sandeepmohan
Well-Known Member
I relocated to New Zealand a couple of months ago on account of a new job. While I did manage to get a whole lot of home goods shipped via unaccompanied air freight, I could not get my very basic home theatre gear moved. For some weird reason, logistic companies arent accepting electronics goods such as audio equipment for international shipping. I hear it is hard to ship gear even within the country but cant understand why it should be a problem taking it out. I did not have the bandwith to investigate this further so left it at that.
Anyway; after settling down at a nice home with my family, I started to miss music and movie nights. All I had was the tvs speaker system for entertainment. Im not much of a headphone person. It was next to impossible to think of spending big bucks on Hi Fi or HT as our move was expensive in itself. Fortunately, there is something called trademe in New Zealand. It is the equal of ebay in the USA. The primary purpose of trademe is to find second hands goods. I started my search and the Hi Fi & HT scene was rather small. Small country, a lot less people so not surprised. Lots of old speakers but no amplifiers. I wanted HT as it would satisfy music and movie needs for the time being. One day, I stumbled upon a Samsung Htib. It was on a bid for $100. I won the bid and the system was mine for $160. The retail price for this system must have been around $1000.
The System: Samsung HT-F6551W
Whats in the box?
The main control unit or receiver does 3D blu ray playback (Isnt 3D dead?), supports HD multi channel audio, has two HDMI INs and one OUT with Audio Return Channel, media playback via USB, Bluetooth and Wi Fi connectivity. It is possible to install Apps via the Samung App store. With a Chromecast connected, there is little use for the systems internal smart functions.
Speakers consist of 4nos of slender two way sealed plastic tower speakers for Front and Surround duties. Technically; these arent towers as they are bolted onto a stand to give you the tower effect. The drivers look like a combination of a soft dome tweeter and mid range drivers. The mid range is edgeless in design. No rubber or paper surround. The configuration is Joseph DAppolito with a twist. I say twist as the top mid range driver does not seem Active and acts as a passive radiator. I do not know if this is a defect or by design. Most likely it is by design as none of the top drivers work. I have come across several passive radiator implementations but none in such a compact enclosure and in the form of a mid range driver. My dads old Akai AE-53 stand mount speaker had a rear facing passive radiator driver and was very effective.
1nos centre speaker which is the smallest speaker unit I have ever seen on a Htib.
1nos passive rear ported sub woofer which is a joke considering its dimensions. I can lift it with two fingers.
1nos wireless RF receiver with an inbuilt digital amplifier to drive the rear speakers. Yupp; this thing has wireless rear speakers. There is no other way you can connect them or get them to talk to the main receiver unit. The main receiver unit has 4 speaker terminals only. Being RF, there is no pairing process involved. A ferrite core unit is provided to keep external interference at bay. You switch on the main receiver unit and the system pairs instantly. You power off the main unit and the wireless digital amplifier goes into standby mode after a couple of minutes.
The one unique thing about this system is the pre amplifier section which is assisted by a pair of vacuum tubes. I dont know if these things are even real. There is no warm up cycle or any warning in the instruction booklet about them. I wonder how they contribute to the sound or if they can at all, considering the limited range of the speaker unit themselves and the digital amplifier section.
The system is placed in our 15ft/12ft dedicated living room. This system does not offer any form of automatic calibration for the sound. You set things up the old fashioned way. Pure judgement and I seem to have got things almost spot on to. Speakers angled to the sweet spot, centre channel below the tiny tv and the rear ported sub woofer placed a foot away from the corner wall. I used a carpenters tape to measure distance of the speakers and listener which is 10ft from the main front speakers. Speaker distance values were input into the system setup. You can adjust speaker gain for each of the six speakers. I raised the gain by one step for the centre channel and sub woofer.
You may laugh it off. I mean, why bother doing all this for a cheap run off the mill Htib. Trust me, these things matter even for something that isnt remotely close to being high end.
