LG SR906B 5.1 3D Receiver System

I admit to spending ages deliberating over this purchase.... Do I really need surround sound? Won't all those speakers look a bit chavvy? Where will they go? How will I hide the wiring? However, after the item being in my Basket for the best part of a week, I clicked 'Confirm Order'. And actually, I'm glad I did!! I'm not very technical when it comes to the world of audio-visual, so this review is written to hopefully address the concerns that your average joe public might have about buying this product.

What makes this package different to the others I saw is the dimensions of the receiver. With it's slim design you would think it was a DVD player. Most amps are big bulky boxes, but this is brilliantly compact and unobtrusive. It does not have vent holes at the top, so you CAN stack your DVD player or Blu-Ray on top of it. It's easy to wire-up, with all the speaker wiring being colour-coded at both ends. The cable itself is transparent, so no worries about whether white or black are easier to hide in your room. Of course, it's just standard speaker cable with no connectors at either end, so if you want to buy different cable, or use whatever's already in your room, you can. The speaker cable shipped with the unit was plenty long enough to position the rear speakers at the back of a good-sized living room following the route of the skirting boards. The speakers are a glossy black plastic and do actually look quite smart. You CAN detach the stands from the bottom of the front and rear left/right speakers and they can be hung on the wall or attached to speaker stands (the slots and bolt holes are all there).

As for connecting to your other equipment, I'll use my set-up as an example because I imagine people worry about that kind of thing. I have a Blu-Ray player (HDMI), XBox games console (HDMI) and a digital TV recorder that's not HD so has a SCART connection. My TV supports ARC - which basically means that if I connect all my HDMI boxes (Blu-Ray, Xbox) directly to the LG Receiver using one HDMI cable each, and I can connect the LG Receiver to my TV using just one HDMI cable. My TV was quite cheap, so I wouldn't think ARC is unusual. The LG Receiver passes the picture and sound from the Blu-Ray/Xbox to the TV (as well as to the surround speakers), and the TV is able to pass it's sound back to the LG Receiver using the same cable. All this means that I can have surround sound no matter whether I am watching TV, playing games or watching a Blu-Ray. I chose to connect my SCART digital recorder directly to my TV, because the TV will pass sound from the digital recorder back to the Receiver. Fallen asleep yet? If you don't have ARC on your TV, or you have SCARTs, optical sound, coax or whatever else, there are enough odd-shaped holes at the back of the unit to support it.

But as for 1100W of surround sound, believe me, you'll hardly ever (if ever) crank it up to full volume. You'll be disturbing your neighbours even if you live on a remote farm in the Outer Hebrides.

The downside of another gizmo is of course yet another remote control. But the LG Remote Control has lots of buttons and a table of codes which means you can control your TV, DVD/Blu-Ray using the same remote control, if you so wish.

So, this product has taken me along the journey from being a surround-sceptic, then surround-curious to the new world of surround-appreciation. All in all, I like my surround sound and I'm glad I chose this product!

I ordered this on monday night at arround 6pm using standard first class delivery and I recieved it at 10am on wednesday morning. It was here in a flash!

The reciever arrived in a big box (one of the biggest that arrived at my house) and inside, first thing was the reciever, It looks more like a blu-ray player due to it's compact design and has a black aluminium front-plate and the rest of the box is gloss black, so it's nothing like other bulky recievers, I was well impressed! Next in the box you had the subwoofer, I do admid it is pretty big but it has a plenty of room for the air intake and it is a front-firing subwoofer (which you can't hear where it comes from), so I don't need to worry about disturbing my parents in the kitchen underneath me and it still produces good base too! The 5 speakers were last thing to come to (except from the manuals, remote control, etc.) and I think that they are the most stylish I have seen with a glossy black finish and they can also be mounted on the wall or on stands (except the centre channel one) and I found all of these satilites to produce a nice and clear vibrant sound making me always think "am I in my bedroom theatre or a real theatre?"

