Has the question "Has Soundbars Improved to Usable Levels" been answered yet, seven years after it was posted?

I'm moving to my new place soon and the TV speakers are very underwhelming, so I'm thinking either a soundbar or a 2.1 setup. Budget around 1k-2k.

It's the title of the thread, but perhaps you were being sarcastic. Lol. The first few pages of the thread mostly said soundbars are not worth it. But I suppose things have changed much since then. Many soundbars seem to have decent reviews on hifi sites.

My current place is very bare bones. Sound comes from the TV speaker and that's it. It's also a rather small TV at 40". I'm moving to a new place and want to have a jump in quality.

The thing is my living area is long. It's 7m (23ft) long with the TV on one end and an open display shelf on the other end. I was thinking that a 2.1 soundbar would be ok but I actually do have power outlets at the display shelf at the other end that can accommodate wireless surround speakers.
So my seating area would be 8ft-9ft from the TV and any surround speakers would be around 14ft behind my sitting position. Would this config work?

Was considering the Samsung Q70T is Q800T but saw comments about the audio dropping issues. Is it prevalent and are is there a fix yet?

Thanks buddy. Do you have any audio disconnection issues? Was checking last few pages and it seems quite prevalent.

I did survey a few soundbars at Harvey Norman. Wanted to keep my budget to 1.5-2.5k. The Yahama YAS209 has garnered stellar reviews online but when I tried it the sound was so muffled...it's like someone threw a wet blanket over the speakers. I'm not sure if it's due to the settings in the showroom.

The Samsung soundbars on the other hand sounded crisp and defined.

This post has been edited by QuickFire: Nov 1 2020, 09:18 AM

Hi guys, a quick (and maybe dumb) question.

I have a Panasonic GX740 TV, a Samsung soundbar, and Nvidia Shield android TV box. What's the proper way to connect these devices with ARC?

1.
TV <--> soundbar via the ARC port
Nvidia Shield <--> TV via normal HMDI port

Or

2.
TV <--> soundbar via the ARC port
Nvidia Shield <--> soundbar via normal HDMI port

I think most people do #2 but my soundbar only has one additional HDMI input port on top of the ARC one, but if I add a game console next time it would be cumbersome to switch.

Wouldn't #1 work equally well? Although I've read that some TVs don't pass through the audio without further compressing it...I'm not sure where this is listed in my TV specs though.