Bluetooth surround ready!

mattressback

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Hi, I was just looking at the CX on the LG website and it mentions getting surround sound via Bluetooth surround ready. Does this feature exist on the C9 and if so has anyone had any experience of this? Is it any good? Is it possible to connect a soundbar via say optical to the tv and also use the rear Bluetooth speakers all in combination with each other?
 
Hi, I was just looking at the CX on the LG website and it mentions getting surround sound via Bluetooth surround ready.
Really... Can you provide a link?
 
Thanks...

That's really quite interesting as last years models were plugging WiSA technology (which the 2020 models offer also)...
 
I tried it with a 48 CX and 2x XBOOM PL7.

Does not work as expected. The XBOOM do not work as dedicated rear speaker but only play the same audio you get from left and right integrated speaker.

Gives a kind of spacious room sound but no true surround sound not even 4.0 what I expected to get.

LG advertisement is misleading in this respect.
 
Bluetooth Surround Ready
Real surround sound for an immersive experience.
With Bluetooth Surround Ready, you’re fully immersed in a three-dimensional stadium atmosphere. All you have to do is simply connect two compatible Bluetooth speakers of the same model to your LG OLED TV.


This simply suggest additional processing being applied to the audio as opposed to discrete multichannel formatted audio being conveyed via Bluetooth. Bluetooth is basically limited to 2 channel audio.

It is however theoretically possible to add two bluetooth speakers as surrounds to a multichannel setup. After all, only the 2 channels associated with those speakers is being conveyed via Bluetooth. so you aren't having to send the entire multichannel discrete audio to those 2 surround speakers.


Does this feature exist on the C9 and if so has anyone had any experience of this? Is it any good? Is it possible to connect a soundbar via say optical to the tv and also use the rear Bluetooth speakers all in combination with each other?


No, it is not a feature apparent on the C9.
 
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I tried it with a 48 CX and 2x XBOOM PL7.

Does not work as expected. The XBOOM do not work as dedicated rear speaker but only play the same audio you get from left and right integrated speaker.

Gives a kind of spacious room sound but no true surround sound not even 4.0 what I expected to get.

LG advertisement is misleading in this respect.
I was planning on doing this. Are you sure they don't work as rear speakers in a 5.1 movie? The LG advert seems to suggest that only. Have you reached out to LG and gotten an explanation?
 
AS far as I'm aware, LG do not facilitate adding Bluetooth surround speakers directly to any of their 9 series TVs. They do however make and sell soundbars and I believe that their top tier models include additional rear and or upfiring speakers. THe X series advertising and literature does suggest that 2 Bluetooth speakers can be added as surrounds though:

Bluetooth Surround Ready
Real surround sound for an immersive experience.
With Bluetooth Surround Ready, you’re fully immersed in a three-dimensional stadium atmosphere. All you have to do is simply connect two compatible Bluetooth speakers of the same model to your LG OLED TV.

I've no practical experience of this or how it is initiated though, but did find this video:

 
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I have a 48 CX and have been playing with the feature using a 3rd generation echo dot connected to an old Apple hifi via a 3.5mm audio cable (decent sound on a budget is a theme in my house).

When you activate the Bluetooth surround feature it takes into a setup process where you select a bluetooth audio device and the tv sends out some 'pings' to gauge the lag between the TV and the speaker, it measures this apparently using the magic remote, it then sets the delay accordingly (up to a max of 60 ms) and runs some test music through both the internal speakers and the bluetooth device to allow you to gauge the quality of the sync (the same as in the above video).

I've found that I can only add one device when configuring bluetooth surround but that maybe as I don't have an identical pair of bluetooth devices.

I've found the results from this are mixed, sometimes it syncs really well and I get a nice expansive sound across the room, with really good balancing between the internal speakers and the other unit, sometimes I need to tweak the delay as the automation doesn't seem to calculate it properly and sometimes it seems the delay is over 60ms so my ability to manage it isn't there and I have to abandon the exercise due to sync problems.

