Surround sound for small room ?

Well nothing will quite be like a receiver with good speaker setup but. If your getting an all in one get the best sound bar you can afford or a 5.1 surround. The 5.1 gives you a center channel for voices to be sent right at you and be clearer. sound bars do pretty well now with faking surround but just not the same as having speakers all around you... Just my 2 cents

Thent

Without a receiver, how are you going to power the surround speakers? Cheap sound bars are as good as the built in TV speakers and expensive sound bars start to get near the price of a budget receiver and speakers.

And no soundbar sounds as good a 5.1 speaker system for surround. Surround means surrounding yourself with sound and speakers. A straight bar can't do that, no matter how hard it tries.

As an audio lover and a bit of a purist, I say get yourself a Hi Fi amplifier and 2 speakers and put them either side of the TV.

This will sound far far better than a soundbar or similarly priced surround sound system.
As a bonus, you will be able to enjoy music too

For Example Bowers & Wilkins 685 S2 Speakers and NAD Amplifier

You could use the logitech surround system. It's self powered so it doesn't need a reciever. It also supports addtional inputs. Since it has limited inputs you would want to run all the devices to the television and a single optical output to the system.

http/www.amazon.com/Logitech-Surround-Sound-Speaker-System/dp/B004M18O60/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1448040765&sr=1-1&keywords=logitech+z906

Surround Sound is a technique of using delays in the right and left speakers to create the illusion of the sound coming from far off to the right or left. Your brain determines the directionalty of sound mostly from the delay between when it hears the sound in the left ear versus the right ear. If there's little delay, then it knows the sound source must be equidistant, and thus nearly straight ahead or behind. If there's a large delay, then it knows the sound must be off to the right (if the right ear heard it first).

If the sound is supposed to come from the left, Surround Sound introduces a delay in the right speaker. The right speaker is slightly louder to your right ear, so this creates the illusion that the right ear heard the sound slightly after the left ear. Your brain then interprets this as the sound coming from the left side, even though both speakers on the soundbar are in front of you.

If done properly, the illusion is actually pretty good. The problem is your right ear can also hear the left speaker, and the left ear can also hear the right speaker. So it will sound a bit muddied or unnatural (fainter echo of the sound also appears to come from the opposite side) compared to a true 5.1 or 7.1 speaker system. If your TV only supports 2 (L and R) speakers or 3 speakers (L, center, R) or 4 speakers (L, C, R, subwoofer), then as someone else suggested you are far better off putting the left and right speakers on the left and right sides of the room. That will create a surrounding sound field without having to resort to sound delay trickery (i.e. make sure the Surround Sound setting is off).

5.1 would add the ability to distinguish between sounds coming from the front and back. I'm having trouble believing you can afford a 4k 3d 49" TV, but can't afford a receiver which can break out the sound into the separate speakers. You don't need an expensive one - all they do is take a stereo sound source and use a microcomputer to process them (much like Surround Sound) to convert them into a sound field for 5.1 or 7.1 speakers. Assuming you're going to be watching video sources which encode 5.1 or 7.1 sound, all you need is a cheap receiver which can send those sound channels to the proper speaker. In fact I'd check your TV manual to see if it supports audio return. If it does, then you don't need to buy a video/audio receiver, a plain audio receiver will do.

True and not true, depends on the source of the audio. Stereo is going to up converted. to more channels and use processing to do it. Other high end sources like DTS-MA can have full discrete channels that have mixed in full surround and not processing or encoding matrix.

Buy a receiver then start with 2 speakers, they'll sound better and cost less than a soundbar, and over time just add more speakers until you get 5.1, or more. Don't get a soundbar just because you're desperate now. From what I understand, you have a dedicated room. Have you thought about acoustics treatment? One step at a time, so you have time to think, don't rush things. There are very competent people on Tomshardware that can help you out, if you give us more details such as website/store and budget (and currency). You're so going to regret buying a soundbar later on, most people that are looking for a home theater experience do. Those that don't are using their soundbar as a typical family room, they just want better sound than what the TV can produce. Obviously you're not like them, because you created this thread. ;-)

agreed with getochkn here,

that statement is both true and not true depending on circumstances. it is true on the grounds that this is how we hear things and is the concept virtual surround is based on, its not true that this is how all surround sound works as true 5.1 from a 5.1 source is not based on audio delay.

if at all possible it is suggested to play audio in 5.1 from 5.1 sources. only upmix if your source is not capable (or the content is not recorded) of/in 5.1 as true surround is better than upmixed.

what are your options?

-soundbar. quality varies from reasonably good to as poor as tv speakers based on budget. some do a pretty decent job of virtualizing 5.1 from a front only array although its not the same as a true surround setup. good if you're limited on space but i wouldnt suggest cheaping out on one.

-2.0 powered bookshelves. no amp or receiver required, only an analog input signal from your device. good if you definitely do not want an amp or receiver however is a bit limiting if you ever wanted to upgrade to a bigger system. you can find such speakers for most budget ranges but you typically get what you pay for.

-2.0 or 2.1 with mini amplifier. similar to above but with a small amplifier and unpowered speakers. still limiting however you get more options as far as speaker choices are concerned.

5.1 with receiver. or starting out with less speakers such as a 2.1 with a receiver. your best long term option if you want to make a full 5.1 setup. buying only some speakers up front allows you to upgrade later on (at added cost) to a larger system.

5.1 home theater in a box (htib). generally available cheaper than separate speakers + receiver combinations however you really need to be careful about them. not all support hdmi or optical 5.1 input and speaker quality can vary wildly.

agreed with suzuki, room treatment is a good thing to think about as well to make the best of what you have currently. things such as carpets on hardwood flooring or drapes/wall coverings can change echo and sound quite a bit.

on a limited budget i would go with a good set of front speakers paired with a receiver and a subwoofer. later on when you have a budget for it get a center channel. if you want you can then fill it out and get rear speakers. starting with a good 2.1 or 3.1 is likely your best choice if you have no budget.

agreed, list what country you are from (even better, list some shops online that sell hifi equipment) as well as a budget so we know what you're looking at.

+1 Suzuki

I had a good like $300 soundbar with hdmi, optical, wireless sub, whole deal and when I went to a 6.1 Denon setup, the difference is 10000x better. Blurays with DTS-MA are amazing. Sound from everywhere. Thing like audyssey that let you place a microphone around the room and take acoustic measurements to help tune things even more. Thing is I did my Denon setup for under the $300 I spent on the soundbar by buying used of kijiji. Got 5 speakers one time, a sub another, another central channel that become by rear (6) speaker, then the AVR.

i went from a logitech x530 5.1 set to using only tv speakers to using a 5.1 klipsch home theater and there is quite a large difference and it would be very hard to downgrade.

the acoustical measurements (ypao for yamaha, mcacc for pioneer receivers) are used with a mic placed at your sitting location. this calculates speaker delay so that audio reaches you at the same time. this allows for speaker placement that is not perfectly equidistant while making them sound equidistant. this is different than the delay for virtual surround that was mentioned before.

I watch either from my desk, right under the TV, or 8 feet away in bed and it does a pretty job of keeping the volumes the same despite two different locations of viewing. Sorcery I say!!!