One of the best sounding bar with minor inconveniences
At current price, this sound bar is one of the best sounding bar in the $250 - $400 range. The sound is full, rich, well balanced and a pleasure to listen to. I haven't A/B compared with brands like Klipsch, B&W, Yamaha or Onkyo sound bars but in comparison with other electronics manufacturers' brands such as Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic or Sharp's sound bars in similar price range, Pioneer trumps them all in sonic quality. It doesn't matter what feature the sound bar claims to have (like 3D sound processing, multi-channel virtual surround, sound enhancing processing gimmicks) unless the speaker actually has good drivers to begin with. Listening to music with this sound bar was the closest thing to listening to a regular pair of speaker - wide, balanced and full. The small subwoofer that comes with the sound bar delivers clean and powerful bass without distorting or muddying mid/high tones. If you are shopping to get the best sound as the top priority, this should do the job. If...
Perfect soundbar for music and movies
After searching for the better part of 6 months, I had pretty much come to trying to decide between the Sony HT-CT660, Samsung HW-F750, or wait for the Pioneer SP-SB23W. After carefully considering the Samsung because of its ease of connectivity with my Samsung UN46ES7500 LED and the Sony for it's multiple HDMI inputs through which I could run all of my components (3d bluray, xbox 360, cable, etc) without having to go through the TV first, I finally decided to take a chance with the Pioneer and the technical abilities of Andrew Jones.
While it would have been nice to have unimpeded sound going straight through the soundbar and pass-through video to the TV, the ability of a soundbar to create true surround sound is more gimmicky to me than anything else. While the wireless connectivity of the Samsung to my TV would have been visually appealing, what truly matters in the end is the way the speaker/soundbar itself sounds. Having tested many soundbars and going back and...
Decent performance, Bluetooth problems with the originally shipped units, poor customer support
Below is my original review. I have upgraded my rating to 3 stars after receiving my replacement unit. I give the soundbar itself 4 stars, but still feel I have to knock off a star due to the embarrassing problems with the originally shipped units, difficulty contacting customer support, and Pioneer's delay in acknowledging the problem. The tone I got from Pioneer and fanboys of the product seemed to be annoyance that I discovered a serious flaw that required a recall.
Anyway, with the updated Bluetooth, the soundbar sounds very good using optical, stereo audio, and Bluetooth. Bluetooth pairing is easy, but the unit can only pair to one device at a time. To pair with a different device you must unpair it from the device itself. You can't just clear the Bluetooth pair from the soundbar because is will automatically repair with the original device. Also, when using Bluetooth, when a new song starts, the first second of sound is sometimes clipped. I have not had this problem...
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