did you just get a sound bar or a surround sound system
and you just want it connected to the tv so you can enjoy it already it's not as
hard as you think and i'm going to show you an easy way to just hook it all up make it work
first let's have a quick crash course and surround sound just enough so that you understand what
you're doing think of the tv as having a brain inside it that brain takes the information from
whatever movie you're watching and it needs to figure out what to do with the sound
the default option is to take that sound and send it to the speakers that are built into the tv
tv makers generally don't use very good quality speakers because anybody who
actually cares about sound is going to use external speakers
same logic of why nobody puts a performance exhaust on a prius they don't care
another option would be what i consider kind of a top tier solution where you have a head unit so
all the brain does it sends the same signal down an optical cable to the head unit the head unit
then uses its brain to take that same signal and send it to the different speakers this particular
system is a 5.1 dolby setup it has five speakers and a sub there's the center channel speaker
that goes right up in front and center and it's basically for things like voices and dialogue
you also have a right and a left speaker and those are what having those different effects
coming out left to right with a lot of the primary sound coming out the center over here you can
see a right rear speaker and a left rear speaker often these rear speakers are called the surround
sound because they surround you so you have the primary sound coming out of the center you've got
side effects from left and right front and you have surround sound from left rear
and right rear you'll notice these are smaller speakers they don't have the size to get a lot
of deep sounds the bass so what systems do is have a subwoofer and that's the other component
for this speaker system you can see in the corner that's where all your deeper sounds are going to
come from and it keeps the size of these speakers smaller now if you just want things easy or you
don't really care about quality of sound you can use the speakers that come with the tv there's
nothing wrong with that if you want to go one level up from the tv speakers something like a
simple sound bar would be your next option there's a lot of different levels of these in quality and
cost i think this one was only like a hundred dollars from the department store it's going to
be better sound quality it's a little bit more spread out but it's still contained right here
which means it's easy to connect for this basic sound bar connection all i've done is taken the
digital audio out optical line and use an optical cable that goes from that point into the sound bar
there could be other connection styles like the rca type jacks i've chosen to use the optical
just make sure that the cable and the connection on both points the sound bar and the tv match
the only other connection is a simple power cord to the sound bar so with those two connections
your sound bar is completely functional now i've had that single sound bar in here for
quite a while and it's been okay but it doesn't have that same full theater sound that you get
in the living room with the 5.1 so what i'm going to do is upgrade that single sound bar to this new
system this is a polk audio kit i actually have poke audio speakers in the living room system
so i'm familiar with the brand i've had them in a car before i know they're good products what i was
looking for is something that was easy to connect that gave me a fuller sound that didn't require
the headaches of adding a head unit the first question is what's in the box what's in the box
well you have your sound bar but in addition you also have two satellite speakers and a subwoofer
so i've actually got four pieces here then of course there's the remote the cords batteries etc
the first thing i did is disconnected the old sound bar and power cord
however i left the optical connector because i'm going to use that for the new one
on the new one you can see the new power cord you can see where it plugs in right there
and you can also see the optical port so we can just use that existing cord
but this one did come with the new one as well so now i've got a spare now both the power cord
and the optical cable are connected at both ends into the sound bar here optical into the tv here
and power cord back here both of them are out through a hole in the tv cabinet and
then route out the front the next step is to put the batteries in the remote next step is
to turn the tv on turn on the sound bar use the power button you see the green light came on so
i know it's powered up now i'm going to play the movie i've got the speakers on my tv down to zero
now i'm going to turn up the volume so basically the tv input was the problem because it needed to
know whether it was coming from the optical signal or one of the other signals so most of yours will
have an input button and you should cycle through that to make sure it's getting the right signal
okay this is the best lifestyle now we have sound coming out the sound bar that's step
one jacksonville the subwoofer and satellite speakers came with this
wireless adapter and you can see the wireless adapter port on the far left
wireless adapter in place this is the bottom of the subwoofer basically just a big speaker
the subwoofer is now plugged in we've got an orange light here so it's got power but no
signal same with this speaker and with this one on this particular unit you've got a
little connect button so what you want to do is hold that down for four seconds
and then on the sub and the two satellite speakers you'll also have it
so you want to hold this down for four seconds
and then it turns green and some of the units will actually have an audio signal from the
sound bar that will say you're connected so you do that for the sub and then both of the satellites
and then you'll see the green dots in the sound bar showing that you're all connected
this system has a plus and minus which basically controls the sound bar it has a plus and minus for
the base to control the sub i guess if i turn up the base tone a beach for biketoberfest this year
and it has plus and minus for the surround sound and i can hear it fine
i can hear this one fine too now from my position here in bed i want to be able to hear from the
front and then i've got my two surround sound speakers equally spaced with my sub in that corner
so this should be a good spot to do that another option is to separate your surround sound speakers
as front ones up in the far left and right but i'm going to see if i get a little bit
more of a surround sound effect by having them in the back the back of the speakers just has a
typical hanging hole so i need to do is put a screw in the wall it can go in there and
hang from easy enough right so take the stud finder i'll save you all the tool man jokes
okay so right there it looks like there's a stud it's gonna be pretty hard to see these
marks but i marked out the two ends of the stud and then i marked a hole here
that will basically allow the speaker to hang so the top of it is about flush with a lamp i've used
a hammer to start a screw into the sheetrock and now i'll screw it in not all the way need to allow
a little bit of a gap so that the speaker can hang on it there's just a little bit of a gap behind it
just enough to slip the speaker over it before i put the speaker on i'm going to measure that
distance from the floor and so that i know how high to put the one on the other side there's one
and there's the second when you're done doing the installation and everything checks out make sure
you tuck all your cables in cleanly and you've got everything nice and lined up well no trip
hazards and that's how you connect the sound bar or surround sound system to your tv enjoy
subscribe to my youtube channel below and let's celebrate turning fuel and air into adrenaline