Need some advice about what 'normal' with soundbars.

[Frank@Chicago]

First off, I realize that soundbars aren't the most ideal sound setup.

But recently I got a good deal on an LG sound bar and surrounds at Hhgreg.

We had carpet done two years ago and I wasn't organized enough to get speaker wires under the new carpet.

As a result, I was looking for a solution with wireless surrounds that was also affordable since I bought an LG TV last year too.

Soundbar is an LG LAS751M and surrounds are a pair LG H5s. Total cost was around $450.

On Amazon, the soundbar alone costs almost that much so the overall deal was pretty good.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00TIA...rds=lg+las750m

Performance-wise the sound is good and full, being able to add surrounds is a huge plus.

The bar is suppose to be 4.1 and surrounds are added using LG's Music Flow system.

BUT, the surrounds don't seem to work as expected. I'm hearing dialog in the surrounds.

I'm also still hearing the surround channel on the actual sound bar (in front), so apparently it doesn't disable that when you add actual surrounds.

Other odd thing is, that while I'm hearing plenty of low frequency, during 5.1 tests there's no sound during .1 portion of the test.

It's like the sub isn't setup to use actual .1 signals and is instead just skimming LF from the overall mix.

I can't argue with the price (the sub is powered, for example), but it's frustrating because it's not very clear how this thing works internally.

You can control the system with an LG app and all speakers were updated internally via WiFi.

Funny thing is, all the Tech reviews were positive and there's no info on the web about funky surround issues...it's like all the reviewers did was rundown some features and not actually test anything.

I'm running optical out from the TV to the soundbar, which should be good enough for real 5.1 sound.

At first, I thought it might be my player sound settings, but 5.1 test videos on YouTube have the same issues and that's running internally on the TV via Smart App.

[Frank@Chicago]

I ended up keeping the system (soundbar and two wireless surrounds).

For the money the sound is pretty good overall, albeit more matrix than 5.1 true.

I was hoping that when you add surrounds in the control app and join them to soundbar, the system would create distinct surrounds and repurposed the extra speakers on the sound bar as dedicated a center channel.

I get that the soundbar needs to do everything (4.1) out of the box and at startup, but when you join extra speakers LG could have done so much better.

There may be another update for Music Flow and I might call LG support, but I'm not super optimistic.

[Frank@Chicago]

There's one other thing that might be of interest regarding LG soundbars or the Music Flow system in general.

The sub in this soundbar package connects using Bluetooth and in my experience is rock solid.

Initially I setup the surrounds using WiFi, but over time they seemed to get increasingly flaky.

Recently, I started going thru some settings to see if Bluetooth could be used for the surrounds as well.

I found they could use Bluetooth and that even at 12 feet away, they are far more stable than Wifi.

I never heard of a soundbar or speaker system using Bluetooth, so I was somewhat reluctant to even try it.

Bluetooth definitely seems to be the way to go with this system, I'm glad it worked so well.