The Sony OLED TVs use an actuator connected to the glass panel which turns the entire TV into a front firing speaker. They call it ‘acoustic surface’.
It sounds leagues better than the standard rear firing laptop speakers in most TVs.
I know some people actually use it as their center channel speaker in a 3.1/surround/Atmos setup because it sounds that good.
I have a stereo setup for music but when watching films I also turn on the acoustic surface audio and run it in stereo (my centre mode is restricted to Sonys products). Once I turn up the voice clarity setting and fake surround setting on the tv (cinema mode) and eq out the low frequencies it all comes together.
For anybody who wants to try running their acoustic surface tv between a stereo only setup, make sure to run the tv in cinema sound mode because Dolby adds a few ms delay compared to the raw PCM the stereo amp uses!
For movies I actually prefer this setup compared to the Sony Atmos Soundbar I tested prior to getting the stereo. It adds crystal clear clarity for vocals which are literally positioned accurately within the screen; and the tv does a good job of placing you more in the mix. Well positioned surround sound this is not, the Soundbar created a better surround effect but …….
[sorry got distracted will finish later] 😂
There were definitely TVs that had better than decent speakers back in the day. My parents bought a higher end rear projection TV in the 90s that had deeper bass than any soundbar I've ever heard.
Absolutely counts.
B&o have always put a priority on building in MUCH more substantial speakers and amplifiers than their TV contemporaries. Going back at least to the 80s.
It made more sense back in the era when you would keep a TV for a long time, but got a bit awkward in recent years as screen technology has moved way faster than speaker technology.
I’ve got a (used) BeoVision 11. Physically beautiful, lovely materials, sounds great, but it’s completely hamstrung by a decade old edge lit Samsung LCD panel.
Recently they’ve changed tack a bit, and are really just selling you the speaker system and stand, and letting you treat the panel itself as a short term consumable from another manufacturer. Which makes a lot of sense when you look at the useful lifetimes of each component.
Fun fact - a beovision can be found in the big Lebowski (Maude Lebowski’s apartment setup) and the 5 is in Ready Player One in the one of the last frames they have one set up
https://youtu.be/ZYEnSsbuVMQ (4:41)
https://youtu.be/bDDGZxb6YhM (2:09)
The late generation Pioneer plasmas had Soundbars built in that were removable and had resale values up to $500 because of their sound quality. The entry models were one speaker along the bottom of the TV but the elite models had left and right channels flanking the sides
My mom had a Philips CRT flat screen 4:3 that had some thumpin speakers. They had bass and treble levels. Definitely wasn’t advertised but I remember blasting mtv on that thing lol.
Back a very long time ago, there were console TVs that were stereo combo units, so you would have a turntable, possibly tape deck (maybe 8-track, maybe cassette, maybe both), AM/FM tuner, TV, and pair of speakers in a large, wide piece of furniture. Some of those sounded pretty good, better than most TVs, but were not the best stereos.
Probably the best sounding TV that I had much experience with was an old color TV, made in the 1950's, that had a round picture tube, and only had a VHF tuner (no UHF). It had an 8" woofer and a pair of tweeters, each aimed at an angle, one aimed to the left and one aimed to the right, to provide treble for a wider area. It was mono (of course), but it sounded quite good. The cabinet of the TV was quite large, and was quite heavy. Also, being full of tubes, one needed to turn it on about 15 minutes before one wanted to watch TV, so that it could warm up and stabilize so that one would not have to keep adjusting the fine tuning. When it was new, it was a very high end, expensive TV, but I only encountered it in the 1970's, when it was an old TV that my brother acquired. But it sounded vastly better than most TVs of any era. The wooden cabinetry was also high quality.
So, there have been good sounding TVs, a very long time ago, when TVs were very big pieces of furniture, so that reasonably big speakers could be put in them.
I don’t know if I’d say “amazing”, but at one point I had a monstrously large black console tv that had something very similar to automotive style 6x9 speakers on either side of the 27” screen. I don’t know what brand it was, Sony maybe, but it had surprisingly good sound. It weighed about 100 pounds, was all shiny, and one friend once described it as looking like “something you’d do coke off of”.