I'm not sure at the moment whether the issues I am having are to do with the echo or the LG TV or something else entirely (needs more testing), would welcome experiences of others, especially if they are using other bits of echo hardware as speakers to augment their LG CX sound successfully (I have various other echo devices I can use if they would work better).
 
I was planning on doing this. Are you sure they don't work as rear speakers in a 5.1 movie? The LG advert seems to suggest that only. Have you reached out to LG and gotten an explanation?

I‘ve contacted LG via chat and phone and asked whether the bluetooth speakers will work as real rear sprakers. The guy in the chat said it would work. The woman on the phone said it would not. Thus I tried myself with a pair of LG Xboom PL 5 and PL7.
And no, it doesn‘t work. There is practically no difference to what is emitted from the internal TV speakers. So you get kind of a 4 speaker stereo sound but no differentiation between front and back.
I’ve made my tests in July but in later firmware nothing was mentioned about improvements with bluetooth surround, so I don’t think the situation has improved since.
I still find LGs advertising of bluetooth surround grossly misleading.
 
I've found that I can only add one device when configuring bluetooth surround but that maybe as I don't have an identical pair of bluetooth devices.

It works with 2 identical LG PL5 or 7 but you only get diffuse expansive sound no true surround sound (bluetooth speakers as rear speakers).

I’ve hadn’t issues with delays but frankly didn’t do longer tests as I wanted true surround sound and thus returned the speakers.
 
I‘ve contacted LG via chat and phone and asked whether the bluetooth speakers will work as real rear sprakers. The guy in the chat said it would work. The woman on the phone said it would not. Thus I tried myself with a pair of LG Xboom PL 5 and PL7.
And no, it doesn‘t work. There is practically no difference to what is emitted from the internal TV speakers. So you get kind of a 4 speaker stereo sound but no differentiation between front and back.
I’ve made my tests in July but in later firmware nothing was mentioned about improvements with bluetooth surround, so I don’t think the situation has improved since.
I still find LGs advertising of bluetooth surround grossly misleading.
Thanks for testing it out. And yea, someone should sue LG for misleading customers
 
There’s no front/rear settings that would indicate proper surround and I checked in the last week so it’s not changed.
 
I would have thought that the Bluetooth 'surround sound' feature would be accessible via a dedicated 'surround' option (as in the video), ie: not via the usual 'Bluetooth' option...

EDIT: And always test the 'surround sound' capabilities using verified 'surround sound' encoded files. Don't believe everything you see listed on YouTube!
 
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If I remember correctly LG advertised the features as initially working with dedicated speakers from LG only with support for 3rd party bluetooth speakers being added later through firmware update. Maybe they currently rely on channel separating done by the speakers (what doesn‘t work for separating back channels as we know) and later plan to do channel separation in the TV and only feed the individual channels to (dumb) 3rd party bluetooth speakers. Maybe then we get true back channels.
Well, this is pure speculation from my side and probably LG has meanwhile ditched their plans to add 3rd party BT speakers support for BT surround sound for their 2020 OLED TV lineup.
 
I've set mine up with 2 pl7 speakers and I think it depends on the audio track as agents of shield on Disney plus had noticeable surround but some other things like YouTube and some Netflix films don't work
 
People don't realize that true 5.1 barely even uses the rear speaks more than 20% of the track other than Ecco effect if Bluetooth surround was working they would barrel hear anything unless an actual action scene was being decoded... pcm surround normally uses more of rear/back back... most DD bluerays will not even have 6 channel discreet sound but 2.0 with auto effect applied only DTS mixs use rear speakers more 50%+ of the time and for long time rear speakers were lower bitrate before master DD (atmos) came out... the rear channels shouldn't be noticeable & kinda sneak up on you during busy scense if calibrated right...
 
