Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk

> How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience?

Not much. Buy used. Buying new stereo equipment is an activity of the wealthy. Everywhere I've ever lived, CraigsList is overrun with excellent used speakers and receivers at reasonable prices.

I won't inundate you with brand-flexing, but I'll say I'm very happy with my home theater system. 4K OLED TV, big ol' tower speakers, and a pretty nice home theater unit. All from reputable brands. All used. Under $400 all together. No shitware.

Not every company does it, or with their whole lineup.

Get a Yamaha [0], NAD [1], Rotel [2]?

I would have adamantly said AKAI, but they are no more.

[0]: https://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio_visual/hifi_components...

[1]: https://nadelectronics.com/product/c-3050-stereophonic-ampli...

[2]: https://www.rotel.com/en-gb/product/a11mkii

What TV do you use?

I use a Frame and don't have any of the issues you describe in the slightest.

The power button turns the TV on with a 0.5 second animation, and immediately I see the Roku interface with no popups or Samsung branding or anything.

Probably the ONLY complaint is that by default my washing machine puts an alert on the TV every time it's finished.

I would probably find the setting to turn it off but honestly part of me finds it very cool for my washer to creep onto the TV because it knows I'm watching.

EDIT: maybe you are using wifi? It's the only thing I can think might be different in my setup. Try running RJ45 and see what happens? All I can say is Works On My Machine unless you add some details

"How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience? Just like every retailer has embraced usury with their credit card programs, every technology company has decided they are in the data harvesting business."

isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that

It feels like you're renting access to your own devices

Thorens 166 turntable, Fischer tube amp from a flea market, and homemade speakers. I left that stuff in storage many years ago and have no idea where it is now. Come to think of it, that had a boot delay too (waiting for the tubes to warm up) but it never really bothered me.

AppleTV running Apple Music connected to my Marantz AVR. No ads. No privacy concerns. I get lossless stereo where available and Atmos on selected tracks. It's great.

High end in what terms? Most options will sound the same (to me? to most?), so the option with the better user experience is really the high end option.

What exactly are you waiting for. I have two Dolby atmos systems, denon receivers, Apple TVs, OSMC boxes on both, and LG Smart TVs disconnected from the internet. Start up time is less than a second.

I'll try to explain this from the point of view of someone who has tried to bring a bloatware-free hifi system to market:

Chinese copies + Amazon = flood of shit

It takes years to design, test, build prototypes, measure, re-design, re-build, calibrate, certify and produce a good hifi audio amp. That means you start your product journey with $500k in debt and unless you can show how you're going to sell enough units to recover this, your project is dead before it ever started. You typically need to sell at 8x of your real costs, because shipping companies, import agents, wholesalers and retailers all want (and need) their margins. If I expect to sell 2,000 units per month (which is A LOT already) for 2 years, then I need to add about $10 to my costs per unit to recover the R&D expenses. And that means as long as Amazon is happy to turn a blind eye on IP-infringing blatantly obvious clones that typically even re-use my product images or slogans or brand names ... then my "original" product will be undercut by $10x8 = $80 in price by Chinese clones. They don't have R&D to recoup because the can just buy my product, x-ray the PCB, and then make duplicates. And trying to get Amazon to follow the law is like playing expensive whack-a-mole with lawyers. It won't help to recover money.

That means as the manufacturer, I have exactly 1 way left to recover R&D expenses:

I lock down the software. And then I either shove ads in your face, or I bully you into a subscription. Or if the ads pay too little, both.

I hate the situation as much as you do, but I also see no better way forward. Nowadays, you need to plan for the flood of shitty clones on Amazon a week after launch. (Or in some cases, even before the original product clears import customs.) And that means you treat hardware as cheap and disposable, because your competitors do that and unless you join them, you're at a huge market disadvantage, because the average customer cannot tell the difference between a low-quality and a high-quality capacitor. (And Amazon doesn't care.)

https://www.cultofmac.com/news/selfie-stick-iphone-case-gets...

(And please note that these guys even had US patents on the product. Didn't help them, though.)

Sonarr, Radarr, Lidard are completely free, no ads, and private. Throw in JellyFin and Kodi and you're set -- no financial cost.

I use Meridian standalone active speakers which just take a PCM stream. An HDFury Vertex2 can strip the audio from HDMI

Check out Schiit Audio.

