good system if it worked. So maybe that was the whole plan all along and that's why he never ran wires when he had the place open up and it made sense. So...
Same reason why wired headphones are better audio just sounds better analogue and if your spending 5k on a hone audio system you want the best stereo system sound wired is better than wireless 100%
It's very helpful that the before and after recordings are 14 minutes apart in the video. This makes comparing the two really straight-forward and easy.
Also adio comparisons aren't great in the first place, because at the end of the day you're still hearing it through a microphone, through a compressed yt video, through whatever you are using for speakers or audio output. You will never hear what they are actually hearing. The only way is if you played the same demo on the same speakers
I feel like the new setup is a lot more true to life of the intended sound stage where the old one is using a lot more virtualization causing it to expand the sound stage wider than it was intended to be.
yea I'd agree with this, I just posted elsewhere that the first demo was more convincing with the direction but you don't actually want a sound stage that jarringly separated when you're trying to enjoy a movie
I also feel like the composer demo they used is a terrible demo to use unless you are actually there too, I would have personally used the helicopter demo from Dolby especially because that demo makes more sense to give a sense of what a movie should sound like. The composer demo is kind of just good for having a sense of the sound stage as a whole, not so much the directional audio that Linus wanted to get from the original Sony setup. P.S. I know I probably made that last sentence confusing.@@trif55
I feel for Yvonne. I'm not exactly some extraordinary interior designer, but if I can't place things in a way I think looks nice it drives me mad. Respect to her since I imagine she's had to make quite a few compromises.
With a theater room, you should have just always done a fancy sound bar with a couple satellites. It feels like that theater room goes unused with all this.
He already mentioned his family not being actually into the theater room, they just want to be chilling in their house closer to a bathroom and to the kitchen, not stuck in a movie seat in deep in the corner of the house. It was cool in theory but in practice that couch is where family wants to hang out in.
Could definitely hear better sound positioning on the HTA9s the second setup was slightly louder on the right channels to me listening on my Virtuoso XT's that have Dolby Atmos turned on as well.
Even just in the UA-cam video listening on headphones, I could tell the final listening test was WAY more cohesive and clear and crisp. The first test with the original system definitely had phase coherency issues which really made it sound “smeary” and a bit washed out. As an audio engineer, even just listening in “binaural” is clear as day the improvement!
This applies to everything it's why I still use wired mouse and keyboard. + if battery dies while playing a game ya that is just rage waiting to happen as I used a wireless mouse for a little while hated it.
@@Bigdog1787I agree with you except with mice. At least my computer warns me if my mouse is low on battery, and swinging wires is like asking for trouble.
@@Bigdog1787My mouse has rgb lights and they flash red when it's low on battery (~15%) and it'll still last for hours, so I've never been caught by surprise. My palm covers the lights, but that's even better because I won't be too distracted by them, and I'll still see them at some point.
I just recently bought the HT A9 and was experiencing similar issues from my rear speakers. Oddly and I dont know why, but after physically unplugging the power from the actual speaker(not the wall) and plugging back in after about 10 seconds, it seemed to solve my issue. It worked on both my rear speakers and I haven't had any issues since then. Worth a try.
I just bought the HT-A9 and received it last week. No sub yet, want to see how the system sounds by it self. I have used it 5 or 6 times, and had one bad drop out, all the speakers discounted. Had to unplug the hub and that corrected it, but if these keeps happening I am returning it. This is a remarkable easy system to use and setup, and it sounds great for movies, it's OK for music. Have you been still getting drop outs?
As a professional audio and video installer, your guys's physical installations whether it be audio video or network always seem to be a dumpster fire, but I do give a lot of props on the equipment you guys use.
I do NOT miss the arguments with management over every new office build. "Why do we need to run cabling anymore? It's too expensive. Everything should just use wireless!" There was also a roughly annual "we need everyone to have wireless keyboards, mice, and headsets" fire IT had to extinguish before it became fully engulfed.
Anyone notice how youtube lowered the quality of 1080p and put "1080p premium" behind a pay wall even though it was last months standard quality? Soon they will put 4k behind a paywall too. UA-cam looks like sh111111t on any screen bigger than 21". Maybe thats why most people haven't noticed.
Maybe Sony could have used powerline technology integrated into their speakers so they can talk to each other since they are connected to a power socket anyway, and have one speaker to actually connect to the wifi acting as the main speaker hub.
Powerline networking is too unreliable (not once installed but in terms of, will it work well at all in any random house). It may be common for some outlets to be on a different circuit, or for there to be other devices on the circuit that interfere with powerline networking. In theory, wireless should work just fine (the HT-A9 ultimately use wifi), it's just that Sony's implementation is shit.
@@st0nedpenguinno one wants to change batteries for them for the wireless feelings, i mean look how people are living with the peeping of the fire detectors 😂😂😂😂
Pretty slick that when he says, "360 Spatial Sound Mapping" they actually pan the audio between the left and right channels. Love the little Easter egg.
I forget why he didn't go with Sonos. At this point a beam/arc, 2x Ones/Threes, and a mini sub would have been so much easier to get set up. I've never experienced or heard of anyone having latency issues with the Sonos products. The beam/arc would be hardwired to the TV and the rest would wirelessly connected to it.
My dad owns an AV company and is a true AudioPhile. I am not. But in his house he had a 75K surround system. and in his new house has a sonos arc, sub and two paradigm in ceiling speakers connect to a Sonos Amp and he says he prefers that system 99 times out of 100. for odd rooms not planned for acoustics its the only way to go. I will be ripping out my 7.2 in favor of this route.
As someone with a 3080 idling in the basement who does pretty much all his gaming on a Steamdeck in the living room I can really empathize with the frustration Linus experiences about his unused theatre.
