Review on 📺 Roku Streambar Pro: 4K/HD/HDR Media Player with Cinematic Sound and Roku Voice Remote by Nancy Murphy

I'm tired of my old 5.1 system that constantly drowns out voices or gets louder on certain scenes and commercials. No matter how I adjusted, an adjustment killed or enhanced another sound to the point where it had just emerged where I felt I was paying more attention to tuning the sound than what I was observing. I was a bit apprehensive about buying the entire Roku kit, streaming panel, subwoofer, and surround speakers, but I was glad I did because it gave me the opportunity to try each device individually to see what's going on to see if I really needed it. The Streambar has excellent sound quality with unusually good bass. Not trembling walls, slamming windows, collapsing roofs, bass that freezes to the bone, but a bass that is noticeable and does not drown out other noises. The sound equalization and speech enhancement features really work. They require some adjustments, and I'll get to that in a moment. After 2 days I found the Flow Panel was doing its job as advertised so I installed a subwoofer. Now it's tricky, you plug it in and then have to go into the flow bar setup app and set up the flow bar to recognize you. But there are instructions that go step by step, 1, 2, 3 and you're done. And there is a boom in it. I mean real boom. This also has to be configured somehow. But for me it's a goalkeeper. Again 2 days later I decided to try the surround speakers. Each speaker is connected via Bluetooth, there are no wires other than a power outlet at a time. Each speaker also needs to be set up individually, but installation is identical to setting up a subwoofer using the instructions provided. The only difference is that during setup you know which speaker is left and which is right. There is a test during the serum. Of course I made a mistake the first time, but it's easy to fix. They also have separate settings. I see a lot of comments about not being able to have as much control over every part of the system as with most sound systems. My old system had a remote control that allowed me to adjust the rear, woofer, bass boost, cinema functions, etc. It was really confusing at times trying to find just the right setting. Of course, there's always something different coming out of the system depending on what I'm listening to, be it DVD, regular TV, music, streaming Netflix or Hulu, etc. And I have to readjust again. The voices were constantly muffled no matter how hard I tried. Auto/PCM/Dolby. the settings don't matter. I don't see any real problem with the Roku Streambar and its friends, in fact I appreciate the simplicity of the settings and I found that once I set it up to my liking I was done. No matter what I'm watching, I get sound equalization, speech enhancement, powerful bass and nice, smooth surround sound. Various sound settings are not on the remote but in the Roku itself. Easy to get into the settings. The levels you get are loud, louder, loudest, off, normal, that's all I can think of off the top of my head, but you get the picture. The volume itself is controlled by the remote and you can set it to use your TV's sound and power if your TV has HDMI/ARC. I do and it works. There's even a setting to disable audio equalization, although I can't figure out why you'd want that. I tried it and it kind of ruined everything. I am a cable cutter. Aerial television and streaming. I am very glad that I bought and tried the whole setup at once. Since I was used to surround sound from the start, I think that's why I decided to leave them all. You may feel differently, it's all a matter of preference. The Streambar is great at trying to surround you. Sounds move away from walls and behind you at different times. The surround speakers ensure I get everything. My subwoofer settings are low. It's cool, and with a small house, if I watch an action movie, the neighbors will know. Expensive? For the whole system yes. But it's much easier to deal with customizations this way. As I said, install it once at will and you're done.