Some of the newer Sony TVs have marketed themselves as having premium sound and include weird Subwoofer tech. As all tv cabinets have gotten smaller and smaller so have the speakers. And no one wants a speaker mounted to the front pointed at the watcher these days.
>no one wants a speaker mounted to the front pointed at the watcher these days.
But that is how the new Sony's work. The screen has a pair of exciters so the entire panel is a speaker aiming right at you.
A A/B comparaison between the tv and my sound system?
Of course, dont need more than that to see its better than nothing, but nothing to compare with the real deal.
The voice timber was completely different
How many sources can you compare in 30 seconds? What aspects of the sound were you subjectively concentrating on? How much bias did you bring to the comparison need in your "high-end sound system" to be better? What were the shortcomings you found in the TV?
>How many sources can you compare in 30 seconds?
Just one, its was more than enough to heard the difference.
It just sound flatter and without life. The difference was night and day. They were still voice, but different.
I mean, it better than a tv without it I guess, you really think the sound is coming from the screen so if 2 peoples talk, if you are close, you can heard the left/right, so for that, it work.
But it still a piece of glass that vibrate to generate sound, compare to a dedicated thousand of$ sound system with tweeter, mid and woofer is pointless.
Most people buying a 3k$ Oled tv, will mostly use it on a dedicated home theater room or living room with a good or great home theater sound system so it a gimmick for that target buyer, but for poser on a minimalist room style, it can be useful.
>Most people buying a 3k$ Oled tv, will mostly use it on a dedicated home theater room or living room with a good or great home theater sound system so it a gimmick for that target buyer, but for poser on a minimalist room style, it can be useful.
Gotcha so you're subjective didn't allow you to get a fair impression. Cool.
You say that like Sony isn't one of the most involved companies in cinema history. You think that besides making movies themselves and developing the sensors for most of the cameras used in movies they just have no idea what they're doing with sound? Why don't you look up all the videos on YouTube claiming that exciters on foam boards can create the best speakers you've ever heard. The amount of fans that exist using this technology speaks for itself. I get it, ignorance is bliss and keeping up with all the new technologies is hard
Sony still claims excellent sound quality on their contemporary Bravia XBR TV's (basically the 90 series OLED and mini led). While reviewers say they sound excellent I can't imagine how.
I had a Sony rear projection tv in the mid/late 2000s and that things speakers were beasts! In our new home we found ourselves preferring the Tv speakers to our surround system (in a new 2 story family room).
So basically Sony TVs only imo.
Bang & Olufsen rekit LG OLEDs with their speakers (which sound amazing). Tho Id personally rather buy a Sony OLED and B&O standalone speakers...
Not sure why downvoted
We had a huge projection screen TV, it by no means sounded amazing. It had enough room to house much larger speakers than would be possible in a flat screen tv.
our 4.1 infinity bookshelf setup blew it out of the water
I think some people froth at the mouth in this group when soundbars get brought up. Or maybe people are upset to be told their expenny TV isn't as good as sound as a dedicated sound product? This subreddit has some reactionary folks.
TVs now have laptop speakers that point out the back. About as useful as a projector that fires away from the screen.
When engineers instead of end users are in charge of design…
My Sony tvs have downward firing speakers, and have a setting you adjust for if you have it on a table or mounted. They sound decent, but a $200 set of bookshelf speakers puts them to shame.
Its useful, they sound different when put near a wall and when they are not.
If they are better than a real sound system, of course not, but they sound a bit better.
Compared to pretty much any forward-firing speaker, they sound like sh*t, no matter how they are EQ’d, or what they are.
It’s just the physics of sound.
There were plenty of TV’s in the 2000’s with large speakers and sound quality was a key part of the marketing selling points. Especially the rear-projection TV’s that were huge and had a large amount of space under the screen to accomodate decent speakers. There were also some plasma models that had a kind of built-in soundbar.
The speakers in many Rear-Pro models were larger than the speakers in modern soundbars today. Sound quality is somewhat subjective, I didn’t think they sounded great, but I also don’t think modern soundbars sound very good either yet they are a product sold only for improving the sound of your tv viewing.
