They are, I don't really know why Lucid is still attempting to get something from these, they are crap and that is it. You generally get what you pay for. I guess I'm on ignore by now.
If this was a "
what should I buy?" thread, then I think your comments about the price disparity would have some merit. In the general way of things, a £90 sound bar is rarely paired with a £1,000 TV where a person takes the time and effort to ask for advice before purchasing. However, as
@Hysteresis said, this isn't the case. The sound bar has been bought as a present, and despite your view to the contrary, that is an important factor in this case.
The big question here is whether the sound bar is working correctly. All the effort is going in to troubleshooting that, not into trying to 'improve' the sound bar. Matters are not made simple by the LG TV sound menus and their poor user manuals. That's what we're working through. It's quite a common complaint from sound bar users that dialogue is drowned out during action, or that subs either boom or can't be heard, or that certain modes don't make much of a difference. Some of that is down to sound bars using in-house audio processing algorithms that aren't particularly effective. Room acoustics is another issue, and so is the dynamic range limitations of some audio gear. We need to establish if possible whether the sound bar is dealing with just a stereo signal. I suspect it is, but I can't be 100% sure.
If I happened to be on site, I'd swap out the source for something where I'd know that the bar is getting a PCM 2.0 signal. I could do that with a simple Freeview box and an optical cable. In under 20 minutes I'd have a proper answer. As it stands though, I'm not on site, and the owner is my/our remote eyes on this, so things take a little longer.
It may well turn out that we are dealing with the limitations of the sound bar. If so, then
@Hysteresis will have a choice to make.
People's opinions on quality are mostly subjective. My son uses a £30 Bush sound bar with a 32" TV and a games console. In his words, it's okay. He has it as a way to get Bluetooth playback and for gaming. I bought a used Yamaha YSP800 for a little project, and it happened that the seller lived close to where my son is stationed, so my boy picked it up for me. He tried it in place of the Bush, said he couldn't hear much difference. I listened to it when he returned, worried that it might be broken. It wasn't (phew), and it sounds rather good, especially paired with a small sub. The steering of surround effects works well, and it's decent for music too. His "couldn't hear a difference" was more an expression of it being more difficult to fit in his room without rearranging things. For him then, sound quality on base is a lower priority than size and space, particularly when he could be posted somewhere new at quite short notice. What people say doesn't necessarily translate to what they really mean.