2:05 either my Syn Pro Wireless isn't good enough or your dummy isn't. Why don't I hear much rear surround? And where's the feel of the base. It's especially weird because I have heard good base on my headphones before so what's going on? Binaural sets should represent what the human ear hears right? I and Linus know what sound should be and especially feel like.
I did not expect that segue, Linus and Jake have raised their son so well.
Yeah, they really have done a good job
That was funny
Insane
@@modestmousecoloredperson HOW COULD HE USE HIS CHILD LIKE THAT!!!
@@modestmousecoloredpersonless than 10 minutes. Nice 🤣
Absolutely love the audio editing that was done at the beginning. As a headphone user I appreciated the surround effect lots haha
got it with headphone too... got beck to hear it again
Wasn’t it nifty? I’m watching this away from home so I’m using my AirPods Pros and mannn that was satisfying. Like tickling my eardrums :)
Was going to comment this
as a speaker user I appreciated the surround effect
It's not editing, it's just the binaural head they have!
Jake's reaction to the first segue killed me, the boy is learning well. As much as I love these home improvement videos, I hope this solution just works with no issues in the future so you can relax and enjoy it.
it was scripted
@@Atomy111 no shit
I'm an audio guy and you guys did a great job with your setup. It was smart to include the wife to get that WAF approval number as high as possible.
I especially like that you figured out that using the TV speaker for a center speaker was a terrible idea. The stand alone center speaker is where you will get your clarity for dialog. Ninety percent of TV/movies is dialog and 90% of dialog comes out of the center speaker.
Linus: *has a theater room*
Also Linus: *has movie nights ruined by the audio system in his not theater room*
exactly what I was going to point out. Movie night ruined by not watching it in your 250.000 $ movie room in the first place. I mean what is the point of having a dedicated Home Theater room if you are not gonna use it 😂😂 .
@@URAZKIVANERhe said in a video a while ago his family mostly doesn't like going down to the theater room to watch movies, the living room is most convenient, minimum viable product is all that matters for a lot of people!
@@RWDtechmy family does the same. The convenience is a big factor. My dad and I will always watch stuff in the theatre room but family stuff no.
@@RWDtechTotally understandable and I would be just like them if I had the choice. But that theater room is a complete waste. And that's a shame, no more, no less.
As person who owns a theater room and a family of 3, sometimes you like to use different rooms and different systems in your house... I'm 27 and yes this is a flex
Yvonne getting final say even though there's a literal room full of audio professionals and technical professionals in the room is the most hilarious thing in the world and I love it.😂
I work in residential HVAC, it's pretty common for the wife to be the one who has final say. I even did a job for a contractor who told his wife, and we told his wife that putting the AC from the closet inside to the attic was a bad idea. Guess where it went? In the attic. Lol.
That's how it is on anything that involves a house.
i mean, she probably did partly pay for the house
It's WAF for a reason
There is a reason why the saying, "Happy wife, happy life!" exists.
I recommend have wires inside the crown molding. When you install crown molding there’s always a gap back, enough room for 1 or 2 speaker wires.
The bots done copied your comment
@@Onewheelordeal 😄 got to laugh at the OF bots.
That's a good idea!!!
I get that they should put the wires inside the mold but why not inside the wall, like every other cable?
@@Onewheelordeal what is their end game? do they try to make bots that look like a real person and start spammin scams when needed?
As someone who has worked with RF for over 30 years, I have *always* advised people to use wired for reliability and wireless only when something has to be in motion.
Same wireless audio is not worth the problems it brings
If you can wire it, you just should. Maybe in another 20 years we'll finally have perfect wireless, but we're still just not there yet.
I'm the same with anything, whether it be audio or data. If you can wire it then you definitely should.
The only reason I haven't got cables for my internet is because I'm in a rental. Thankfully, mesh systems have gotten really good and I can get full speed gigabit internet around the house with a mesh kit.
My surround system is cabled though. Not the neatest but audio definitely works better over cable.
if it doesn't move (a lot) just wire it
basically the only things that make sense wireless are phones and mice, and when it comes to charging phones do better wired anyway
@@tyrannicpuppyperfect wireless will happen when cold fusion happens
I rarely comment on things but you have touched on one of my hobbies. Sound.
Some fun little notes from playing around with home theatre systems.
If you are using the receivers powered outputs instead of using external amplifiers, you are missing out on a lot of sound and detailed precision. Sound quality and volume will always come down how much power you have to drive your speakers, and how efficient your speaker is. The more watts you can power your speakers with the better listening experience you will have, unless your speaker is super inefficient at reproducing sound. Also, your center channel speaker on a receiver, will always need decibles increased in the equalizer to make it sound good, unless you have a dedicated amplifier for the center channel. The center channel will always be the hardest speaker to drive in a home theatre system.
Side Note: The thing that destroys speakers is distortion from the audio source,
and clipping from the amplifier. Very rarely send more power to your speakers will destroy them,
but this is rare.
That Sony AVR is a good sounding unit and you can increase the output to the center channel as you suggested. The downside which Linus discovered is that the built-in room correction software on-screen display is clunky at best. It's the same stuff they used ten years ago and it's never been updated.
the way the audio works on this is fantastic; you guys have really upped the production value -- so interesting to listen with headphones and have a surround experience in a simulated manner
Too shame its not surround but only stereo, real ears can detect way of incoming soundwaves. Thats why we use surround speakers instead of just stereo.
@@Cowayger I think you don't understand why this is stereo. We have two ears, so we always hear in stereo. Their method of recording using a human-like figure translates the sound delays between the ears that you would get from surround to our headphones. That allows us to hear what they hear rather than the actual surround channels. Remember, they aren't trying to show us the surround demo. They're tryna show us how the surround demo sounds on their system.
