When we moved into our house in 2013, I wanted an option to listen to music and enhance sound from the television. I also wanted to keep the setup simple, which meant no large speakers and receiver. Our living room is somewhat small, and doesn't have a lot of extra room for large speakers. I ended up buying a Sony sound bar. At the time, the sound bar I purchased was advertised as one of the better entry level sound bars with a price of $350. For the first several years the sound bar was mostly used to stream music from the adjacent Alexa device. However, in the past few years when I started watching more movies and streaming shows, I would use it for television and movie sound. The majority of the time when watching TV it sat unused, blocking the remote censor and requiring awkward arm angulation to adjust the volume. Additionally, the Sony did not have HDMI connections, meaning I was limited by lack of HDMI linking and what type of audio I could send to the sound bar from the TV. Because of these reasons, I decided to upgrade to a newer sound bar. It wasn't that the sound from the Sony bar was bad. It was more that it was limited in its daily functionality due to its lack of modern connections. My new sound bar fixed these concerns, kind of.
I didn't do a ton of research on what sound bar I wanted. I knew I wanted to spend around $500, so that was my starting point. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Klipsch, and my brother has a Klipsch sound bar that he likes quite a bit, so the Klipsch Cinema 600 became the top candidate. I looked at some other sound bars in the price range on Crutchfield, but nothing really jumped out at me, and the Cinema 600 had decent ratings, so I went ahead and got it when it went on sale on Prime Days for $400 (usually $550). The only thing I considered doing was getting a bar with Atmos. The Cinema 800 has Atmos, and there was a JBL bar that got good ratings with Atmos too. Both cost around $1,000, however, and neither was on sale. These bars don't go on sale often, so I decided to skip Atmos and get the 600 on sale. We mostly watch sports (and QVC) and stream music from Alexa on this bar, so I think I'm fine skipping Atmos. I'll reserve it for the basement theater.
I was able to get the sound bar to integrate with my TV so that when the TV turns on, the bar does as well, and the remote controls sound through the bar. This allows for improved sound on a daily basis while getting rid of the arm angulation previously required to adjust volume. The TV I am using in this setup is from 2008, and I learned that while it supports HDMI linking (to allow the bar to turn on when the TV turns on), it does not support HDMI ARC. This means I don't get any sound from the TV using HDMI. I have to use HDMI linking to get the bar to turn on, but audio comes from an optical audio cable. Probably a good thing I didn't get the Atmos bar, as I would need HDMI to support that format. My TV needs to be upgraded in this equation to get everything to work seamlessly, but otherwise it works fine and the picture still looks good, so I'm having a harder time justifying that upgrade at the moment. At some point that will be needed as the technology leaves it behind.
As for the sound quality, it is good as expected from Klipsch. The volume levels are kind of weird. It seems to go from 0 to 4-5 on TV, making it difficult to listen to shows on quiet levels. It is easier to hear dialogue which is nice. Streaming from bluetooth has the opposite problem. You have to have the bar turned up halfway to get good volume levels. Neither is a big deal, just kind of strange. I will say that for as much as I like Klipsch speakers, I have had some interesting interactions with their products that involve electronics. My biggest complaint with this bar is that the sub seems to be overactive for certain programs, specifically live broadcasts. I don't know if it is wind on the mic or background crowd noises, but it commonly lightly thumps in the background. It's as if the crossover frequency needs to be lowered. Sadly I don't think this can be done. I have kind of gotten used to it, and you can turn the sub off if it becomes too annoying, but I find it odd that it does this and was surprised when I didn't see anyone in the comments mentioning this.
Overall I think this sound bar upgrade was a success, though not a home run. It allowed for easy integration of the bar for daily use, as well as volume adjustment without throwing out your rotator cuff. I wish the sub was a little less frantic, but otherwise it sounds good and is definitely an upgrade from TV speakers.
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