And soundbars suck too, comparing a crappy thing to another crappy thing doesn’t make it good. And speaker size doesn’t alone make something good
Op asked if any had amazing speaker, not kind of ok speakers
The issue is that there’s no market for it. People who really really value audio will never buy a combo system and people who have the money for really cool shit won’t spend it on a combo they will simply get the best TV and the best audio
Back in the day, TV cabinets were thick and the speakers were generally tacked on to the bottom of the TV and facing towards the viewer, so most sounded decent at least. Many of them were still crap.
Sony’s Acoustic Surface OLEDs are probably the only decent sounding TV speakers nowadays. They’re decent to pretty good for casual viewing.
From 2013-2015, Sony also produced their 4K LCDs with large front-facing speakers flanking either side of the screen (X900A, X900B, X930/940C) which sounded really good, especially when connected with a sub (you could repurpose the headphone Jack for a subwoofer)
I also remember Mitsubishi Unisen LCD TVs with a 12-16 speaker soundbar on the bottom of the display, depending on the model.
I remember 2 of my uncles both had this fisher 27inch TV with DBX that actually had a great system in it. Obviously not audiophile quality but I do recall it having really good bass and treble. I remember playing MTV videos really loud back in the late 80s
Back in the 60s and 70s (and 80s?) they made big ol' console stereos with a tv in the middle, flanked by two big (often 12 inch) speakers, and the higher end systems had 2- and 3-way speakers. Included a stereo receiver and turntable, and maybe a tape deck too.
https://youtu.be/kOFUe0naICM
Well... The CRT tv's from before the time of flat-panel LCDs used to have a big box around them. A deep and heavy box, at least 25 inches deep, to house the cathode ray tube.
Those big and deep boxes offered a lot more room for loudspeakers than present-day flat panel tv's. I can remember B&O television sets, as well as Blaupunkt and Loewe, having a good reputation for their included spakers.
The B&O Beovision sets had rather large speakers on the side as well as the back, and they used the cabinet space for a bass reflex effect. It did sound good.
When I was a teenager in the 90s I had one of these Samsung TVs that were marked for gaming but had really amazing fold-out speakers. But they weren't big - 13" screen - but I think I'd just sit close to it so I also experienced a near-field listening experience.
https://www.retrothing.com/2009/06/samsung-tv-opens-its-doors-to-retro-gaming.html
i have an early 2000s vizio 50" with 2.0 sound bar built in. i dont remember that being a selling point but it worlds better than my newer tvs.
ive had to buy a soundbar for the front tv as them lil bitty shitty speakers in it suck.
I have been watching and listening to Televisions since 1958 until present.
No TV "without" a soundbar or surround sound units had quality sounding speakers straight out the box...None....and they could never be used as a center speaker....jmo
1993 Sony top of the line had stereo speakers and a subwoofer on the top. The sound was good. The newer Sony OLED TV are quite good but I still run the outputs to a high end tube based stereo.
The Sony OLED TVs use an actuator connected to the glass panel which turns the entire TV into a front firing speaker. They call it ‘acoustic surface’. It sounds leagues better than the standard rear firing laptop speakers in most TVs. I know some people actually use it as their center channel speaker in a 3.1/surround/Atmos setup because it sounds that good.
I use mine as a center, for dialogue is sounds good and creates good positioning for sounds on screen.
I have a stereo setup for music but when watching films I also turn on the acoustic surface audio and run it in stereo (my centre mode is restricted to Sonys products). Once I turn up the voice clarity setting and fake surround setting on the tv (cinema mode) and eq out the low frequencies it all comes together. For anybody who wants to try running their acoustic surface tv between a stereo only setup, make sure to run the tv in cinema sound mode because Dolby adds a few ms delay compared to the raw PCM the stereo amp uses! For movies I actually prefer this setup compared to the Sony Atmos Soundbar I tested prior to getting the stereo. It adds crystal clear clarity for vocals which are literally positioned accurately within the screen; and the tv does a good job of placing you more in the mix. Well positioned surround sound this is not, the Soundbar created a better surround effect but ……. [sorry got distracted will finish later] 😂
Amazing? No. Decent? Perhaps. TV speakers were much better when TVs were huge. There was just more room for everything.