You won't notice any difference between faked and real surround?@@neil_surya
If only setups like these weren't extremely expensive. I'd love an LTT video about best bang for your buck home theatre setups. Like the best cheap reciever to do surround, and what speakers to pair with advantages and disadvantages. That would be really interesting
and as you get older and older your hearing gets worse and worse and get to a point where this super expensive setup is from a personal perspective.. worthless.
My best advice for that would be to check pawn shops. I picked up a nice 4k Denon receiver for $90 and I also found a nice pair of 100 watt 3-way floor stand speakers for about $80 or $90 as well. Otherwise I just asked people I knew if they old speakers they didn't need anymore for my center and side channels. Those speakers you get in those all-in-one box theater systems make for beautiful center and side channel speakers. An episode where they have to coble together the cheapest theater system would be kind of cool.
Not sure if LTT is the right channel for that, but as they mentioned here: rear speakers and surround effects are only needed for the atmosphere, not as much for sound quality.
If you're on a tight budget always prioritize getting a good quality stereo setup over a mediocre surround setup and add the flavor speakers afterwards.
Tons of channels like that - that will do a better job than LTT.
LTT is a mile-wide-inch-deep kind of channel. If you need something indepth, you best look elsewhere.
As others said, buy used. Start with stereo, and depending on the size of speakers you start with, maybe add a sub as the first upgrade. If you go with big speakers, add a center speaker instead. Stereo speakers, center, and maybe a sub is actually great for most people, and if you have the space, you can add back/side speakers later on, and maybe dedicated Atmos speakers if you want to go wild.
Most people say that it's best to stay within the same brand and line of speakers, at least when it comes to stereo and center. You don't need to be that picky when it comes to the sub and back/side speakers, but aim for the same "quality" of speakers all around. Staying at least within the same brand adds to the aesthetics of the setup, because they often use the same color schemes across lines of product. But if you go for all black or white, that might not be an issue at all.
I have the first series of Dali Ikon for stereo and center, and Dali Concept as back speakers. I found that because I have pretty big front speakers, the sub was actually not doing that much work, and I moved away from it. Dali is a Danish brand, not that it's super cheap in Denmark, but as far as I know it is fairly pricey outside of Denmark. So you might wanna look for a local brand. And just look around to begin with to see if there are some brands / sets you keep seeing on the used market - like entry level hifi is often sold really cheap, and can still be a great option, because if people dip their feet into hifi, they often upgrade after a while to get whatever they are looking for.
Don't go overboard! It's tempting to drop a lot of money, but as with everything else, you will get diminishing returns the more money you spend. Sure, the $10K might objectively be better than a $500 speaker, but is it worth your money, and if you get the $10K speaker, then you also need to get the super expensive receiver or amp, and then drop thousands of dollars redoing your living room, so that you can experience it the optimal way, and so on and so forth.
Most important part: always listen to the speakers, as in, go and listen to them so that you can figure out what you like. I used to have a friend who was perfectly happy with a plastic setup that he'd bought for next to nothing at the supermarket. When that broke he asked me for advise, and we went to a store and listened to a few things. He could immediately spot the difference between his old setup and what he ended up buying, which was the entry level Denon receiver, and a matching set of speakers made of actual wood. In short: you don't need to be an expert, just trust your ears.
This is pretty much why I never rely on wireless for anything. Companies always seem to think everything should be wireless, but there is so much radio traffic in the world today that you can never expect it to always "just work".
Man even wired barley works hdmi arc driving men insane because 20% of the time it wont work for absolutly no reason at all the damn thibg always refuse to work whenever i invite ppl over
Especially in large apartment buildings
we're participating in making it flawless so the next generation can wonder how we ever survived without it
@@kingzor100 I turned off eARC on my setup, and just went back to having my setup as I did before I upgraded my receiver. To be fair, it probably works perfectly fine on my Denon receiver, but my LG TV drives me insane because it kept auto switching to inputs I didn't want to change to, and tried to enable the remote features, with no option to just pick one setting and not having the TV mess with it.
It's probably totally fine if you have a soundbar, only use it for TV audio, and only stream using the TV's apps. I don't use the apps, I don't stream a lot of TV and movies, and my setup is mostly used for watching movies on discs, or listening to music on Spotify, vinyl, or CD.
I'm actually really impressed with highend wireless mice. I've never had a connection cut out on me.
(Cheap wireless mice tend to be far less impressive and I've encountered a fair few with flaky connections.)
I can't imagine having a home theatre and still wanting to watch movies in the living room. I feel Linus' frustration here lol.
Convenience is underrated I guess to how strongly people actually like stuff sometimes 😂. That and living rooms are super cozy sometimes too. Having a home theatre must be incredible though for when watching a big movie it'd be an actual dream
Wait until you have a home theater room. It ends up being a waste of money for most people.
Kids will grow into it as they get older, different taste and time schedules...
@@TheEchelon youre talking as if you are rich enough to have one lol
i know 2 people with a theater room. They both use it basically everyday.
I love Linus’s house content - honestly my favourite series on the channel and I say this with nothing but love and respect for his entrepreneurship and work ethic and well deserved success. All things I look up to.
So I say this with love when I say Linus, you can’t say “movie night ruined” when you’re watching a movie in your kitchen adjacent open plan awkward shape living space when you have a HOME MOVIE THEATRE right there 🤣😂
100% same. I love any and all home upgrades and side grades lol.
I'd love to see a teardown of the old speakers to see if there was any possibility of doing a janky hard wiring to the boards on the inside.
That's actually what I thought the video was going to be about.
You might get the audio input, but those speakers must send much more than just the audio signals for those surround shenanigans. You may be able to reuse them as normal speakers but then you are probably better off using normal, better sounding, speakers.
I wanna see a teardown of the living room. Too much going on in there. It's like old people live there.
Or replace the WiFi interfaces with ethernet ones.