Buy a used Braun A1/A2 amp (100-200$). There are maintenance handbooks online for both. Replace the two main condensators, which cost about 10-20$ each. Buy a pair of Canton GLE 200 or their presuccessors (100-350$). They didn’t change much in the last 20 years. Still very good, neutral and enough bass for a small living room. Hook your Technics 1200 MK2/5 (1000$) with an all round needle (100$) to the Phono-In Cinch connectors. Select your favorite vinyl from your collection, put it on the plate of the 1200. Move the arm on the first track of the vinyl. Enjoy completely analog music without distractions. The A1 boots in under 100ms, so does the Technics 1200. Total costs 1670$. Beats any Sonos etc. setup in sound quality and convenience.

Disclaimer: I have booth systems in parallel and I feel disgusted and disappointed every time I have to use the Sonos system now.

For my stereo setup, around $4000 for everything. It's also used for game emulators, kids to watch movies and cartoons, wife to watch whatever she feels like, etc.

Projector (Optoma laser) - $1200

110" powered retractable projector screen - $100

Mid tier PC - $600

DAC (Schiit modi 2) - $180

Amp (Behringer A500) - $100

SVS prime towers - $1000

SVS Sub - $750

All of my music is running off Jellyfin. I have a turntable that barely gets used but that's because I don't have enough space for it to keep it out of the reach/ damage radius of my kids.

You can of course do this for much less if you don't spend 2 grand on the audio part.

This is why I love vintage audio. I’m sitting here listening to classical on FM radio on my Marantz 2215B made in the 1970s and it is what you are describing and sublime.

> Just like every retailer has embraced usury with their credit card programs

What does this mean?

I hate to be that guy but how on earth do you have a "high-end" system (your words) that does all this?

Sure, there is some boot up time to warm everything up, but there are no ads and no user agreements etc on mid to high end systems.

Even my entry level system (denon avr, lg c1 oled, appletv4k and ugoos as media players) does not take more then 10 seconds from totally off to showing the menu / plex interface, and no user agreement popups or ads

> Samsung to shove bloatware down our throats

Why on earth do you say that? :))) I got a nice Samsung 12" tablet, and a nice Samsung (work) smartphone. After 20-30mins of disabling bloat/crap-ware their batteries last a week on stand-by.

> How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience?

For me, I reckon less than 5k overall. JVC DLA-X5000 projector, Yamaha A1020 receiver, Focal Aria 936 speakers, SVS SB1000 sub, Raspberry Pi 2 with Kodi on it, a NAS with 16TiB of storage and gigabit networking to connect it all. All the AV stuff second hand, of course. No load times, no ads, just a system that works for me.

I do not accept technology into my life unless it works for me. If the latest nK formats and 1000 channel surround doesn't work without equipment that works for someone else than I'll never have it in my home. Simple as that. I'll read a book instead.

Why using a TV when you can use a mini PC instead?

Samsung soundbars are all of the things you asked for.

> How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience?

Beyond the speaker and amplifier of your choice (both dumb! or dumbed down) a few hundreds of USD and couple of weeks or months of learning and tinkering with low cost hardware and open source software for HiFi use. Some Raspberry Pis and matching DAC allowed me to have a very decent experience I needed (around KEF speakers). There were dead-ends, confusions, restarts, dubious or closed down solutions offered but you will rely moslty (not completely) on your own in the end if done right, and not exposed to the mercy of ruthless conglomerate assoles that much.

Not sure what you are complaining about, I have Samsungs surround soundbar, they are amazing for the price (apart from fuckup with forced updade bricking the bar, but I'd never ever update soundbar or similar tech if it just works... why? There is never any gain just potential risks, I don't do ebanking via soundbar ffs).

My TV is just a rather basic chinese 75" TCL, and I have absolutely 0 zilch ads anywhere apart from actual Google products (youtube of course but thats a terrible experience anywhere without ublock origin or similar, and OS showing on the background in main menu ads for their paid movies - the place I spend maybe 3s during start if at all and they don't even look like ads just background). If I launch straight ie netflix 0 nanoseconds spent seeing ads. If I play from USB there is nothing. And this is rock bottom chinese stuff.

Turning on TV which is in sleep mode is like 2s max, another 2s and soundbar is on automatically via eArc.

I used to have B&W towers with Pioneer receiver (bought for peanuts, older tech sounds 100% as new one) but then I realized they add friction to whole experience and I prefer a small notch lower sound quality to convenience and surround. Samsung soundbar with that TV does that 100%. Apart from playing music only I don't even notice the difference.