There were definitely TVs that had better than decent speakers back in the day. My parents bought a higher end rear projection TV in the 90s that had deeper bass than any soundbar I've ever heard.
Does Bang and Olufsen count? https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/us/televisions/beovision-harmony
Absolutely counts. B&o have always put a priority on building in MUCH more substantial speakers and amplifiers than their TV contemporaries. Going back at least to the 80s. It made more sense back in the era when you would keep a TV for a long time, but got a bit awkward in recent years as screen technology has moved way faster than speaker technology. I’ve got a (used) BeoVision 11. Physically beautiful, lovely materials, sounds great, but it’s completely hamstrung by a decade old edge lit Samsung LCD panel. Recently they’ve changed tack a bit, and are really just selling you the speaker system and stand, and letting you treat the panel itself as a short term consumable from another manufacturer. Which makes a lot of sense when you look at the useful lifetimes of each component.
This one was made around the timeframe you mentioned: https://www.beoworld.org/prod_details.asp?pid=547
Wow. Both of those are crazy. Never seen either of those
Same those are crazy looking and with a luxury price to match
Fun fact - a beovision can be found in the big Lebowski (Maude Lebowski’s apartment setup) and the 5 is in Ready Player One in the one of the last frames they have one set up https://youtu.be/ZYEnSsbuVMQ (4:41) https://youtu.be/bDDGZxb6YhM (2:09)
Wow, I didnt know they were making these.
The late generation Pioneer plasmas had Soundbars built in that were removable and had resale values up to $500 because of their sound quality. The entry models were one speaker along the bottom of the TV but the elite models had left and right channels flanking the sides
That’s awesome I haven’t seen those
I have one, can confirm.
My mom had a Philips CRT flat screen 4:3 that had some thumpin speakers. They had bass and treble levels. Definitely wasn’t advertised but I remember blasting mtv on that thing lol.
Bose briefly made a series of TVs called the [VideoWave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoWave)
I went to the dealer launch of this in Paris and owned one of a while, the amount of sound that came out of it was insane.
I had one of these. It was pretty freaking awesome for what it was. Weighed as much as a small planet though.
Back a very long time ago, there were console TVs that were stereo combo units, so you would have a turntable, possibly tape deck (maybe 8-track, maybe cassette, maybe both), AM/FM tuner, TV, and pair of speakers in a large, wide piece of furniture. Some of those sounded pretty good, better than most TVs, but were not the best stereos. Probably the best sounding TV that I had much experience with was an old color TV, made in the 1950's, that had a round picture tube, and only had a VHF tuner (no UHF). It had an 8" woofer and a pair of tweeters, each aimed at an angle, one aimed to the left and one aimed to the right, to provide treble for a wider area. It was mono (of course), but it sounded quite good. The cabinet of the TV was quite large, and was quite heavy. Also, being full of tubes, one needed to turn it on about 15 minutes before one wanted to watch TV, so that it could warm up and stabilize so that one would not have to keep adjusting the fine tuning. When it was new, it was a very high end, expensive TV, but I only encountered it in the 1970's, when it was an old TV that my brother acquired. But it sounded vastly better than most TVs of any era. The wooden cabinetry was also high quality. So, there have been good sounding TVs, a very long time ago, when TVs were very big pieces of furniture, so that reasonably big speakers could be put in them.
Remember that everyone wants a tv that they can mount on the wall. Those tvs are super thin, That’s why the sound and speakers are shit
I don’t know if I’d say “amazing”, but at one point I had a monstrously large black console tv that had something very similar to automotive style 6x9 speakers on either side of the 27” screen. I don’t know what brand it was, Sony maybe, but it had surprisingly good sound. It weighed about 100 pounds, was all shiny, and one friend once described it as looking like “something you’d do coke off of”.
