Also: Changing these 5 soundbar settings made my living room feel like a movie theater
The S95TR includes four components: a main soundbar, a subwoofer, and two small rear speakers. The subwoofer and rear speakers are wireless, so you don’t need additional cords besides the power connections and main HDMI cord.
The main concern that prevented me from committing to a surround sound setup in the first place was dealing with wires running across my room, so I appreciate that this system is partially wireless.
Unfortunately, you must download the LG Soundbar app to use all the features. It’s a little inconvenient that this is separate from the LG ThinQ app that controls LG TVs, especially given that you’ll probably use it regularly, but that’s a minor quibble.
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The setup is simple. After plugging in the speakers in the instructed order, installing the app, and adding the soundbar to the app, the speakers go through a tuning process specific to your room setup. I played a movie before using AI Room Calibration, and I can attest that it made a noticeable difference in how things sound.
I then used the TV’s built-in speakers to get a baseline for testing this soundbar. Over the noise of two kids and a dog in the house, I had to turn the volume more than halfway to hear comfortably: 65 out of 100. Conversely, when I switched the audio to the soundbar, it was more than loud enough in the 40s. Right away, I knew it would be a serious upgrade.
Another thing I like to test with audio equipment is how well it handles dialogue. With my everyday setup, I usually watch everything with captions because it’s so easy to miss something.
This soundbar fixes that problem with a small up-firing center speaker in addition to the traditional front ones, something LG claims makes dialogue clearer. When I turned on one of my favorite shows, I noticed a decent improvement over the TV’s built-in speakers and a significant improvement over my everyday soundbar’s audio. If you struggle to catch every word like I sometimes do, you’ll definitely appreciate this feature.