- Today, we're talking about Roku sound.
This is the ecosystem of Roku speakers
that includes the Streambar, the Streambar Pro,
the Subwoofer, and the wireless speakers.
Now, this is a video that I've been wanting to do
for a while.
If you follow my live streams, which you should,
then you've heard me talk about this.
I've wanted to do a video
where I set up the ultimate Roku system.
I've got the Roku TV.
I've had the wireless speakers for a while,
but I decided, hey, let's trick out the system a little bit.
See how it goes.
And if you watched my video a couple of weeks ago,
you know that I struggled with it.
I was trying to set up a surround system
with Streambar Pro, the wireless speakers,
and the subwoofer.
And I was having a devil of a time.
I couldn't get it to work.
In fact, as I mentioned in that video,
I called customer service, tried to get them to help me out,
and I was given apparently incorrect information.
It can be done.
And I know that now because in that video, admittedly,
I was a little frustrated and I think that came through.
So, I did get in contact with Roku.
They walked me through the setup process.
Took a little a while to do, but we got it done,
and it does work great now.
And in fact,
in order to complete my ultimate Roku sound setup,
they were kind enough to send me a couple
of extra satellite speakers to do a full surround,
both front and back.
So, in today's video,
I'm gonna talk about a couple of things.
First of all, I'm gonna give you my impressions
on the ultimate Roku sound setup.
I've got full surround with four satellite speakers,
I've got a subwoofer, and the Streambar Pro.
So, how does it sound?
I'll let you know.
Spoiler alert, it's pretty great.
But I'm also gonna let you in on how I got it all set up.
Because in that previous video,
obviously I was very frustrated
because I couldn't get it to work.
All right, let's dive in.
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Hey, everybody.
Thanks for joining me today.
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And like I said,
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Now, let me back up a little bit
and tell you what my setup has been for a long time
and why I wanted to do this video.
About a year or two ago, I did a video on soundbars.
I reviewed a few soundbars.
Some came with subwoofers, some didn't.
Some were cheap, some were expensive.
It was a fun video to do.
It was very interesting,
but it got me thinking what would work best with my Roku TV?
And since we end up giving away most of the products
that we review on the channel, those soundbars all left.
So, I needed to buy something for myself.
I ended up settling on the Roku speakers
because, hey, I've been a Roku guy for a while.
I wanted to see how they sounded.
So, I got those wireless speakers that you see behind me.
They go on either side of the TV, and I was blown away.
I thought they sounded really, really great.
For a couple of satellite speakers,
this was not a soundbar, there was no subwoofer involved,
I thought they sounded fantastic.
Really good bass response, good speech clarity,
really good for watching my movies
or even listening to music sometimes here in the studio.
So, I've always thought they were really good quality.
The only thing that kind of threw me off a little bit is,
yeah, that you can't use them with any other system.
It's gotta be a Roku TV.
It's gotta be a Roku Streambar
if you want to hook up those satellite speakers.
So, it's always been a little bit tough
for me to unequivocally recommend them to everybody, right?
In a few moments,
I'll talk about how the system actually sounds,
but for now I want to actually go back
to that previous video
and talk about how to set it up correctly
and the mistakes that I had made.
I was pretty sure I had gone
through every possible combination of unplugging this
and disconnecting that and factory resetting this,
but apparently not.
You ever had that thing where your car's making a noise,
and so you take it to the mechanic
and the moment you get to the mechanic,
the car stops making the noise?
It was a bit like that.
I was on the phone with the Roku folks,
and they're walking me through the setup,
and I could have sworn I did absolutely everything
that they said, but when they told me to do it, it worked.
Who knows what I did wrong the first time?
Ultimately though, it's pretty simple,
although a little bit frustrating
if you're in shoes like mine.
That in order to set this up correctly
essentially you need to strip down your entire system
and start from scratch and attach things in the right order.
So, I already had the wireless speakers,
those are the satellite speakers next to the TV,
hooked up to my Roku TV.
Okay great.
So, I've got those set up.
I added a subwoofer after that.
No problem.
Okay, great.
So far so good.
But then when I tried to add the Streambar Pro into the mix,
that's where I ran into problems.
So, if you recall, I called customer service.
They said, "Hey, it's not gonna work.
"The software in the Streambar Pro is interfering
"with the software in the Roku TV.
"So, you're never gonna get it to work."
Apparently that's incorrect.
And here's what I had to do.
I had to take my wireless speakers and disconnect them,
completely disconnect them from my system.
Same thing with the subwoofer.
Unplug it, reset it, strip it down, get it back to zero.
Then I started with the Streambar Pro.
Got that plugged in, got it hooked up to the TV.
That is a very, very simple process,
especially if you have a Roku TV.
And in fact, once it's hooked up,
I didn't even have to change remote controls
to the new remote control for the Streambar Pro.
It just worked with my existing remote control.
Great.
But once the Streambar Pro is plugged in,
now I can start adding on those other things.
So, I plug in the satellite speakers,
I plug in the subwoofer.
And they go through their updates
and then they connect to the system.
It turned out to be shockingly easy.
It just took a little bit of time, again,
to strip that system back down to zero
and then build it up from the Streambar Pro.
The best I can tell that's the easiest way to do it.
And it's really not too hard.
It's a little bit time consuming and can be frustrating
if you don't understand that order of operations.