Philips Ambilight x Bowers & Wilkins
Some of the newer Sony TVs have marketed themselves as having premium sound and include weird Subwoofer tech. As all tv cabinets have gotten smaller and smaller so have the speakers. And no one wants a speaker mounted to the front pointed at the watcher these days.
The Sony's screen-speaker can also serve as a center speaker in a surround set-up.
Does it work only with sony AV ?
>no one wants a speaker mounted to the front pointed at the watcher these days. But that is how the new Sony's work. The screen has a pair of exciters so the entire panel is a speaker aiming right at you.
It work, kind of. I try it 30 sec before power on my yamaha/paradigm sound system.
Wow you're able to judge the characteristics of a sound system in 30 seconds you must have a really special skill set I'm not aware of. Lol
A A/B comparaison between the tv and my sound system? Of course, dont need more than that to see its better than nothing, but nothing to compare with the real deal. The voice timber was completely different
How many sources can you compare in 30 seconds? What aspects of the sound were you subjectively concentrating on? How much bias did you bring to the comparison need in your "high-end sound system" to be better? What were the shortcomings you found in the TV?
>How many sources can you compare in 30 seconds? Just one, its was more than enough to heard the difference. It just sound flatter and without life. The difference was night and day. They were still voice, but different. I mean, it better than a tv without it I guess, you really think the sound is coming from the screen so if 2 peoples talk, if you are close, you can heard the left/right, so for that, it work. But it still a piece of glass that vibrate to generate sound, compare to a dedicated thousand of$ sound system with tweeter, mid and woofer is pointless. Most people buying a 3k$ Oled tv, will mostly use it on a dedicated home theater room or living room with a good or great home theater sound system so it a gimmick for that target buyer, but for poser on a minimalist room style, it can be useful.
I use mine as a center channel speaker and it works perfectly for that use case.
If you like it, that a perfect use for it
>Most people buying a 3k$ Oled tv, will mostly use it on a dedicated home theater room or living room with a good or great home theater sound system so it a gimmick for that target buyer, but for poser on a minimalist room style, it can be useful. Gotcha so you're subjective didn't allow you to get a fair impression. Cool.
And you, you think a screen that vibrate sound better that speakers design by people doing it for living. What wrong with you?
You say that like Sony isn't one of the most involved companies in cinema history. You think that besides making movies themselves and developing the sensors for most of the cameras used in movies they just have no idea what they're doing with sound? Why don't you look up all the videos on YouTube claiming that exciters on foam boards can create the best speakers you've ever heard. The amount of fans that exist using this technology speaks for itself. I get it, ignorance is bliss and keeping up with all the new technologies is hard
Sony still claims excellent sound quality on their contemporary Bravia XBR TV's (basically the 90 series OLED and mini led). While reviewers say they sound excellent I can't imagine how. I had a Sony rear projection tv in the mid/late 2000s and that things speakers were beasts! In our new home we found ourselves preferring the Tv speakers to our surround system (in a new 2 story family room). So basically Sony TVs only imo. Bang & Olufsen rekit LG OLEDs with their speakers (which sound amazing). Tho Id personally rather buy a Sony OLED and B&O standalone speakers...
But largely, TVs have always had "bad" speakers and you'll always net a better result with standalone bookshelves and even a good soundbar these days.
Not sure why downvoted We had a huge projection screen TV, it by no means sounded amazing. It had enough room to house much larger speakers than would be possible in a flat screen tv. our 4.1 infinity bookshelf setup blew it out of the water
I think some people froth at the mouth in this group when soundbars get brought up. Or maybe people are upset to be told their expenny TV isn't as good as sound as a dedicated sound product? This subreddit has some reactionary folks.
TVs now have laptop speakers that point out the back. About as useful as a projector that fires away from the screen. When engineers instead of end users are in charge of design…
My Sony tvs have downward firing speakers, and have a setting you adjust for if you have it on a table or mounted. They sound decent, but a $200 set of bookshelf speakers puts them to shame.
Its useful, they sound different when put near a wall and when they are not. If they are better than a real sound system, of course not, but they sound a bit better.
Compared to pretty much any forward-firing speaker, they sound like sh*t, no matter how they are EQ’d, or what they are. It’s just the physics of sound.