I start with a copy of Dire Straits Remastered disc (cd copy of the original). Noisy transport I must say. No warm up business for this Samsung, which is odd for a vacuum tube based system. The system is good to go instantly. The excess orange glow from the tubes are the result of two led lamps sitting below the tubes. There is no way a vacuum tube glows so bright. Some dont glow anyway. We start with Down to the Waterline. Knopfler is best enjoyed on a rig that does excellent mid range and delivers quality bass and I must say that this Samsung is doing alright. No jaw dropping moments here, it sounds OKAY. We need to remind ourselves that this is a Htib. For the money, this little Samsung (weighing no more than 4 kilos, all put together!) is amazing. Do note that all bells and whistles right down to the equalizer are set flat or Off. The dome tweeters are definitely not doing much but the nice midrange is compensating. We go into Golden Heart and Knopfler continues to sound great.
Onto Metal which is what I dig. We start with The Down Troddence. If there are Thrash Metal lovers here who have not heard this band, you are missing something BIG. TDT are without doubt the best sounding thrash metal band ever from India. To some extent, I feel they surpass some international bands too. What I also appreciate about this band is the effort they took to record their debut album. It is superb. The track Nagavalli is a test for any system not just to play loud but to stay in control. Sadly; this Samsung falls apart. It just cant keep up with fast bass and the immense drive from those electric guitars. Munzs voice goes for a toss too. The sound is all over the place. The sub woofer is disconnected from the rest of the speakers. It cant keep up with a fast paced drummer and starts buckling. It is the sound you get when the cone has extended but hasnt gone back to rest before which the next bass note strikes. The sub woofer is effectively doing double duty in this system and it is hopeless. A genre as extreme as this is ruled out. It is not a fair comparison but the very same track on my Trigon-Blumenhofer set up, at 50% gain sounds as good as the band playing live. There is not a hint of strain or ear fatigue and you are definitely motivated towards snapping your neck.
Movies. The bench test includes animated feature such as the hilarious Secret life of Pets, Disneys musical Frozen, Logan and Mission Impossible Rogue Nation. The latter being the worst movie in this group but works for a sound check. In one word, this system shines for movies. It felt like the dome tweeters woke up, the sub woofer did not loose the plot and dialog was crystal clear. Excellent channel separation too. This is something I never expected. In some ways, this Samsung surpases some of those cheap and budget Pioneer, Onkyo and Yamaha Htib units. Yes; it cant keep up on lower frequencies due to the tiny sub woofer and thats about the only flaw. You are otherwise treated to a very good movie experience. If you did a blind test, you will be surprised by the capability of this system. I must remind everyone one that the system was playing in a fairly large room as well.
What else can you do with this Htib? Well there are some Samsung Smart bits but they are hopeless. There is Netflix, YouTube, a Browser and you can install Apps but I rather not go down that road as the interface is sluggish. Navigating your hard drive plugged into usb could be faster too. LGs WebOS is by far the best system Ive seen. Wireless connects without a hitch and the system auto updates firmware if you choose to do so. The system supports Dlna too. You also get digital and analog audio inputs, bluetooth and a programmable remote.
To be honest, I did not expect much from this little Samsung. Little systems can only do so much. One must remember some of the conveniences on offer as a one box system too. It is compact, reduces a bit of clutter by means of wireless rear speakers and offers decent connectivity.
To end, if you are space starved and dont have too much money to blow, a little Htib like this can take care of your music and movie needs. Just dont go in with high expectations.
Pictures
https://goo.gl/photos/8JLy9bT9WbHQLoNS6
Anyway; after settling down at a nice home with my family, I started to miss music and movie nights. All I had was the tvs speaker system for entertainment. Im not much of a headphone person. It was next to impossible to think of spending big bucks on Hi Fi or HT as our move was expensive in itself. Fortunately, there is something called trademe in New Zealand. It is the equal of ebay in the USA. The primary purpose of trademe is to find second hands goods. I started my search and the Hi Fi & HT scene was rather small. Small country, a lot less people so not surprised. Lots of old speakers but no amplifiers. I wanted HT as it would satisfy music and movie needs for the time being. One day, I stumbled upon a Samsung Htib. It was on a bid for $100. I won the bid and the system was mine for $160. The retail price for this system must have been around $1000.