@@RAndrewNeal Dont know the exact chip they are using, but its very likely something like an esp8266 with the wifi integrated, no where to tap in. And even if its an external wifi chip, designing and building a circuit that responds exactly like the system is expecting is beyond unlikely that they would ever do that.
I have the HT-A9 and I also initially had wireless dropout issues. In my case, I was able to make adjustments to my setup to solve them (moved my wifi access point and set the HT-A9 speakers to the "prioritize signal over quality" settings), but that wouldn't be possible for everyone. I definitely agree that it's a huge flaw with this product. If they ever do a successor, they definitely need to tack this from both ends: improve the stability of the wireless itself because there's no reason wifi-based audio transmission should be so troublesome, and also provide a wired backup option.
Linus did try all that stuff already, he even moved everything to specific channels, so that there was an obvious gap for the system to use. No dice, it still ended up channel hopping and breaking stuff. It would be fixable if the bloody things allowed for telling them to stay on a specific channel.
@@666Tomato666 as I said. It worked for me but it’s not going to work for everyone. In my case my wireless environment was such that I was able to make changes to solve the problem. In Linus’s case, he was not.
Do you think it's possible to just open them up and solder on wires? Just curious, because maybe one day I'll see some cheap used ones.
@@lordelliott42 and connect them to what?
@@lordelliott42 No, since they're IP speakers, but there is no Ethernet connection foreseen. They have digital crossovers and an acoustically fairly how do i put it well it's not a design that is very inherently sound, pardon the pun, they're for sure running a lot of digital compensation, they sorely need that. They should have had Ethernet and ideally a PoE add-on option at a bare sensible minimum for the product, and i'd still call it landfill fodder even if it had that.
It would make so much sense for the HT-A9’s to just have Ethernet as a backup/second option. Put a port on each unit and one on the hub, and if you need to run them wired you just plug in an unmanaged switch and it automatically switches over.
Exactly. Active speakers are a blessing as their internal amplification, equalizing and DAC can be optimized for said speaker, but not having an ethernet port on all speakers beside the routing unit is beyond me. I would never buy a set that doesn't have that, it's just asking for trouble.
Add PoE support and its the perfect solution.
@@robinbegley1077 I don't think PoE, even PoE++ (802.3bt) could really keep up with a speaker, not only because of the amount of power required, but especially with the variability of that power. Speakers use power in short bursts, not in a more constant way like a camera or a phone, and I don't think the power supplies in normal switches would like that kind of "bursts" of power demand.
There are large groups of people and even organizations that are pushing to move the entire lighting system of office buildings to PoE++ so it can all be "smart". Its a stupid idea but they are advocating it. With any one speaker being less then 50 watts Id imagine. It might requiter the speaker or a separate brick of capacitors to handle the variability of the load IF consumed power is a problem. I could see needing a special, high end PoE switch to handle the higher load based on what ive seen.@@carlostorrespaz5592
@@carlostorrespaz5592 It has easy solution - supercaps
LTT went from tech channel to home improvement channel and I am all in for it haha 😂
And for me its the reason why i stopped watching LTT regulary. At this point he keeps sabotaging himself for klicks because no tech multi-millionaire can be that stupid with his tech decisions, but for every 1000$ fail he literally earns tens of thousands with clicks and sponsors.
It's kinda smart, he gets to write off his home improvements and possibly even the house by including it in videos.
I’m all for it! I don’t really care about gaming but a home audio system install, that’s super interesting to me
He's growing up with the audience.
except he did such a bad job running the cables, it was hardly a "home improvement"
The fact that your room is the typical rectangular home theatre, but you are getting virtual rears is amazing.. That AV receiver sounds like it's going to be my next AV receiver. Great video.
I've had many AVR's over the years, and Sony's AVR's would be a good choice for the introduction into the home cinema world. Denon has better graphics, but Sony's are more user-friendly. Besides Sony imo sounds better with two channel stereo music.
@@AntibackgroundnoiseI like Integra
I love that Linus took a similar path to me and ended up in a similar spot with regards to living room audio. Tried wireless surrounds hooked to a AVR and struggled with signal drops and static pops. Finally ripped those out and carefully hid wires along baseboards until I could complete the runs in the wall and ceiling for 7.2.4 Atmos. The SVS Elevate are good and the little 3000 Micro is a tough sub that’s good for filling in bass in position where it might get hit or in the way.
What Sony should have done with the wireless ones is an ethernet jack as well. It would give you the exact same experience and likely not need much of anything on the hardware/software side to make that work.
With them already needing power, and hi-PoE capable of 100watts of power, they really should have more options for the price. I'd be fine with them simply having the option to be wired.
I don't know. A good Ethernet cable is a CHUNKY kind of cable.
And if you've got to run fat cables to every speaker... this doesn't sound like it's the "stealth" option.
@@benwu7980 I wouldn't use PoE for an audio amplifier at all but the speakers already have power they just need the data in a more reliable way than the wifi they're using.
@@klaxoncow Cat6 is no thicker than the speaker wire they just ran. We're talking about a digital audio signal maybe a couple for different drivers and the microphone(s), it doesn't need 10 gig or anything crazy. Heck, 10 Mb/s would probably be just fine.
@@Renegade605 but if you have to run ethernet cables to the speakers, why not run speakercables directly to them?
They also make crown molding with hidden cable channels in it. We have it in our house and it was a GAME CHANGER. Wifey finally let me put a 9.2 system! Also if you're going balls out, you can paint your speakers to exact match the wall or ceiling colours. We did that with left over paint and I even ordered custom matched grill cloth to re-cover the grills.
That’s awesome. I’m keeping this mind for when my future husband installs surround sound.