People don't realize that true 5.1 barely even uses the rear speaks more than 20% of the track other than Ecco effect if Bluetooth surround was working they would barrel hear anything unless an actual action scene was being decoded... pcm surround normally uses more of rear/back back... most DD bluerays will not even have 6 channel discreet sound but 2.0 with auto effect applied only DTS mixs use rear speakers more 50%+ of the time and for long time rear speakers were lower bitrate before master DD (atmos) came out... the rear channels shouldn't be noticeable & kinda sneak up on you during busy scense if calibrated right...
For my tests last summer I‘ve used dedicated 5.1 surround testfiles. First streamed via built-in webbrowser and later downloaded and played directly from USB thumbdrive after a guy from LG support questioned whether the webbrowser could stream true 5.1 surround sound. In all cases bluetooth speakers played exactly the same stereo downmix as the speakers in the TV.
Don‘t have a pair of supported bluetooth speakers any more to repeat the test but unless LG silently changed something with their Bluetooth surround implementation I‘d say no, this is not surround sound at all but only 4 speaker stereo sound to be honest.
 
For my tests last summer I‘ve used dedicated 5.1 surround testfiles. First streamed via built-in webbrowser and later downloaded and played directly from USB thumbdrive after a guy from LG support questioned whether the webbrowser could stream true 5.1 surround sound. In all cases bluetooth speakers played exactly the same stereo downmix as the speakers in the TV.
Don‘t have a pair of supported bluetooth speakers any more to repeat the test but unless LG silently changed something with their Bluetooth surround implementation I‘d say no, this is not surround sound at all but only 4 speaker stereo sound to be honest.
Yeah I totally agree sometimes people don't read their fine print or just take the time to make sure they're doing the setup correctly and that they have the right equipment to do so I just happen to own multiple amounts of Bluetooth headphones speakers JBL Google assists parts speaker actually two of them. My old Yamaha system that did not have HDMI throughput I only had optical or coax anyways after filing 20 years it died so before buying another surround sound set up which I have a couple of edifiers that have the first link etc but I wanted to take a try at the LG Bluetooth surround so I set up the Polk audio assist and I noticed on the TV when I was going through it I just tried one of them and it allowed it it ask you where do you have the speaker set up in the front of the TV on the sides in the rear and then also too if you wanted to work and sync with the TV or you're going to have it as a surround or if you're going to have it in the front as just for vocals etc so I went ahead and tried putting it in the rear with just one speaker and tried that out and it requires you to be where your seat where you're going to be seated with your magic remote and aimed at the direction of the TV when it pinks and so if you have ceiling fans on the air conditioner is loud it tells you to do this a quiet setting if you have a door open close the door it's using the Ping to set up like cuz it's sonar since I've tried it multiple times with different speakers trying to get the best sound etc noticed a few times I had the remote was even covered up so when it's set up on the AI sound there are times at night I mean it gets extremely loud so the one I use in my room I make sure to set up that the remote towards my feet of the bed so it stays in the same exact place between the speakers setup and the TVs so the sound stays consistent but if it does allow you to set up for a surround and it does its job correctly when I watch certain movies of course it's notify me about the HDR and then you'll see it that it says you know that your sound and 5.1 etc it just doesn't do the job yet but it does a real really good job when those movies or content available I noticed the older the movies only sound like Gladiator etc come through with everything if not you know if you're watching like shinners list for example you're sometimes you can only hear the raindrops or the marching of the feet etc but they do a great job of working in concert with the TV and on the AI sound when you do this setup you can do it when you when you first do the setup when it's due doing playing a little music for the LG setup it tells you do you want to set up a normal you want it for with higher trouble or more Bass and I've tried watching several movies and if you're watching it action movie it might be better to set up the bass side of it and it works really well
 
Hi all,

I was looking to use this feature on my new G1 but unfortunately, I cant get it to work with the Bluetooth speakers I already have however I have noticed this recent video from LG



Has anybody had this working in true surround rear speaker setup?

Many thanks.
 

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