Is this maybe region specific behavior? I live in Switzerland, US consumers are widely known to accept way more ads than other western countries, plus there is a lot of wealth in that single market.

Have a 10TB movie collection on an external HDD (mostly 1080p x265 rips and few 4K ones) but its less convenient and I have to download new stuff myself. Plus I love standup collection Netflix has.

Total price cca 1.5 years ago - cca 1700$ and a proper cinema experience.

We went from being able to walk into a store and actually try stuff out - compare how headphones sound, how a speaker feels in your hands - to now just gambling on Amazon reviews and hoping return policies are generous

The problem with showrooms is it is easy to go in, see what you need, then walk out and order from the cheaper mail order place that doesn't have retail overhead.

The other problem is walmart with the generic stuff is good enough for most even though it is measurably bad, in a cheap but measurably bad listening environment - but they can thereby compete with online sales. That and a lot of expensive stuff is measurably no better than the "our best" walmark junk and so if you do find such a store there is no guarantee they are not pushing you overprice junk instead of the good stuff.

The consumer choice spectrum was pretty rad in the mid-to-late-1980s. I was often in the market for hi-fi stereo equipment, and I did it by accumulating discrete components one-by-one.

In my home city, we had several electronics retailers who sold every kind of component stereo equipment, including car stereo and whatnot. So I could literally walk into a store and see a huge gamut of dual-deck cassette recorders, or turntables, or amplifiers, receivers, etc. And they were all set up for customer demo. It was fantastic.

When the time came for me to shop for a CD audio player, I pre-purchased a few CDs to listen to for the demos. That was a great move; the place where I went for "auditions" had a dedicated listening room just chock-a-block with equipment that could be switched into whatever speaker system fit my home setup. And so in exactly one stop at a retail outlet, I was able to listen to that CD through several diverse systems, make a final purchase decision, and walk out of there with my favorite 7-disc CD changer, which served well for about 15 years after that.

The thing is, traditional receivers wanted to be the "brains" of home theater, switching video inputs, managing audio, turning everything on.

That role is no longer sensible when used with smart TVs/Apple TV boxes/Android TV boxes.

As a result, traditional receivers are relegated to be being audio decoders and amplifiers. Honestly, I think there's already more manufactured and lying around than the world really needs. It was inevitable that a few product lines would be consolidated.

I'm curious how large this market is.

Speaking only anecdotally, when I was in my 20s, I bought a Sony "home theatre in a box" which included receiver, small subwoofer, and small satellite speakers. Over time, I upgraded to an Onkyo reciever and Polk center, surrounds, and subwoofer.

But... then I decided I wanted a more minimal look, and switched to a JBL sound bar + subwoofer, which has detachable surrounds -- but I almost never utilize them.

For sure, the sound is nothing compared to what I had before, but I'm mostly OK with it. All that to say, how popular are sound bars, and how popular are dedicated receivers?

Consolidation is a problem. We end up with 5 companies owning all brands. That is not good for competition and for the customer.

AFAIK B&W 800D is used in many mastering studio's. I wonder what they will do with their high-end / pro audio segment, since it's quite different from your average home stereo (or even hi-fi) markets.

I have a Marantz receiver that I’ve been using for around a decade now and it’s been excellent, having done its job well the whole time and it having continued to get updates fixing or improving things (e.g. after Spotify bricked a bunch of stuff by deprecating its old API, Marantz issued an update using the new API).

Given Samsung’s track record with enshittification and support timelines I’m worried that this acquisition means all that will be going away, which is a shame. Guess I’ll be looking at Sony and Yamaha models instead going forward.

Pioneer is still around. TEAC too but they're a bit more mid-to-high pro market, I guess.

Out of the list, only B&W and Marantz are decent. Others are average to low quality consumer-grade audio equipment companies.

That if is the question. There in other industries examples of a good small company being bought out and it is for the better - they keep making quality things but now have the advantages of the big company. There however a lot of well known examples of a good small company being bought out for the name which is then put on junk while fooling people who still remember the name.

Only time will tell.

Makes you wonder if Sound United was struggling more behind the scenes than it seemed

Unfortunately the market is quite small and shrinking. I wish more people wanted great sound rather than phone/tv speakers (or soundbars).

And we just saw a VSCode fork (Windsurf) get purchased for $3 billion.