@@AshBigsatleast when it comes to sound section let him do whatever they want
1:07 Linus proudest moment😂
Loved the spatial audio "moving" audio during the announcement!
at 0:30 i experience the 360, at 0:44 i experience as well the audio cracking. nice touch
I love these house vids. They are the real world application or the tec and it is super interesting to see how you go about solving issue. EVERYONE has issues once stuff is put into the house, it is super relatable to see issues like, where and how to install stuff so it doesn't look bad in your home against the "best" way to have something set up.
If at all possible I'll always go wired, it just opens unlimited possibilities, I hate being limited. This is nice, I like the calabration, it was fast and effective, can't really ask for more really.
Especially when the "wireless" speakers need power anyway, MEANING THEY HAVE WIRES LOL.
I would have given each of the options a test in that EQ calibration, Engineer looks like it's for an optimized type of room. Not had that feature on a Sony before though to know what the other options would have done to change the sound, and certainly never had a HATS to compare.
@@benwu7980 It said it was tuned for the room the engineers use, which you can guarantee doesn't have a wall mounted TV on a 45 degree angle lol.
I think Linus messed up literally EVERYTHING about this setup.
@@st0nedpenguin It is generally a lot easier and less obvious to get power to speakers than to run wires from the TV to them, especially in modern homes which generally have outlets near everywhere.
Discretely running speaker wire everywhere can be time consuming and expensive, and may not be feasible in rented homes.
@@st0nedpenguin Yeah, the room the Sony engineers developed it in is almost certain to have pretty much the optimal type of dimensions, layout and likely treated walls.
Just for reference: If you have proper acoustically engineered floorstanding speakers then you should be able to watch movies without a subwoofer, and you shouldn't set them to small. Instead set them to large, combine main(front) and LFE and set the LFE to the point where your speakers fall off the wagon. On our B&W 683 they drop at ~45Hz so I set it to 50Hz, subs don't really enjoy anything much above 50Hz either.
It's not necessarily expensive speakers only, but our previous speakers was definitely to the point where the Low-pass filter was set at 120Hz so what Jake says holds true for most of the "regular" surround sound systems, especially the size speakers they're running here.
Yeah as usual LTTs audio tips are not particularly correct. A pair of floor standing speakers combined with a properly setup DSP will sound _really_ goodall the way through the frequenc range. I mean looking at those measurements they got the bass performance leaves quite a bit to be desired, lots of ups and down, and shows that even my book shelf speakers play bass better (but maybe not louder) than this. So I don't know exactly how the DSP in the Sony receiver works or if you can do some manual tuning yourself, but both the bass and the treble could definitely be better, and tbh not that hard to do yourself if you have access to a PEQ.
@@gurratell7326 Well, for small speakers it's perfectly correct, but when you get low-stretching floorstanding then yes, you kinda want to take advantage of that.
Heck, I don't even use a DSP, just manually set crossover and the drivers do their thing to make it sound good, and it does :D
The previous set of speakers did however require a lot of EQ to be adjusted to just balance the audio profile out.
Not a bad tip alltogether, just a bit of a broad statement.
Sure, you can watch them without a sub, but it does cause issues on a good amount of movies. Try watching Shang-Chi just after the opening scene when he is getting out of bed. The bass response without a sub is horrific, no hyperbole. I have B&W 702 S2 with an Arcam SR250 and my bass response goes down to 40hz and that scene is absolutely abysmal. That's not to say my speakers don't have great base responses on a lot of movies, but not having a sub really effects my system in a lot of ways.
But some movies drop all the way down to 16hz or lower? Id prefer subs for that full dynamic range and the power thirst that low hz requires.
@@TheWidowMaker. Also the issue with bass requiring power is almost always and for all of majority of time due to space constraints.
Give a subwoofer a big enough enclosure with proper tuning and porting and you could have home cinema bass with less than 50watts that extents down to 10Hz
The main issue is that houses aren't made for a 1x1x1meter subwoofer in each corner of the tv-room 😅
Just like the internet, wired connection is still solid compared to wireless, and when you have different devices using 2.4 Ghz around the house, i think there is no surprise that one of the devices may not work as well, that's why so called "audiophiles" trust a wired connection when playing music or movies. Good Job Linus friends and family.
0:30 wear headphones. "360 Spatial Sound Mapping" goes from left to right. Excellent little easter egg
Those frequency response graphs are so clear and easy to read. So glad you guys took some time to work on that. Well done!
19:31 is such a wholesome and enjoyable moment. Such great understanding and love in the relationship after all these years. Love to see it ❤️
At this point I'm here just to cheer on the relationship. All the tech stuff is cherry on top LOL
@@elucified Haha! Love that. Sort of the same here, but I do like the tech stuff as well as I enjoy following it and often use it when talking to friends about the latest tech news/world events. :P
Though, their relationship is definitely a big part of the reason I follow as well. Definitely something I strive to be and look for as well. Maybe one day. It’s a great mix nonetheless
I smile with joy whenever one of Linus's kids gets involved. I only hope at least one of them takes an interest in tech and gaming and continues things eventually
Yeah, true. I just hope it’s not forced upon them. Either by their parents (I’d doubt they would do that, they seem to have pretty great morals) or by the community.
Good luck having a kid these days that isn't into tech and gaming
@@OnewheelordealGaming? Most definitely. Tech? I dunno, a lot of people in their 20s and even teens don't know anything about tech, even to the point of not understanding what a file explorer is- work any IT job and you'll learn very quickly how tech illiterate most people are because of all the QOL features put into the most advertised tech to make it dead easy. The vast majority of people are still plug-and-play computer "enthusiasts."
c r I n g e
@@Onewheelordealwith gaming sure, but as a 19 year old gen z I can tell you my generation overall, is brain dead to tech
How brain dead? My friend had a computer class in HIGH SCHOOL, so where talking anywhere from 13-18, where the class average typing speed was EIGHT WORDS PER MINUTE
Not 18, not 80, EIGHT
This is because for most of the kids in that class, that was their first time ever touching a keyboard that exsited in the real world and not just one on a touchscreen
I had audio cutting out in my system and fixed it by turning WiFi off in my tv and running an ethernet cable.