So the speakers sound great, look great, etc. Is installing them easy? Simply, yes it is. On the back of the reciever, on the right hand side, you will see 6 speaker terminals and the same as on the speakers itself. You can't go wrong here, each speaker wire is colour coded, so basically match the colour to the speaker, it's that simple and the speaker wires are just normal speaker wires, these ones are silver plated copper to make it look nice. If you have your TV and Reciever at the front of your room (unlike me) thier won't be a problem. Front Left/Centre/Subwoofer/Front Right cables are about 3m long and the 2 others for the rear are about 10m long, but if you have your Reciever and a Projector at the rear of the room (like me), you will need to buy your own speaker cable. Search 20m Fisual Strand and you can get a cable that is identical to the included ones. Inputs on the unit are good to, offering you the option to connect a wide veriety of devices. Thier is 3 HDMI inputs, 1 HDMI output, 2 Toslink inputs (optical), Coaxial Input, 3.5mm Jack input, RCA inputs and more. The HDMI passthrough is version 1.4 too, so you can pass through 3D and thier was no quality loss on my 1080p Projector at all! After you have wired everything in, simply connect the auto calibration microphone, place it where you sit, press "auto cal" on your remote and remain silent for 2 minutes then your fit to go! The systme can also go very loud (have to keep it not-too-loud to not annoy my parents, lol) The remote control is easy to use with batteries included too! The remote is like one of those that are included with recievers such as Onkyo's, etc. The reciever has alsorts of different sound presets, you can set it to Bypass which will play sound from the source without any further processing (it isn't 2 channel sound from 5.1 source but is on a 2 channel source), Bass Blast which gives you amazing bass from all the speakers without any loss what so ever in clarity, Natural Plus which basically plays the back left/right speakers the same as the front left/right and the center in mono which is ideal for background music/disco/kareoko at a house party and there are also other modes too. I use Bypass for 5.1 channel sound and from a 2 channel source such as a PC via 3.5mm jack, I use PLII Movie because this converts it to like a pseudo surround sound experiance which I like and also makes the sound clearer (PLII Movie and PLII Music are only available from Stereo and PLII Sources, not Dolby Digital or DTS).

BTW, I didn't set mine up using the optimizer microphone because it didn't work for my room, could be an available option but I couldn't use it. Also if you have an XBOX 360, set the audio output to Dolby Digital 5.1 (not WMA Pro) or if you have a PS3 (I have both), go into sound output settings and manualy select Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 as this reciever supports both of these and the sound is fantastic! It doesn't support DTS HD but it still sounds fantastic, trust me, it's 100x better than TV Speakers or iPod Docking Stations!

If you are looking for a budget surround sound system or are new to the audio visual technical world and don't know what to buy to make a surround sound system, GET THIS! You won't have wondered that you have made a wrong turn. BEWARE! You will never turn back to stereo or mono sound after buying this!

- UPDATE 14/12/2012 - I watched the "PSY - Gangman Style" music video from youtube (1080p) on this setup (This surround sound + my Optoma HD600X-LV HD Projector) through a normal 10m 3.5mm cable connected to my laptop. I set the volume to 50% (20/40) on BASS mode and it was extremely loud (like being at a disco with loud music, or maybe a little louder) and it still sounded absolutely crystal clear (no distortions or detail missing from the sound). So which begs the question, "Is this system good enough to host a party that you intend to have loud music and maybe a disco, even in a very large room?", Definetly!!!

We chose this system based on its excellent reviews and the fact that we'd just bought an LG TV and Blu-ray player so thought it would be nice to have everything well matched visually and easily compatible.
It's a great price and it looks and sounds very good, even at the quieter volumes that we prefer.
Delivery was by City-Link which for us was unfortunate as the driver couldn't even be bothered to try to deliver on the day he took it out in the van (much irate emailing followed and the driver got a ticking off). We received it safely the next day and I spent a while sorting out speaker wires, positioning and connecting up which seemed pretty straightforward. Our room is fairly big and there's plenty of cable. I know next to nothing about sound systems other than that the negative and positive wires have to match at both ends!
We only had one HDMI cable that we bought with the Blu-ray player so I used that to connect the receiver to the TV via the ARC socket on both items, turned everything on and went into TV settings. I turned the ARC setting on, the TV speaker off, pressed the ARC button on the receiver's remote and waited to hear my new system. Nothing. Dead silence.
Check wiring - OK. Check TV settings - think they're OK, run speaker test via receiver remote - ghastly white noise whizzing round the speakers so they're on and connected - OK. Turned TV speaker back on to watch evening programmes. Gave up and went to bed, expecting to have to ship the whole box back to Amazon.
This morning I decided to go through the TV settings again and in passing decided to activate the Simplink facility which lets you use one remote control for all pieces of equipment though I'm happy with loads of remotes. Activated it and suddenly sound blared out of the speakers. Yippee!
I may have missed something but I couldn't see anything (and still can't) that says you have to activate Simplink to get ARC to work but on my system it seems I do. (Told you I know nothing!)
So to give a bit of advice to novice buyers: Make sure you order an HDMI cable to connect the receiver to the TV if you have an ARC compatible TV and want to play normal TV sound through the speaker system as you don't get one with the kit. (If your TV isn't ARC compatible you'll need an optical cable).
Activate Simplink even if you don't want to use it. Individual remotes still work anyway.
It's working, I'm happy. Just need that extra HDMI cable to arrive soon so I can watch my 3D Blu-ray film in glorious surround sound ....