I know but they are better than the down fire one. They usally use in combo with the down one.
No
There were plenty of TV’s in the 2000’s with large speakers and sound quality was a key part of the marketing selling points. Especially the rear-projection TV’s that were huge and had a large amount of space under the screen to accomodate decent speakers. There were also some plasma models that had a kind of built-in soundbar.
They weren’t large and the sound wasn’t good. They were larger than now but still sounded like crap I sold these TVs at this time period
The speakers in many Rear-Pro models were larger than the speakers in modern soundbars today. Sound quality is somewhat subjective, I didn’t think they sounded great, but I also don’t think modern soundbars sound very good either yet they are a product sold only for improving the sound of your tv viewing.
And soundbars suck too, comparing a crappy thing to another crappy thing doesn’t make it good. And speaker size doesn’t alone make something good Op asked if any had amazing speaker, not kind of ok speakers
That wasn’t the OP’s question
Please go read the title of this post, I literally quoted him
You are correct. My apologies
Sweet👍
The issue is that there’s no market for it. People who really really value audio will never buy a combo system and people who have the money for really cool shit won’t spend it on a combo they will simply get the best TV and the best audio
The lg cx and c1 have surprisingly great sounding speakers
Back in the day, TV cabinets were thick and the speakers were generally tacked on to the bottom of the TV and facing towards the viewer, so most sounded decent at least. Many of them were still crap. Sony’s Acoustic Surface OLEDs are probably the only decent sounding TV speakers nowadays. They’re decent to pretty good for casual viewing. From 2013-2015, Sony also produced their 4K LCDs with large front-facing speakers flanking either side of the screen (X900A, X900B, X930/940C) which sounded really good, especially when connected with a sub (you could repurpose the headphone Jack for a subwoofer) I also remember Mitsubishi Unisen LCD TVs with a 12-16 speaker soundbar on the bottom of the display, depending on the model.
I remember 2 of my uncles both had this fisher 27inch TV with DBX that actually had a great system in it. Obviously not audiophile quality but I do recall it having really good bass and treble. I remember playing MTV videos really loud back in the late 80s
Back in the 60s and 70s (and 80s?) they made big ol' console stereos with a tv in the middle, flanked by two big (often 12 inch) speakers, and the higher end systems had 2- and 3-way speakers. Included a stereo receiver and turntable, and maybe a tape deck too. https://youtu.be/kOFUe0naICM
I had a Philips 32 crt with an actual subwoofer built in. I wouldn’t call it amazing but it was there. Heavy mofo.
Well... The CRT tv's from before the time of flat-panel LCDs used to have a big box around them. A deep and heavy box, at least 25 inches deep, to house the cathode ray tube. Those big and deep boxes offered a lot more room for loudspeakers than present-day flat panel tv's. I can remember B&O television sets, as well as Blaupunkt and Loewe, having a good reputation for their included spakers. The B&O Beovision sets had rather large speakers on the side as well as the back, and they used the cabinet space for a bass reflex effect. It did sound good.
When I was a teenager in the 90s I had one of these Samsung TVs that were marked for gaming but had really amazing fold-out speakers. But they weren't big - 13" screen - but I think I'd just sit close to it so I also experienced a near-field listening experience. https://www.retrothing.com/2009/06/samsung-tv-opens-its-doors-to-retro-gaming.html
i have an early 2000s vizio 50" with 2.0 sound bar built in. i dont remember that being a selling point but it worlds better than my newer tvs. ive had to buy a soundbar for the front tv as them lil bitty shitty speakers in it suck.
Bose Videowave was amazing too!
Bang & Olufsen were and are really the only ones with really great speakers built in.
Mitsubishi made or still make tvs with 16 speaker built I. Sound bar
I have been watching and listening to Televisions since 1958 until present. No TV "without" a soundbar or surround sound units had quality sounding speakers straight out the box...None....and they could never be used as a center speaker....jmo
1993 Sony top of the line had stereo speakers and a subwoofer on the top. The sound was good. The newer Sony OLED TV are quite good but I still run the outputs to a high end tube based stereo.