Not the all time lowest but incredible bang for bucks for its small footprint
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What is the usual price for these?
Here let me camelcamelcamel that for you :
Lowest: $159.00 (Nov 30, 2022)
Highest: $310.96 (May 09, 2021)
Current: $169.00 (Nov 20, 2023)
Sources : https://3cmls.co/AU/B08X3XMWB1
Legend, thanks!
Exceptional timing, I've been keen on one of these for ages
this or a refurbed yas-108 for around the same price?
If you're into Blu-ray, I'd avoid this one - it's fine for TV and Dolby Digital movies, but doesn't handle DTS, relying on the source device which may be suboptimal for the soundbar. I'd get loud music and sound effects while struggling to hear speech, and settings like Clear Voice and dynamic range compression helped little - replacing it with an ATS-1090 (YAS-109) made all the difference.
your comments has me rethinking my choices.
Previous posts for the C20A and B20A had plenty of praise for the clear voice which is why I am looking to upgrade.
As someone on the wrong side of 55 and diminishing hearing from years of scuba diving and playing in bands and sticking my head in the bass bin at concert, I bought the B20A on the last deal and I must admit I'm impressed with the difference it makes from the standard Sony Bravia sound both in clarity of voices (something I have had trouble with at times) and a nice bit (but not too much) of bass and bass rumble. For me well worth it for the price.
Same reason I started looking at getting a sound bar in the first place. Setting the DTS issue aside, the Clear Voice feature works fine, although for TV and other basic stereo sources I'm not sure it's much more than a glorified equaliser preset that boosts voice frequencies (some TVs have a similar feature built in).
Where the ATS-1090 shines, and presumably this is also true with the B20A and other soundbars, is how it handles surround audio in movies. DVD/Blu-ray players or TVs don't necessarily have a well optimised stereo downmix and can leave you struggling to hear dialogue while keeping music and sound effects at a reasonable volume, whereas the ATS-1090 nails it, like having the missing dedicated centre channel that helps speech stand out. So you want to be feeding surround tracks directly to the soundbar such that it can grab that centre channel and throw it right at you - the trouble with the C20A is it just can't do that for DTS (i.e. a lot of Blu-rays), so it comes down to whatever downmix is fed to it.
thanks for explaining this so the B20A could be okay?
@d0nkey: Can't say for sure but that model does appear to support DTS, and it's the lack of that which leads to the issue I described with the C20A specifically. Shame the 109/1090 seems discontinued - doubt there's a major difference in sound quality vs the B20A but some of the extra features like the HDMI-in can be helpful, and they'd regularly go for ~$199.
Picked one up and it arrived yesterday. Quick review, stereo separation is not good (unsurprisingly) it almost sounds like mono. Decent bass, but mid and highs are quite muddy. It is step up from my tiny sounding TV speakers but I would not recommend this for music listening. For the price (not RRP) it'll work well for a small room and quite decent. Unfortunately I'll be returning mine as I listen to music a lot.
@TrollBender your kind of deal