Select Cost Effective Sound Surround System or sound bars for TVs

4 October 2018

Most Smart TV allow a source device such as blue-ray player to be connected to a TV using HDMI cables and have the TV pass the 5.1 or 7.1  sound surround signal to a sound surround receiver/player using HDMI ARC or digital co-axial or optical SPDIF cables.  However,  not all sound surround receiver/player can receive such raw 5.1 or 7.1 sound surround signal.  This article will explain why.

 

 Why?

For the sound surround receiver/player to be able to receive the raw 5.1 or 7.1 Dolby surround sound,  the receiver/player must have processors that can process and decode the compressed digital  bit-stream audio signal sent by the TV.  The cheaper and common receiver/player usually do not have this built in  function.  They simply receive stereo or 2 channel signal and have a Digital Signal Processors (DSP) to convert the stereo into 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound.     It is not a true 5.1 or 7.1 but a simulated  surround sound.

Which is better,   True or Fake?

The commoners  would invariably say the true 5.1 or 7.1 system is better;  however,  it is understand that not all movies are producing or the content providers are providing true surround sound.  Then the next question is whether one should choose the more expensive set that use patented Dolby Prologic signal processor to decode the raw Dolby surround sound  or just any DSP processor that just produce simulated surround sound.

What is Dolby Prologic or DSP?

Dolby Pro Logic is a surround sound processing technology developed by Dolby Laboratories, designed to decode soundtracks encoded with Dolby Surround.  DSP is a  microprocessor that is often used to simulate sound surround.   Whether one should choose a more expensive sound surround system will depend on the design and the quality of the soundbars and more importantly,   the "taste" of the users.  Some claimed that DSP produced better sound effect than Dolby Prologic. Therefore,  it is always better for one to listen to the sound system as everyone’s “taste of sound”  is different.

Why so much Cost Difference?

One would notice that there are a lot of cost differences between the cheaper and the more  expensive audio receivers or soundbars.    Actually,  if one were to strip the set down to its bare bones,  one would notice that all of them have similar major components such as power amplifiers,  signal processors and control  except that the more expensive ones might use better components such as thyroid transformer instead of ordinary laminated iron core transformers.   The more expensive ones usually have  much higher music power for better sound quality at lower sound volume.

Can MiTV4 Provide 5.1 Surround Sound?

Most MiTV can provide 5.1 sound surround sound but only the ones with external sound bars have specifically mentioned that it can provide Digital Audio Atmos digital surround sound.   Most MiTV can only provide simulated or virtual  surround sound

A Cost Effective MiTV Sound Surround System

This article will examine some of the popular and cheaper soundbars that have been used for Xiaomi and other televisions.  Among them,  the most common one that has been sold well  is the 33” Xiaomi TV soundbar as shown attached. 

The other soundbars that have been sold well in China is the JY Audio soundbars that have similar or better specifications.  

 These soundbars are tabulated and compared here for information (Note: scroll table to the left to read).  Note that these cheap sound bars have only DSP simulated sound surround output.

	Xiaomi 33-inch	万音 JY A1S	万音 JY A9S
Price	CNY399	CNY218	CNY358
Power	15 Watts,  6 ohms	30W+30W RMS	80W
Sound Channel	ATS2825/TAS5731M DSP	DSP sound surround	DSPS/SRS sound surround
Frequency	50 Hz - 25000Hz (-10dB)	20 Hz - 20000 Hz	40 Hz -18000 Hz
Channel Separation		>=65 dB	>=60dB
Sound to Signal		>=75 dB	>=70dB
Idling Power		<=0.5 Watts	<=0.5 Watts
Speakers	8 speakers	8 Speakers	8 speakers
Built-in
Tweeter	2 Nos of 35 mm Dome		2 Nos 2"
All Frequencies		2 Nos  2.5"	2 Nos 3"
Sub Woofers	2 Nos of 65 mm sub-Woofers
Mid range	4 Nos of 70x55 mm passive	2 Nos passive radiator	4 Nos 3" Bass radiation
External Woofer		60 Watts Bluetooth or Cable	60 Watts Bluetooth or Cable
Input Output	1x Co-axial SPDIF 1xFiber SPDIF 1x Stereo RCA 1x Aux in	1 x Sub woofer out 1 x Co-axial SPDIF 1 x Audio input Bluetooth for most TV	1 x Sub woofer out 1 x Co-axial SPDIF 1 x Fiber SPDIF 1 x Audio input Bluetooth for most TV
USB Thumb		Yes	Yes
Card Reader		TF card	TF card
Bluetooth	4.2	4.2	4.2
Power Supply	16 Volt 2.5 A	220 Volts	DC 24 V 3 A
Casing	Plastic Material	Wood with metal surface control panel	Wood with metal surface control panel
Dimension	83 x 7.2 x 8.7 cm	100 x 7.5 x 6.5 cm	98 x 10.2 x 7.1 cm
Weight (kg)	1.925 kg	3.2 kg	3.14 kg
Accessories	Co-axial SPDIF cable Manual	3.5 mm RCA Co-axial SPDIF Infra-red Remote Control Manual	3.5 RCA Coaxial SPDIF Fiber SPDIF Infra-red Remote Control Manual
	https://news.znds.com/article/32629.html		https://cn.made-in-china.com/gongying/jyav2013-ZeYJzxuGvjWm.html
Speaker System (Click to enlarge pictures)
Input Output (Click to enlarge pictures)
Control Panel (Click to enlarge pictures)
Accessories (Click to enlarge pictures)
Pthers (Click to enlarge pictures)

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