Why you need a soundbar with room correction.

Are you frustrated with the sound quality of your TV? You’re not alone. One of the most common consumer complaints about modern TVs is their poor audio performance. If you’ve ever found yourself straining to hear dialogue or disappointed by the lack of impact during action scenes, it’s time to consider a soundbar with room correction.

You’ve probably heard it yourself: even high-end TVs sacrifice sound quality for sleek, thin designs. These TVs typically use either down-firing or back-firing loudspeakers, crammed into the limited space their slim profiles allow. The result? A listening experience that leaves much to be desired.

Imagine trying to have a conversation with someone who is facing away from you. That muffled, misdirected sound is essentially what you’re getting from your TV’s built-in speakers. Dialogue becomes difficult to understand, the overall sound is often tinny and harsh, and there’s a noticeable lack of bass that robs your favourite movies and shows of their impact.

Soundbars have emerged as a popular solution to this dilemma. At its core, a soundbar is a horizontal speaker array designed to complement your TV’s appearance while significantly upgrading its sound capabilities. Typically spanning the width of your TV, soundbars align their left and right speakers with the edges of the screen, ensuring a cohesive audiovisual experience.

The benefits of a good soundbar over built-in TV speakers are immediately noticeable. You’ll experience a fuller, more natural sound thanks to larger drivers and better acoustic design. Dialogue becomes clearer and more intelligible as the front-facing speakers project sound directly toward you. The result is a more immersive viewing experience with reduced listening fatigue, allowing you to enjoy your content for longer without strain.

While soundbars offer a significant upgrade over TV speakers, there’s a catch that many buyers don’t realize: the acoustics of your room can have a massive impact on sound quality. This is where the story gets interesting.

When you place a speaker (including a soundbar) close to a wall, it begins to interact acoustically with that surface. This interaction can lead to muddy, exaggerated bass that lingers in time. Ironically, this can make voices sound chesty and reduce clarity – potentially undermining the very improvements you were seeking with your soundbar purchase.

The science of room acoustics goes even deeper. When sound waves from your speakers interact with walls, floors, and furniture, they create excessive reflections and standing waves. These interactions can lead to sound irregularities, where certain frequencies are boosted while others are attenuated. Bass is particularly susceptible to room effects, often building up in corners and near walls, leading to boomy, undefined low-end. Moreover, these room reflections can blur the perceived location of sound sources, reducing the stereo imaging and soundstage that high-quality audio systems can provide.

Thankfully, there’s now a solution. Advanced soundbars, like the Klipsch Flexus Core 300, now come equipped with a powerful feature called digital room correction. This sophisticated software can analyse your room’s acoustic properties and compensate for the sound degradations caused by room acoustics and speaker placement.

Our contribution to this field is Dirac Live. This system is a set-and-forget calibration technology that uses patented, research-driven measurements and algorithms to optimize your soundbar’s performance for your specific room.

The process is both powerful and user-friendly. Using a microphone (the Flexus Core 300 comes with one), Dirac Live measures the acoustic response of your room from multiple positions. It then analyses this data to create a detailed acoustic rendering of your space. The software then generates a correction filter tailored to your specific room and speakers. This filter is applied to your soundbar, effectively neutralizing room-induced anomalies.

The benefits of this technology are clear and immediate. Voice clarity and intelligibility are significantly improved, ensuring that dialogue remains easy to understand, even at lower volumes. Bass becomes tighter and more balanced, with compensation for room modes and wall proximity resulting in more accurate low-frequency performance. The spatial resolution of the sound is enhanced, creating a more immersive listening experience with improved soundstage and imaging. Perhaps most impressively, these improvements are consistent across a wider listening area, creating a larger “sweet spot” for optimal sound.

As you consider upgrading your TV’s audio system, keep these two key principles in mind:

By following these recommendations, you’ll be well on your way to experiencing your favourite shows and movies with cinema-quality sound. Your ears – and your family movie nights – will thank you!

Ready to explore your options? Check out our soundbar page to find the perfect audio upgrade for your home entertainment system.