Digital Home Thoughts: Surrounding yourself with the Samsung HW-D550 Audio Bar

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Sunday, October 9, 2011

Surrounding yourself with the Samsung HW-D550 Audio Bar

Posted by Don Tolson in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 08:00 AM

All the input and output jacks are on the back of the unit. They are contained in recesses in the back panel, so that the unit can sit flat against the wall. However, this makes them a bit tight to access if you have larger fingers.

Figure 3: Here's a shot of the audio inputs. At the top is the 3.5mm phone jack for the analog input. Then below are the two optical digital audio inputs. I'm not sure why the bottom one (Audio In 1) is marked as 'TV', since it doesn't really seem to make a difference.

Figure 4: In another recess are the HDMI audio/video inputs and outputs. These are HDMI 'mini' jacks, so you might need to invest in extra cables to connect this up. The top one is the only HDMI output available, and there are two inputs.

There are 5 audio inputs -- 2 mini HDMI, 2 optical digital audio, and 1 analog audio via a stereo 3.5mm phone plug (yuk). I would have preferred to have the usual RCA phono for the analog audio, but I guess there were space constraints. At least the supplied cable is for the analog signal input. Samsung doesn't provide any HDMI or optical audio cables with the Audio Bar for input. Fortunately for me, I had lots of cables hanging around (remember I said I was used to interconnecting lots of things? Remember the description of my media centre?) The ones I didn't have in stock were HDMI to mini-HDMI, but a quick search of eBay turned up a couple for less than $10 so, once they arrived, I was good to go.

There is only one HDMI output supplied -- for hooking up the monitor/TV I would suppose. Samsung does provide a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable to connect up to your TV. Although it does provide ARC audio play through, I'm not sure you'd want to have this output going to another audio unit.

Hooking up everything was amazingly easier using HDMI. Up till now, I hadn't really appreciated how convenient it was having a single connection for both video and audio. Unfortunately, only having two HDMI inputs limited the amount of stuff I could connect -- just the media PC and the BD-D6500 Blu-ray player (see other review) -- but it was good enough for this review.

In the centre of the midrange+tweeter unit are all the controls. You can miss them when the unit is off, since they are surface touch controls with back illumination which only comes on when the power is applied. When I first set up the unit, I thought I had to use the remote to activate power, input selection, etc. It was actually my wife who discovered that the control panel was touch sensitive. (Good idea, Samsung!)

Figure 5: Here's a shot of the centre display/control panel of the Audio Bar. (Darn those glossy black finishes!!!) In the centre, you can see the display of which input is currently selected. Above that are the operating controls for the HW-D550. From left to right, these are Input select, 3D Surround Sound on/off, Volume down, Volume up, and Power.

The remote provided is a fairly simple affair and doesn't take a lot of time to figure out.

Figure 6. The remote provided with the Audio Bar is pretty straightforward and easy to use. As you can see from the buttons, it is able to control the basic functions of the TV as well.

The keys are well labelled and spaced appropriately. Range seems to be about 15 feet (4.5m). It's powered by two AAA batteries, which Samsung supplies.


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