And I think I'm evidence of that potential frustration.
So, if I had any advice for Roku,
it would be to bump up their literature game
just a little bit and expand that quick start guide
with a few extra scenarios.
You know, if you're starting from zero,
then follow these steps.
If you already have the wireless speakers,
then follow these steps, et cetera, et cetera.
It would be really helpful
for those of us in different scenarios.
But eventually I did get it set up.
So, now I've got the Streambar Pro under my Roku TV,
I've got the satellite speakers,
both in the front and behind the TV,
and I've got the subwoofer set off to the side.
So now we've got ourselves a true 5.1 surround sound system.
Now, how does this compare with other 5.1 surround?
Well, there's one thing to consider and that's price.
Is Roku more or less expensive than other 5.1 systems?
I'd say it's pretty comparable.
Definitely give or take.
You can find cheaper ones out there
that aren't going to be as good.
You can find more expensive ones
that are potentially better.
But I will say that for the price,
I've been very, very impressed.
I'm not exactly what you would call an audiophile,
but I think I flirt with that territory.
I've been into sound for a long time.
And I can say that this is a very, very impressive system.
And why is that?
Well, I think it's in part
because when you look at other 5.1 surround sound systems,
the rear speakers especially tend to be smaller, right?
They don't need as much oomph,
at least that's how the thinking goes.
But with this, the Roku system,
I've got the same wireless speakers front and back,
and they are fantastic in any scenario.
So, when you put them as your rear speakers,
you're actually getting a little more oomph
than you normally would from your rear speakers
in a surround sound system.
Now you may not want that much.
You may not want to pack a punch
from the speakers behind you, and that's okay.
You can go into the sound settings
when you're watching any given program,
and you can bump up or bump down the surround level.
That's essentially the volume you're getting
from those rear speakers.
But even if you bring the volume down,
the fact is that those speakers are very nice.
So, you're getting really well rounded system
with good lows, mids, and highs from those rear speakers.
And then we turn to the bass response of the system
as a whole, and that comes largely from the subwoofer,
though not entirely.
The subwoofer really does pack a punch.
And at first blush, I was a little bit frustrated
that I didn't have a subwoofer specific remote
or a control that could bump the bass up and down.
But then actually you kind of do,
it's in the regular remote.
You just hit that star key while you're watching something
and it'll pull up the sound menu.
You can bump the bass up or down.
You can turn the bass off entirely,
which will turn off not just the subwoofer,
but the bass in the entire system.
It's really weird.
And you've got control of it that way.
Now the nature of a video like this is
that unfortunately I can't actually convey
what the sound quality really is when you're sitting
in this couch.
But let me see if I can put it this way.
If you plug in a TV like this into your wall,
this is a TCL six series,
then you are gonna get tinny, not great sound.
In fact, I've argued for a while
that if you're buying a new TV,
then you need to factor in an additional $200
to whatever the cost is,
so that you can at least get a decent soundbar.
Okay, so now we've got the TV and you add the soundbar in,
the quality jumps up quite a bit.
The Roku Streambar Pro doesn't have the bass response
that the wireless speakers do,
but it does have excellent mids
and it has great speech clarity.
So, you're gonna have a much better experience
with the Streambar Pro than just the TV sound.
Now, if you add in the wireless speakers,
you're really kicking things up a notch.
The wireless speakers do come
with a much better bass response.
It's not subwoofer level,
but you're getting a more rounded sound.
And if you really round out the system with the subwoofer,
the additional rear speakers,
then you've got a 5.1 surround system
that I would put up against just about any other 5.1 system
that I've seen for around this price.
So yeah, I love the sound quality of this system.
But when I do reviews like this,
I'm always trying to think, okay, but where's the negative?
What's the downside?
And the downside we've already kind of talked about,
first of all, it can be difficult to set up
if you're already in the Roku ecosystem.
And the second thing of course is
that it's a closed ecosystem,
meaning that these Roku devices need to speak
with each other.
You can't take the wireless speakers
and put them on an LG TV or whatever.
The nice thing is
now that I've got this surround sound system set up,
it's all running through the Streambar Pro,
which means, yeah, if I wanted to switch to an LG TV,
if I wanted to get a Samsung,
if I wanted to get any other brand
than, you know, a Roku built in smart TV,
then I could do that.
I can take this with me.
But if all you've got is the speakers
or the speakers and the subwoofer,
yeah, that's not gonna happen.
Overall, I'd say if you are a Roku person
and you're looking to really trick out your sound,
then this is a fantastic way to do it.
If you're not a Roku person,
then, well, there's no way you made it this far
in the video, so I'm not gonna worry too much about that.
One word of caution is
that this system can get very, very loud.
So if you are sharing walls,
if you're in an apartment or, you know,
a small house or something, have a little caution with this.
You can obviously set it to night mode.
You can turn the bass down, all of that stuff.
But yeah, at its default settings
if you really crank this thing up,
it'll rattle the walls.
I'm lucky enough to have a standalone studio
where I can do that,
but not everybody's gonna have that luxury.
All right, everybody, thanks for watching.
Let me know what you think.
Hit the comments below.
Tell me if you have a system like this
or if you were thinking about getting a system like this
if it seems like it's worth it to you.
So yeah, hit those comments.
Let me know what you think.
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
Join me on Fridays for the live streams.
And I will see you all next time.