KlipschCinema 400 Sound Bar + 8Inch Wireless Subwoofer with HDMIARC,Black

I got this Klipsch 400 on sale at nearly half price. At that price it's a decent value. After experiencing it, I would not pay full price for it.I got this Klipsch 400 to replace a VIZIO S4251W-B4B that died on me. I got the Vizio 5 years ago in refurbished condition. This Klipsch is not nearly as good unfortunately. I have yet to find a better or equal soundbar for any amount of money tbh. If you can find one of those Vizios, nab it. They clarity of the high frequencies and the stereo image it produces are unmatched.On to the Klipsch.For an 8-inch subwoofer, it's pretty muddy and imprecise. The subwoofer level is also not mixed well with the sound bar, it's default level is far too loud.The stereo image is very poor without using the surround sound setting, but the surround setting has its own caveats that I'll get too. You get a lot of directionality from the speakers in the sound bar. Like I can tell the sound is coming from those speakers and they are dare I say, a bit tinny at first listen. The surround setting helps with this but does not eliminate it.Getting good sound.For listening to music I found that the sub needs to be near the lowest volume and surround needs to be on to get and appropriate stereo image and representation of high frequencies.Pick a song you are very familiar with and start with the above settings and a reasonable volume. Then turn the sub all the way down and mix it back in to your ears taste.For dialogue, surround cannot be on. The way surround setting seems to work is by compressing/boosting the wider areas of the stereo image. When listening to dialogue this has the effect of also boosting up the background noise. I guess this is why they add a separate dialogue setting. I found the dialogue setting unnecessary with the appropriate subwoofer level and a bit unatural sounding tbh.Also for dialogue I found that the lower subwoofer setting for music was not appropriate and I had to to turn it up a bit.In the end it seems like I'll have to flip settings back and forth quite a bit between music, games and TV but it's workable, and for half price a decent value.The gymnastics I had to go through to get this thing to sound good were troubling.

My beloved Pioneer SP-SB23W Andrew Jones Soundbar started failing to connect to the subwoofer a few weeks ago. I've used it since they came out in 2013 and have not been disappointed. But it keeps popping and not connecting and not working. Repairing anything anymore is usually more expensive than just buying something else, so that's what I did after checking CNET as per usual.This Klipsch Cinema 400 Sound Bar sounds fantastic right out of the box. It's going to need a few weeks to break in and will probably take a few hours of playing with it to get it dialed in, but so far I'm impressed.It has separate volume, sub, surround and dialog buttons on the remote to quickly help adjust the sound quality and depending on the source, they definitely make a noticable difference. It's easy to scroll through them and hear what sounds best for the content.For the price I'm surprised it sounds as good as it does. Typical Klipsch horn speakers can get loud easily and since they also make great subwoofers, this is a very good sounding speaker bar. The low price is a bonus.So far I'm very satisfied.

The Klipsch Studio Series 400 Sound Bar + 8Inch Wireless Subwoofer is a big step up from my Yamaha ATS-1060, both in power and sound quality, plus the addition of the subwoofer and Dolby. What it's lacking however is an equalizer, so if your source doesn't have one or can't use it, you're out of luck. For example, when using the HDMI-ARC output from my TV, the TV's equalizer is disabled so I have no equalizer. Fortunately with my TV, when viewing programs with Dolby sound, the audio sounds good. When the program audio output is not in Dolby, the surround function on the sound bar will brighten it up. I would not however, confuse the surround function with the real thing. Overall, I'm satisfied with the sound bar's overall performance with my 2023 LG C3 OLED TV.Not having an equalizer with the sound bar may be is a major issue when playing music, depending on the source. When I played songs from YouTube Music on my laptop, everything sounded muddy but, since since there's no equalizer on YouTube Music for PC, I couldn't change anything. When I used my Android phone however, no problem, I adjusted the built-in YouTube equalizer and it sounded great! Before buying it, I knew this sound bar didn't have an equalizer but also knew it wouldn't be a problem for music, since I primarily use my phone. My old TV didn't have an equalizer and my Yamaha sound bar's equalizer was very rudimentary, so I don't think there will be much of an issue with sound quality from TV program audio.Also there is no app that I can use on my phone as a remote because the Klipsch Connect App doesn't support it, nor does the only 3rd party Android app that I can find. This is a problem if you lose your remote or it breaks, or in my case, I always put the remote away and use the app. It's just one less remote to add to the clutter. I can live with this, I just don't like it. One other minor issue is that it's quite tall and it blocks the IR sensor on my TV so I have to hold my TV remote up in the air and point it down to turn it on. Fortunately, I don't have to do that with my TV remote app on my phone or it would be a bigger problem.Installation and setup is a breeze, although I hope you don't need to rely too much on the included product manual. It's very cryptic, but I believe that there are additional tips on the website. I had no problem pairing the subwoofer and other Bluetooth devices. Overall the sound quality and power output is great for me. The surround sound setting has minimal effect on Dolby input but does add an echoed effect to others that will be subjective in terms of likeability. The dialog feature is useful for me.Overall I'm happy with this sound bar, especially since I got it for a significantly discounted price. If you can live with the few drawbacks and don't want Dolby Atmos, The Klipsch Studio Series 400 Sound Bar + 8Inch Wireless Subwoofer is a good choice.