In other news, Block Audio ASI Inc. (providing AI services for audio providers on the blockchain) was just acquired for $3.14B.

Same. Quite surprised.

If you're into lossless audio formats, room correction, or full surround setups with discrete speakers, receivers still have a strong case

I feel like this is tied to the overall decline in movie and music quality. Maybe I'm just getting old. There is no more "Titanic" or "Nirvana". Lots of people have noticed the decline in audio mixing in movies as well, which has led to a generation of younger adults who need captions for regular movies. A discrete audio system would probably help with this but for what? How many times are you going to watch latest Avengers?

Personally I have a Raspberry with Kodi, a Chromecast and a Nintendo Switch attached to my Onkyo receiver and only one HDMI cable going to the wall-mounted TV. Plus two nice (for my taste) big speakers. And I can listen to streaming music without turning the TV on (big big plus)

I agree with this.

I think the overall experience with the modern setup is worse in every way than 20 years ago with the exception of picture quality since we have 4K now. (Of course mostly we watch heavily compressed streaming video). 20 years ago I had a 5.1 system and would watch DVDs. The sound was vastly better than TV speakers/soundbar, compression was lower on the video despite being SD. By 15 years ago this was no longer true with a Blue Ray player of course, everything was better. My setup back then even had an audio compressor ("dynamic range adjustment") so you could actually hear the dialog when you needed to turn the volume down at night. No need to use subtitles!

But the old setup doesn't make sense anymore either as you would have had to keep replacing the receiver a bunch of times for no good reason as AV standards changed.

I got rid of my old setup at some point. I have a new system in another room that doesn't do video at all. It's just stereo with a CD player, a Turntable, a digital media player (doesn't get used much) and a Bluetooth input for streaming.

I have an 7.1.4 Atmos system with a Sony ES receiver.

I can definitively tell you that sound bars to not come anywhere close to the quality of what I have, and at a decent price too (the entire audio setup cost less than my OLED tv).

I think most people are never exposed to real home theater audio so they don't know what they are missing. Similar with high end stereo audio these days (which I also have).

Every time I show Top Gun Maverick in my theater room to a friend, they want to go out and buy a real setup. Several have. It sounds better than an actual theater plus I get to lounge on my couch with my dog.

> Thus why do you need a separate box? It just seems like a waste

The sound quality of modern TV is absymal. The digital compression does play its part, but the speakers and the case are crap.

Soundbars -- and also improved built-in TV speakers -- have eaten the low-end receiver market, for sure, but there are still a lot of other installations. A soundbar and stuff like Sonos are still compromises vs discrete channel speakers, and many people are still willing to pay for better sound. You don't have to go too high end to want better sound.

Marantz gear in particular is great, and Samsung buying them seems really unfortunate. Might be better than some private equity randos though.

Most people are basic and have basic needs, and a soundbar suffices in most cases.

I was sort of one of those people, with a soundbar, because it was easy and convenient. The soundbar came with a wireless subwoofer, and that solved the problem of running wires across my living room.

But, I had a gifted B&W 5.1 system with powered sub collecting dust out in my garage for a long time. I recently made the push to dust it all off and buy a receiver to power it, replacing the soundbar+sub we had been using for years.

The difference is really night and day. The soundbar just never got loud enough for when I wanted to crank-it-up when playing music. It was good enough for watching most TV shows, but the sound we get now from a 5.1 movie is incredible in comparison.

I did the work to run completely flat speaker wires to the surround speakers, under the rug in our living room. It took some work to re-route wires and get power to where the receiver is, but it was well worth it.

The new system goes as loud as I can stand it with crystal-clarity all the way up to "11". The soundbar looks like a piece of junk in comparison and is now out in the garage collecting dust.

Polk speakers are an amazing deal.

I think both the message and the code are wrong in this case. 429 too many requests indicates that you specifically as a client have spent too many requests, not that the site is being spammed to hell. If the site can't handle the traffic, a good option is 503 service unavailable, as that makes it clear that the problem lies on the server side, not the client.

This is because the remotes use IR for the power commands. There’s really no getting around it. A small piece of electrical tape over the IR window on the monitor will fix it.

Sony already does some wireless surrounds. They sound like crap.

The problem with wireless speakers is you can't really stream at a high enough bitrate to them to make for decent audio. Plus to really work, they need a plug nearby.

People without a proper room really can't enjoy surround sound which is a shame. There's this whole world of high end home theater equipment most people never get a chance to hear.

