Investigating my AV options lately

I have been investigating my Audio Visual options lately. Since I have just bought a new TV to replace my current monitor screen, I was curious about sound-bars or speakers since it would also upgrade the audio experience.

Many people seem to love their sound-bars but while I love the simplicity, it always seemed like too high a compromise to me. There is no way that you can recreate all the sounds with tiny speakers. I have been watching tons of audiophile reviews to see what their experience is and there are a few speakers that I would like to try. All of them a powered speakers since living in an apartment, I don’t want to get lots of equipment.

Now of course you can say to me at this point, if you want to keep things simple then a sound-bar is the best way to do that. True, but often reviews of sound-bars say that they don’t sound any better than the TV’s build in audio. Since they can cost as much or more than speakers, I don’t want to spend that money and find out that it was a wasted effort. I think sound-bars make sense in limited spaces but I like the flexibility of speakers which can possibly connect to multiple sound sources like iPad’s/iPhone’s and so on.

I had a certain brand of speaker that I thought would be something I would enjoy until I spoke to someone who actually bought it. He said that it caused him to have headaches listening to it, and other reviewers have said that it can be irritating as well with the excessive treble they felt it created. I don’t have any burning need for speakers. It is often true that I put my audio at low volume since I can be be sensitive to loud noises. For me, getting a better sound system is about the clarity of the sound not the volume. I also have a wonderful set of headphones which I really enjoy, and living in an apartment isn’t really conducive to loud sound systems.