Setup:
- TCL S470G TV (Google TV like Linus’s)
- Sony soundbar that connects to Sony subwoofer through Bluetooth connection
The audio cutting out was very frustrating. The sub would lose connection intermittently, making people’s voices in shows alternate from very full to very shallow. I read online that WiFi signals can interfere with Bluetooth. Haven’t had a problem since turning WiFi off on the tv.
I also run wired ethernet to my TV direct from the router. I don't know why all these TV's have terrible transfer rates for the TV's built-in wireless.
The segue was actually genius, I always watch for Linus to do it to start skipping ahead
Your Son doing the segue to our sponsor was great 🤣 + the way Jake reacted 😂🤣
This is why I setup stereo towers or a nice sound bar... while I like surround sounds, this is just so difficult to deal with, the cost is insane, the benefits for some rooms are better than others, generally rooms need to be designed for the prospects of doing surround sound.
Being a rental person, a decent 4.1 soundbar or some full range towers with a decent amp goes a long ways.
I don't even buy new stuff half the time, I wheel around town for garage sales, goodwill, thift shops and find a good pair of boss, klipsch, bose, etc then I purchase a good reliable Class-D 2.1 100-200w Amp with/without Optical/ARC support and tune the TV sound settings or the Amp controls. Done, nice sounding stereo.
If I want surround, I help the Union at the University I work for and we get free seats to any of the movies they show and lay back in the amazing tuned THX theater we have.
The sharpness in the new setup from old one - really could tell a difference. Amazing work here..
Whoever does qc, and editing for this channel, all of them, absolutely great!
I hope Linus never stops upgrading his house. These videos are the best ones on the whole channel.
linus's kid saying can i also tell them about our sposor got me rolling😂😂😂😂
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter What does that have to do with the fact that his kid did the sponsor transition? Seemingly unprompted
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenteryou need help. You are not alright.
To be honest I think it's quite pathetic to drag your kids in front of a camera to a big audience like LTT has.
Your kids should have their privacy and not be displayed public on youtube.
@@Chingy474 Linus has explained that it is always up to the kids if they want to be in videos, and that they are always paid fair market rates for it. As it it a job.
@@ludwiglilienstrom7756 Then he is an idiot tbh. as a public figure who is able to pay millions of ransom, you dont want that people know who your children are and what they look like. its not the desicion of the child if it wants infront of the camera and get fair rates, you as a parent say no and do everything to keep them secret from the public.
I think Linus should do an episode on just how amazing technology is, but how hard it is to apply it to your own personal situation. All these solutions are great, but obviously, they don't work for everyone or every situation. This is the dilemma of what a person should spend money on for their situation.
Q: What #BRAND of emergency wired portable-home theater sound systems do wealthy families keep in their #bugoutBags?
I had a killer Klipsch 7.1 surround system but ultimately opted for a Bose 700 Soundbar and wireless sub when I moved and didn't want the headache of big system. Does it sound the same? No, but it is good enough and looks so much cleaner.
I was watching a film at a friend's house and since I'm a stereo guy, I wasn't concearned about the surround setup he had going on. During the film, I was hearing a speaker directly behind my head, which - as it turned out later - was not there at all. The rear surrounds were so well set up, they could emulate a rear center surround kind of thing.
The other thing is in my car. It came with the optional higher quality sound system, with a separate 10 channel amp (driving the front highs, mids and woofers separately, and the rear highs and mids together and the rear woofer on their own). When I bought the car, I listened to the sound system, and assumed there is an extra subwoofer, but as it turned out, there isn't any, it has just the 12 speakers in the four doors and that's it. (it's a 2009 post-facelift Skoda Octavia vRS with the Skoda Sound System, so I don't even know who supplied the speakers :D)
21:08 Almost got a little worried about the huh duh six hungos by ol' mate Senny for a second there.
0:34 Loved the 360 audio edit there. Its the little things that make it so good.
15:35 - Interesting, I initially set my system to be all small, but it felt like for normal TV, it almost never sent anything to the sub (regardless of what I set the crossover to), so I switched my front L/R to large, and now it has a fuller sound when watching sports/TV shows. It's not overly bassy, just fuller, and still retains clarity in the center channel. That being said, the front L/R speakers are the large versions of my speakers, so their f-response can actually produce 40hz
I feel conflicted by the whole small vs large setting. I have a pretty descent setup with good fronts and 5 custom subwoofers. And still cant decide which setting i like best. Sometimes it feels like the small just cuts all the lows from the speakers AND subs. and large sometimes feel like it cuts lows to subs. its weird
"yeah, can I also tell them about our sponsor?"
That's fucking gold 😂
(Love the CPU pillow and screwdriver❤ ty LTT)
The chaos atmosphere the team brings to Linus house is just incredible
Angled rooms are terrible! Glad it worked out for you! I would always get lucky, nice square room with front and surround towers, over sized center 2 subs (one medium, one large), adjust gains as needed, add carpet if needed.
Lesson: No matter how much you plan ahead and pre-wire, forget it. You should have installed a utility corridor behind each wall.
You should consider hiring electricians to run the wires. They may be able to pull put lights down, fish through walls, or find paths through the attic or basement or outside that might not occur to you guys. LTT staff seems pretty competent so I assume they thought of a lot of that already, but it's worth suggesting. You could also potentially get a finish carpenter in and pull that crown moulding down and run the wires in behind, and fish down the walls using the space behind the crown.
Generally you should never hire an electrician to run low-voltage wiring. They usually won't have any experience with it and will treat them like electrical wires, and what's good for electrical wires is not good for things like high speed networking cables. Low-voltage wiring is its own trade with its own tradespeople.