I try to show everyone my theater room to get more people excited. Several friends have run out and bought setups after hearing it. It's not too hard to run wires and mount speakers. I genuinely think most people just don't know what they are missing.

Look into Schiit Audio! They're American designed and manufactured. Their receivers aren't as consumer friendly as those of sony/denon etc but the quality is amazing, they have low, mid, and high end devices for each category, and they dont have/require any wifi connectivity. I've been daily driving their headphone DAC and tube amp for the last 8 years with no problem.

Funny you should say that about toasters... Because I've been down a toaster buying rabbit hole over the past year and toasters are not all the same. I mean sure, a €20 toaster is gonna be the same as all other €20 toasters. But beyond that they have massively different build quality and toasting speed, and don't get me started on how hard it is to find a toaster designed for real bread instead of square supermarket slices(+).

My recommendation is actually to buy a commercial toaster. It'll toast twice as fast and last for years. Downside is that it will probably look ugly. I've heard good things about Dualit too though.

(+) On the other hand if all you eat is white sliced pan, then go ahead and buy any €20 toaster. You're in luck, they were built for you.

Careful - it isn't clear that consolidation is bad. There is only a small market for this type of gear and less competitors can mean that the ones left actually have the money to design/build something good.

My left wing idea is prohibition of preferential pricing after a certain size to mitigate monopoly leverage. If you have say 20% of a market for chips, eggs, or whatever and more than a billion in revenue, then you have to set the same price anyone can buy at.

Last year I bought a Denon RCD-N12 - a mini system - for my office. I mostly use it to play CDs but can stream to it from my iPad too. The thing is great and for me, playing CDs while I work is perfect because it forces me to get up every 45 minutes or so to swap out the CD.

Quite a bit in audio, consumer or professional. I've had my Bowers & Wilkins MM-1 desktop speakers for nearly a decade. Audio Technica are another trusted brand, especially for monitor headphones.

Seems unlikely. There are a lot of audio brands.

People just prefer soundbars because they are easier and less imposing while delivering 80% of the value. Samsung sound bars in particular are very good. Compared to a 5.1 setup, their biggest fault is lacking good stereo separation.

Netflix delivers Dolby Atmos in bitrates that are indistinguishable from lossless audio. It's better, not worse.

Maybe it's always been this way and I just never noticed but at some point in the last ten years or so Samsung became synonymous with bottom of the barrel quality, while still charging premium prices. I won't buy anything with a samsung sticker on it, even used, because it's inevitably going to have failing electronics, stupid design decisions, too many half-baked features, and horrible buggy software/firmware. Your typical no-name alibaba whatever is likely to be at least on-par with anything Samsung puts out while costing less.

Even ignoring price, I can't think of a mainstream brand I consider worse from a quality perspective than Samsung. The only other brand I consider as bad is Sony, and that's more ideological than quality because of their shenanigans and contempt for their customers -- at least their hardware isn't almost across the board destined for the scrap heap. I've seen too many nearly new samsung appliances just die due to bad electronics and they want to charge nearly the cost of the appliance for a replacement circuit board.

On topic for audio -- I got a samsung receiver for $20 from the thrift store and while it sort of does the job of being an amplifier, everything else about it is horrible. Worst interface of any receiver I've used since the 80s, its easy to change a setting accidentally while being difficult to change it back, and it doesn't power back on after a power outage requiring me to manually press the (capacitive/touch) power button on it. Also that (TOUCH!) Power 'button' is right next to the volume knob so you accidentally touch it while changing the volume, shutting the receiver off. But booting it back up requires holding the (capacitive) button. A quick press makes it flash so you think it is booting but the joke is on you, you need to hold it. Also you have to hold it properly, because sometimes it simply fails to register so after holding it for a few seconds and it doesn't boot, you have to take your finger off and try again. It's a receiver and you can't even select an input -- you need to cycle through all of them one at a time. So the one connected to your TV starts blasting erectile dysfunction audio at boosted commercial volume through your speakers when you're just trying to switch to bluetooth so you can listen to some lo-fi. You can't even make this stuff up. It's a joke and I don't believe anyone involved cared one bit about making a decent product.

They were owned by medical device company. Same company that sued Apple and why we don’t have an oximeter on Apple Watches in the US.

Yeah, kind of a bummer. B&W makes great headphones. I expect it to be "made" pretty soon.