Harman Kardon SB 30 5.1 Soundbar and Wireless Subwoofer

Using this with a Samsung 60" smart TV, centered on the narrow wall of a 15 by 60 foot area: family room, eating area and open kitchen. Used mostly for watching TV, especially sports, and the occasional movie. SB 30 a vast improvement over TV speakers of course. No audiophiles here, but we appreciate decent sound. I actually laughed at the night and day improvement when I turned it on. Have had the TV for 5 months, What was I thinking to wait so long to upgrade the sound? Listening to music really hasn't been an option, but very pleasant now.In past purchases of audio I have always preferred HK sound (and others) over Bose so I went this way again. Did not audition systems, but read a lot of reviews. We formerly had a Yamaha YSP in here, but it had a complicated set-up that didn't really work very well with this room.Appreciate the choices of settings and the clear explanations in the manual that you can download from the HK site -- be aware that the full manual is NOT packed with the system. I am especially glad to have a setting for room size and for the Dolby options. We've had trouble catching dialog from the TV speakers and suffered annoyance over average volume variations. Based on two days experience I expect the Dolby leveling and modeling which I have turned "on" to be helpful with these.I like the clever LED indicators visible from the front so you can tell what you're setting (if you remember what 1, 2 or 3 lights mean.) Don't worry -- they turn off after 5 seconds or so.Our son, super tech, already has this programmed in our universal remote. He says it's easy enough but it's his specialty and I like to let him contribute so I didn't try to do it myself.Super attractive. Table mounted at the moment (may go on the wall later.) In fact, it hides the structure of the TV's stand, plus some cords and things and that's welcome. Just the right height -- doesn't block anything it shouldn't.Do note the length of the sound bar -- about 44 inches. This is fine under our 60 inch TV, but might look odd if it were longer than the width of the TV.We have noticed about once a day we get what some reviewers may call a "pop" (more like a thump) from the sub. Based on what I read in these reviews this might be occasions when the audio briefly "drops out," like when the video changes from program to commercial or between commercials (?) causing the sub to turn off and then on again. Kind of surprising the first couple of times, and obviously not ideal , but we plan to experiment with the sub placement (we now have it against a wall a few feet in front of the TV) to see if we can mitigate this. Even if we can't we can live with it. Hey HK, make this response a little slower! We have a lot of wireless around here, but haven't had any popping crackling as other reviewers have reported.From other reviews, reliability seems to be an issue -- I can only hope we'll one of the lucky ones or that Amazon will take care of us if we're not. But this is a sweeet system.

I have a living room that's separate from my theater room, and I didn't want to install an elaborate surround sound system in the living, but I also didn't want to stick with the factory speaker from the TV, which to be nice, is underwhelming. I've had my eye on a soundbar for a while and decided on this one. Now, it doesn't touch my Klipsch Reference series 5.1 setup in the theater room, and really nor should it. But its sound fills my 20x20 living with ease.For those who are experiencing crackling with the subwoofer, I've experienced the same, but it's only when other Wifi devices are in use in the general vicinity. I also have experienced wifi network interference while using the SB 30 -- network performance degradation, connection dropouts etc. And while this is happening, there's random crackling from the subwoofer. Once I shut the laptop/wifi devices off, the crackling stops. I'm guessing the soundbar communicates with the subwoofer over a channel somewhere in the 2.4Ghz frequency. This may or may not be the cause of your issue, but it's been for me. I've isolated it, now I have to fix it... probably by getting a 5Ghz wireless router.-------------------Update: 12/30/2013This soundbar and I have tangled mightily in the past year, and unfortunately, I lost. Hard to believe it's possible, but I am going from 4 stars to 1.Almost immediately after writing the above review, I bought a 5.0 GHz router, thinking that might solve the issue. The problem is that not every wireless device is capable of communicating at the higher band, and I didn't take into account the neighbors who have their routers only advertising at 2.4 GHz. You can't escape 2.4 GHz, folks. This, to me, is a major, major engineering flaw on Harman Kardon's part. That all said, my subwoofer often has static and/or random popping and no matter what channel combination is used, it still happens. This is easily 3 stars off the review. BUT, that's not all. The soundbar died last August and I had to get it replaced. And even though it's under warranty, they made me pay for shipping. $110 for UPS ground because the box is HUGE. Dealing with their customer service was a chore, too. People from India who speak just enough English to read their scripts make it really difficult to have a positive experience. After several layers of customer service, I finally found someone who understood me. Once I repeated myself, for the fourth time that day, they said, "Oh sure, no problem. We'll replace it." 1 hour, 20 minutes was all that call took.I feel like I paid $910 (the original $800, plus the shipping cost on the RMA) for a $200 item. Never again, Harmon Kardon. Anyone looking to purchase this, I implore you: Move on.I feel comfortable with the 1-star review. I'll give that star to the sound when it's working properly, which is about 10% of the time, because it is still a massive upgrade from TV speakers.

I purchased this system 11/26/2012 and received it 12/3/2012. It was easy to install and delivered a significant improvement over the tinny speakers on my plasma tv. I had some misgivings about ordering it because of the damaging reviews reporting a problem with clicking noises but decided to take the gamble anyway. I now rue that decision because on 1/2/2013 my system starting emitting the same noises. Thus far I have conferred with an HK technician via telephone who suggested changing the power outlet and removing the connection to the tv, neither of which affected the clicking noise. He then advised me to fax in an invoice for warranty replacement which is what I have done. I will update this review to include the followup experience.Followup:I did receive permission to send in the soundbar for warranty replacement. Alas I had not saved the packaging materials so had to pay UPS to box as well as ship the soundbar, total cost $125. The subwoofer has not malfunctioned as yet and the new soundbar is working properly. I will update if the status of either component changes.