@@guspazthat’s exactly what an electricians job should be is any sort of voltage, I’ve been an electrician for 4 years and I do internet, home theater, residential and commercial. What you mean to say is Linus needs to hire the right electrician not some half ass who only is there for a paycheck.
@@nkinney2000I’ve heard many stories of people having electricians install network cabling and seeing them staple them down or kink them or run them alongside AC wires or do other things that hurts the signal integrity. If the electrician says that they also do low voltage wiring then sure, go for it. But people shouldn’t just assume that they can hire any electrician to do low voltage wiring. For example, I don’t believe that low voltage wiring is covered by the regulations that govern the certification of master electricians where I live.
@@JustSomeGuy009 I agree, it’s like taking your car to a backstreet mechanic thinking they’ll do their best. Any company worth their salt will have the right guys. Plus where I live low voltage is a part of being a master electrician. Haven’t worked at one company that doesn’t do low volt.
Royalties on the "Brian the Electrician" song got to be too much
I’ve heard of skill issue, but to need 4 takes to fix an audio setup.
Only Linus can drop those kind of numbers
For speed
Hopefully Sam will take the Sony's to the lab and figure out whether the issue is the speakers, or the house. Never been a fan of wireless over wired for near anything and those videos only reinforced my dislike.
@@benwu7980 same here. I'm lucky in that there's cat5e in every spot i could possibly want a speaker. so, i just convert it to balanced and back on the other end using 1 pair per channel of audio and 1 par for 9v to power the active DI box.
@@benwu7980 The speakers probably work great in an ideal environment but the whole reason they were appealing to Linus, and pretty much anyone, is to fit into a not ideal environment. So the only use case for these is an ideal environment from a wifi standpoint and a sub par environment from an audio standpoint. That's it.
And the former is pretty much non existant these days and getting rarer by the day.
The issue is that the speakers are channel hopping. Even when he cleared up channels, the speakers still do it. Its a very clear software problam which might not trigger all the time, but very clearly present.
nice attention to detail when Linus is saying "360 spatial sound mapping"
I think I heard the rope positioning on the old ones a little better. But I see that the bass was much more well-defined on the new one.
I guess sony had the best setup from the start, we just wish wireless speakers were not so flaky.
My Samsung Q990B has some drops on subwoofer too. It breaks immersion everytime it happens.
i listened to the raws with my hd660s and for me it felt like the soundstage was much better in the old one with the new setup feeling dull in my left channel for whatever reason.
I don’t blame Linus for just wanting a sound bar. Sonos arc for simplicity and quality of life.
Damn. Thanks for that Large vs Small lesson. I finally fixed my "pure direct" setting in my low end Sony, where it was not using sub at all making it ugly and flat. After setting them to "small" it is using sub!
Fantastic editing as usual! PERFECTION
The Dolby atmospheres trailer test sounded like being in an actual cinema
"can I tell them about the sponsor".....the little Linus just made this video a whole lot more interesting to watch 👍🏼😂
I think wired home theater speakers are always better if possible. Linus would have been smart to have run the wires back when the house was all open and mostly just studs. I mean I will give credit to him that I have never owned or even listened to the system he is replacing but it sounds like a good system if it worked. So maybe that was the whole plan all along and that's why he never ran wires when he had the place open up and it made sense. So...
Same reason why wired headphones are better audio just sounds better analogue and if your spending 5k on a hone audio system you want the best stereo system sound wired is better than wireless 100%
It's very helpful that the before and after recordings are 14 minutes apart in the video. This makes comparing the two really straight-forward and easy.
There are chapter markers for precisely this purpose :)
Also adio comparisons aren't great in the first place, because at the end of the day you're still hearing it through a microphone, through a compressed yt video, through whatever you are using for speakers or audio output. You will never hear what they are actually hearing. The only way is if you played the same demo on the same speakers
I feel like the new setup is a lot more true to life of the intended sound stage where the old one is using a lot more virtualization causing it to expand the sound stage wider than it was intended to be.
yea I'd agree with this, I just posted elsewhere that the first demo was more convincing with the direction but you don't actually want a sound stage that jarringly separated when you're trying to enjoy a movie
I also feel like the composer demo they used is a terrible demo to use unless you are actually there too, I would have personally used the helicopter demo from Dolby especially because that demo makes more sense to give a sense of what a movie should sound like. The composer demo is kind of just good for having a sense of the sound stage as a whole, not so much the directional audio that Linus wanted to get from the original Sony setup. P.S. I know I probably made that last sentence confusing.@@trif55
All of this is why I chose Sonos. After unboxing, within 10 minutes the system was fully set up & playing great surround sound.
one of the smoothest segues EVER. The surround sound effect at the start was awesome
I felt that 360 Spatial Sound mapping
I feel for Yvonne. I'm not exactly some extraordinary interior designer, but if I can't place things in a way I think looks nice it drives me mad. Respect to her since I imagine she's had to make quite a few compromises.
Seeing as his son didn’t read the sponsor spot I guess Linus said no… 1:11
I have that same receiver the thing is sick. I took down Sheetrock ran Cat6A & speaker cable everywhere in my house. Now I’m saving to get your tv.
With a theater room, you should have just always done a fancy sound bar with a couple satellites. It feels like that theater room goes unused with all this.
He already mentioned his family not being actually into the theater room, they just want to be chilling in their house closer to a bathroom and to the kitchen, not stuck in a movie seat in deep in the corner of the house. It was cool in theory but in practice that couch is where family wants to hang out in.
Could definitely hear better sound positioning on the HTA9s the second setup was slightly louder on the right channels to me listening on my Virtuoso XT's that have Dolby Atmos turned on as well.
They grow up so FAST!
I cant believe i did not click on a commercial selling crap! Im so thankful!
