Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 344 posts

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#51

Post by amlib »

kyriakos wrote: post #28
neuroelectron wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is tied to the overall decline in movie and music quality. Maybe I'm just getting old. There is no more "Titanic" or "Nirvana". Lots of people have noticed the decline in audio mixing in movies as well, which has led to a generation of younger adults who need captions for regular movies. A discrete audio system would probably help with this but for what? How many times are you going to watch latest A…

There are 2 problems currently with movie audio. One is that the channel separation is not as good as it used to be. New movies have 5.1 audio the effect is minimal which no longer justifies the expense on the sound system. People online are saying this is because many movies are made for primarily for streaming and that majority of people listen on their TV or sound bar instead of dedicated surround systems. The sec…

> The second issue is what you described, the mixing is just bad, sound effects and music are much louder than dialog making it impossible to comprehend without subtitles.

The trend of mixing sound effects much louder has been in vogue for longer than star wars exists and not a lot of movies drown out everything in super loud music (Christopher Nolan films being exhibit number 1 lol). I think part of the issue stems from the audio not being adapted for home releases. There used to be special sound mixes for VHS, TV shows and even DVDs (as stereo version of the 5.1 track) that lowered the dynamic range and made everything fairly clear even on your 70s CRT TV speakers.

Nowadays sound engineers probably marvel at how nice and crisp their work sounds on a studio kitted with 1 million worth of audio gear and call it good enough for playback in all systems. Add some directors wanting more "natural" dialog requesting actors to speak softly and the deal is sealed, only the 0.1% can watch anything without subtitles.

I honestly think the solution is for the industry to adopt a standardized audio gain control solution. The only reason we didn't get that in the past was because implementing such things on consumer gear was far too expensive (it was far more cost effective to just pre-process it and deliver the low dynamic range mix right in the medium, with the advantage of the possibility of a custom tuned mix). Today's TVs all have some kind of audio normalization functionality but they are all kinda bad (they alter loudness balance making everything sound tiny, a proper solution requires proper equal loudness contour compensation) and not suited for sudden and constant jumps of volumes like in movie action scenes. It also doesn't helps that every manufacturer does it differently.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#52

Post by ericghildyal »

tzs wrote: post #39
keoneflick wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, traditional receivers wanted to be the "brains" of home theater, switching video inputs, managing audio, turning everything on. That role is no longer sensible when used with smart TVs/Apple TV boxes/Android TV boxes. As a result, traditional receivers are relegated to be being audio decoders and amplifiers. Honestly, I think there's already more manufactured and lying around than the world really needs…

Any article posted here about smart TVs draws a large number of comments about limitations and annoyances of smart TV platforms. 90+% of the things people complain about would no longer be a problem if they got a traditional A/V receiver, plugged all their sources such as streaming boxes and game consoles into the receiver, and just used the smart TV as a monitor (and as a tuner if they watch OTA television). Until t…

The problem isn't the number of boxes plugged in, its that the TV has its own OS and built-in apps that people want to use that doesn't work with anything outside the TV.

I don't think too many people have, for example, a Samsung TV and a Firestick and use the 2 interchangeably for different apps.

I had this problem until the Samsung interface got too unbearably slow (6 year old tv), so I just bought a Google TV and that goes through my receiver's HDMI in port. Before this update, I was using optical out from the TV into my receiver, but the quality was noticeably degraded. I'm lucky I also don't use the radio function or a record player since that would just add to the chaos.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#53

Post by fmajid »

snapetom wrote: post #6
notfed wrote: post #2

Great...Samsung buying the competition. Denon makes great audio receivers. I expect them to turn to junk soon.

Yeah, kind of a bummer. B&W makes great headphones. I expect it to be "made" pretty soon.

B&W is first and foremost a speaker brand, as used for mastering at Abbey Road Studios and a huge number of top recording venues. Their headphones are midrange at best.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#54

Post by skydhash »

al_borland wrote: post #34
keoneflick wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, traditional receivers wanted to be the "brains" of home theater, switching video inputs, managing audio, turning everything on. That role is no longer sensible when used with smart TVs/Apple TV boxes/Android TV boxes. As a result, traditional receivers are relegated to be being audio decoders and amplifiers. Honestly, I think there's already more manufactured and lying around than the world really needs…

This is one of the things that kept me from getting a proper home theater setup. It always seemed like more complexity than I wanted under my TV. I could do it, but I simply objected to the idea. Not to mention, I like for someone to be able to come to my house and use my TV without taking a class first.

I have a somewhat cheap Denon for 5.1 audio and after the initial sound setup, I've never needed to touch the settings other for adjusting the subwoofer volume. It's mostly Apple TV -> AVR -> TV, but I got other inputs like a PS4 and a PC for music. And it has Airplay, Bluetooth and Spotify Connect for anyone that wants to play from their phone.