Even just in the UA-cam video listening on headphones, I could tell the final listening test was WAY more cohesive and clear and crisp. The first test with the original system definitely had phase coherency issues which really made it sound “smeary” and a bit washed out.
As an audio engineer, even just listening in “binaural” is clear as day the improvement!
Honestly a really good LTT video I want to see more of the audio setups where they test it and then show us.
Watching the upgraded demo makes me forget how badly I miss having my home theatre setup!
Wired is always better
This applies to everything it's why I still use wired mouse and keyboard. + if battery dies while playing a game ya that is just rage waiting to happen as I used a wireless mouse for a little while hated it.
In most cases I‘d agree with you, but wireless headphones are just so much more comfortable and convenient.
@@Bigdog1787I agree with you except with mice. At least my computer warns me if my mouse is low on battery, and swinging wires is like asking for trouble.
@@Bigdog1787My mouse has rgb lights and they flash red when it's low on battery (~15%) and it'll still last for hours, so I've never been caught by surprise. My palm covers the lights, but that's even better because I won't be too distracted by them, and I'll still see them at some point.
@@leonroI just use Mouse pad that charges the mouse
I just recently bought the HT A9 and was experiencing similar issues from my rear speakers. Oddly and I dont know why, but after physically unplugging the power from the actual speaker(not the wall) and plugging back in after about 10 seconds, it seemed to solve my issue. It worked on both my rear speakers and I haven't had any issues since then. Worth a try.
I just bought the HT-A9 and received it last week. No sub yet, want to see how the system sounds by it self. I have used it 5 or 6 times, and had one bad drop out, all the speakers discounted. Had to unplug the hub and that corrected it, but if these keeps happening I am returning it. This is a remarkable easy system to use and setup, and it sounds great for movies, it's OK for music. Have you been still getting drop outs?
0:58 Smooth just like his father. Damn!
Oh my God, that moment of Linus' son announcing the sponsor. 😂 the reaction of the staff and Linus state it was not scripted 🤣
It was really cool experiencing surround sound at the same time as Linus and Jake in my headphone!! You should do it again next time!!
Promoting the sponsor has become a tradition in Linus Family xD
Best seque ever. That face when your son says the line, is priceless.
The best tech fail and lessons learned comes from this channel as a original.
As a professional audio and video installer, your guys's physical installations whether it be audio video or network always seem to be a dumpster fire, but I do give a lot of props on the equipment you guys use.
His first sponsor spot!
From Ethernet to home theater systems to mice and keyboards, I just have 2 words.
Wired FTW
I do NOT miss the arguments with management over every new office build. "Why do we need to run cabling anymore? It's too expensive. Everything should just use wireless!"
There was also a roughly annual "we need everyone to have wireless keyboards, mice, and headsets" fire IT had to extinguish before it became fully engulfed.
The fact that LTT went to the trouble of getting audio examples for the audience is fantastic!
This whole house thing of his makes me really happy with my 4k TV w/ sound bar + 2.1 surround setup / choices.
I love that Jake laughs when your kids make jokes. It's like he breaks character, lol.
New editing goes absolutely insane on LTT, not just this video but all of them. Even with audio effects now!
Anyone notice how youtube lowered the quality of 1080p and put "1080p premium" behind a pay wall even though it was last months standard quality? Soon they will put 4k behind a paywall too. UA-cam looks like sh111111t on any screen bigger than 21". Maybe thats why most people haven't noticed.
Maybe Sony could have used powerline technology integrated into their speakers so they can talk to each other since they are connected to a power socket anyway, and have one speaker to actually connect to the wifi acting as the main speaker hub.
Powerline networking is too unreliable (not once installed but in terms of, will it work well at all in any random house). It may be common for some outlets to be on a different circuit, or for there to be other devices on the circuit that interfere with powerline networking. In theory, wireless should work just fine (the HT-A9 ultimately use wifi), it's just that Sony's implementation is shit.
@@guspaz The wireless they're using is also too unreliable, apparently.
Also nothing is "wireless" if it requires plugging in for power lol.
@@st0nedpenguinno one wants to change batteries for them for the wireless feelings, i mean look how people are living with the peeping of the fire detectors 😂😂😂😂
@@mahdi9064 At least fire detectors aren't marketed as "powerless" lol
Pretty slick that when he says, "360 Spatial Sound Mapping" they actually pan the audio between the left and right channels. Love the little Easter egg.
Thanks to your Dolby test I just found out my surrond speaker was unplugged. Thanks Linus
I forget why he didn't go with Sonos. At this point a beam/arc, 2x Ones/Threes, and a mini sub would have been so much easier to get set up. I've never experienced or heard of anyone having latency issues with the Sonos products. The beam/arc would be hardwired to the TV and the rest would wirelessly connected to it.
You sir, might be the smartest man here 👌Sonos is the way to GO!
My dad owns an AV company and is a true AudioPhile. I am not. But in his house he had a 75K surround system. and in his new house has a sonos arc, sub and two paradigm in ceiling speakers connect to a Sonos Amp and he says he prefers that system 99 times out of 100. for odd rooms not planned for acoustics its the only way to go. I will be ripping out my 7.2 in favor of this route.
Welcome to LinusHouseTips
Who would have thought wires are the best option huh. It's almost like "wireless everything" is a terrible Idea 👀
Linus, please don't walk around me whispering in my ear, thanks.
As someone with a 3080 idling in the basement who does pretty much all his gaming on a Steamdeck in the living room I can really empathize with the frustration Linus experiences about his unused theatre.
2:05 either my Syn Pro Wireless isn't good enough or your dummy isn't. Why don't I hear much rear surround? And where's the feel of the base. It's especially weird because I have heard good base on my headphones before so what's going on? Binaural sets should represent what the human ear hears right? I and Linus know what sound should be and especially feel like.