There's no need for a super-complicated setup for good sound.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#55

Post by distances »

darkwater wrote: post #36
bhouston wrote: post #11

I feel that sound bars + speakers directly attached to TVs has decimated the "home theatre receiver." "Back in the day", home theatre receivers made sense when you wanted Radio + CD inputs in addition to the TV input. But radio and CD players are gone. There is just TV. Even when I do audio, I run it through the TV. Thus why do you need a separate box? It just seems like a waste. Instead everyone these days are just…

Personally I have a Raspberry with Kodi, a Chromecast and a Nintendo Switch attached to my Onkyo receiver and only one HDMI cable going to the wall-mounted TV. Plus two nice (for my taste) big speakers. And I can listen to streaming music without turning the TV on (big big plus)

I have Chromecast, Blu-ray player, Steam Deck, and computer hooked to my beamer. My solution was a HDMI switch with audio extraction capability, so the HDMI audio goes from the switch to a tiny digital amplifier feeding my stereo speakers. And one HDMI out from the switch to the beamer of course. Very compact and modular system, quite happy with it.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#56

Post by skydhash »

baq wrote: post #9
neogodless wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how large this market is. Speaking only anecdotally, when I was in my 20s, I bought a Sony "home theatre in a box" which included receiver, small subwoofer, and small satellite speakers. Over time, I upgraded to an Onkyo reciever and Polk center, surrounds, and subwoofer. But... then I decided I wanted a more minimal look, and switched to a JBL sound bar + subwoofer, which has detachable surrounds -- but…

Not very popular, but popular enough. If you care about sound more than looks (...and if you get the system set up and have a convincing story for your wife that it must be this way), it's the only way to experience movies 'properly'; mixed with an OLED TV, a proper subwoofer (like PB-1000 or similar) and bluray-quality content the system will be better than your average cinema experience. Now, whether that means any…

There are some nice speakers that can fit nicely in a living room, but rears placement are always a problem. Especially if the sofa is isolated in the middle of the room. But my SO has enjoyed nice sounds so there was no struggle there (It was gradual with a 2.0 setup before the 5.1).

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#57

Post by ben7799 »

bhouston wrote: post #11

I feel that sound bars + speakers directly attached to TVs has decimated the "home theatre receiver." "Back in the day", home theatre receivers made sense when you wanted Radio + CD inputs in addition to the TV input. But radio and CD players are gone. There is just TV. Even when I do audio, I run it through the TV. Thus why do you need a separate box? It just seems like a waste. Instead everyone these days are just…

I agree with this.

I think the overall experience with the modern setup is worse in every way than 20 years ago with the exception of picture quality since we have 4K now. (Of course mostly we watch heavily compressed streaming video). 20 years ago I had a 5.1 system and would watch DVDs. The sound was vastly better than TV speakers/soundbar, compression was lower on the video despite being SD. By 15 years ago this was no longer true with a Blue Ray player of course, everything was better. My setup back then even had an audio compressor ("dynamic range adjustment") so you could actually hear the dialog when you needed to turn the volume down at night. No need to use subtitles!

But the old setup doesn't make sense anymore either as you would have had to keep replacing the receiver a bunch of times for no good reason as AV standards changed.

I got rid of my old setup at some point. I have a new system in another room that doesn't do video at all. It's just stereo with a CD player, a Turntable, a digital media player (doesn't get used much) and a Bluetooth input for streaming.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#58

Post by forevernoob »

dsr_ wrote: post #4

There are lots of speaker manufacturers; I'm not too concerned about Polk and B&W. But! There are relatively few home theater receiver makers, and the Denon/Marantz siblings have been a big chunk of them for decades. (Sony, Yamaha, Onkyo, Denon. Nobody else covers the low and mid cost market.)

AFAIK B&W 800D is used in many mastering studio's. I wonder what they will do with their high-end / pro audio segment, since it's quite different from your average home stereo (or even hi-fi) markets.

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#59

Post by TiredOfLife »

neuroelectron wrote: post #17
bhouston wrote: post #11

I feel that sound bars + speakers directly attached to TVs has decimated the "home theatre receiver." "Back in the day", home theatre receivers made sense when you wanted Radio + CD inputs in addition to the TV input. But radio and CD players are gone. There is just TV. Even when I do audio, I run it through the TV. Thus why do you need a separate box? It just seems like a waste. Instead everyone these days are just…

I feel like this is tied to the overall decline in movie and music quality. Maybe I'm just getting old. There is no more "Titanic" or "Nirvana". Lots of people have noticed the decline in audio mixing in movies as well, which has led to a generation of younger adults who need captions for regular movies. A discrete audio system would probably help with this but for what? How many times are you going to watch latest A…

> There is no more "Nirvana"

That cacophony was considered quality music?

Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

#60

Post by leptons »

baq wrote: post #40
leptons wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are basic and have basic needs, and a soundbar suffices in most cases. I was sort of one of those people, with a soundbar, because it was easy and convenient. The soundbar came with a wireless subwoofer, and that solved the problem of running wires across my living room. But, I had a gifted B&W 5.1 system with powered sub collecting dust out in my garage for a long time. I recently made the push to dust i…

Yeah proper sound is something you have to experience to understand, otherwise you’ll keep saying ‘I don’t need it’ or ‘a soundbar is good enough’. If you never cross the -30 level, maybe it is…

You get what you pay for, too. The B&W setup is about $1700 with the amp (I only had to pay $250 for the amp), but the soundbar was about $170. It seems difficult to spend that kind of money when something 10x less will do, especially without hearing it in your living room first. But after hearing it I'd absolutely spend the whole $1700 to get this system. I do get 10x the enjoyment out of it, when it counts.

Next I'm probably going to surprise my wife and install some bass-shakers inside my couch for the full movie theater experience.

Post reply on HN