The System: Samsung HT-F6551W
Whats in the box?
The main control unit or receiver does 3D blu ray playback (Isnt 3D dead?), supports HD multi channel audio, has two HDMI INs and one OUT with Audio Return Channel, media playback via USB, Bluetooth and Wi Fi connectivity. It is possible to install Apps via the Samung App store. With a Chromecast connected, there is little use for the systems internal smart functions.
Speakers consist of 4nos of slender two way sealed plastic tower speakers for Front and Surround duties. Technically; these arent towers as they are bolted onto a stand to give you the tower effect. The drivers look like a combination of a soft dome tweeter and mid range drivers. The mid range is edgeless in design. No rubber or paper surround. The configuration is Joseph DAppolito with a twist. I say twist as the top mid range driver does not seem Active and acts as a passive radiator. I do not know if this is a defect or by design. Most likely it is by design as none of the top drivers work. I have come across several passive radiator implementations but none in such a compact enclosure and in the form of a mid range driver. My dads old Akai AE-53 stand mount speaker had a rear facing passive radiator driver and was very effective.
1nos centre speaker which is the smallest speaker unit I have ever seen on a Htib.
1nos passive rear ported sub woofer which is a joke considering its dimensions. I can lift it with two fingers.
1nos wireless RF receiver with an inbuilt digital amplifier to drive the rear speakers. Yupp; this thing has wireless rear speakers. There is no other way you can connect them or get them to talk to the main receiver unit. The main receiver unit has 4 speaker terminals only. Being RF, there is no pairing process involved. A ferrite core unit is provided to keep external interference at bay. You switch on the main receiver unit and the system pairs instantly. You power off the main unit and the wireless digital amplifier goes into standby mode after a couple of minutes.
The one unique thing about this system is the pre amplifier section which is assisted by a pair of vacuum tubes. I dont know if these things are even real. There is no warm up cycle or any warning in the instruction booklet about them. I wonder how they contribute to the sound or if they can at all, considering the limited range of the speaker unit themselves and the digital amplifier section.
The system is placed in our 15ft/12ft dedicated living room. This system does not offer any form of automatic calibration for the sound. You set things up the old fashioned way. Pure judgement and I seem to have got things almost spot on to. Speakers angled to the sweet spot, centre channel below the tiny tv and the rear ported sub woofer placed a foot away from the corner wall. I used a carpenters tape to measure distance of the speakers and listener which is 10ft from the main front speakers. Speaker distance values were input into the system setup. You can adjust speaker gain for each of the six speakers. I raised the gain by one step for the centre channel and sub woofer.
You may laugh it off. I mean, why bother doing all this for a cheap run off the mill Htib. Trust me, these things matter even for something that isnt remotely close to being high end.
I start with a copy of Dire Straits Remastered disc (cd copy of the original). Noisy transport I must say. No warm up business for this Samsung, which is odd for a vacuum tube based system. The system is good to go instantly. The excess orange glow from the tubes are the result of two led lamps sitting below the tubes. There is no way a vacuum tube glows so bright. Some dont glow anyway. We start with Down to the Waterline. Knopfler is best enjoyed on a rig that does excellent mid range and delivers quality bass and I must say that this Samsung is doing alright. No jaw dropping moments here, it sounds OKAY. We need to remind ourselves that this is a Htib. For the money, this little Samsung (weighing no more than 4 kilos, all put together!) is amazing. Do note that all bells and whistles right down to the equalizer are set flat or Off. The dome tweeters are definitely not doing much but the nice midrange is compensating. We go into Golden Heart and Knopfler continues to sound great.
Onto Metal which is what I dig. We start with The Down Troddence. If there are Thrash Metal lovers here who have not heard this band, you are missing something BIG. TDT are without doubt the best sounding thrash metal band ever from India. To some extent, I feel they surpass some international bands too. What I also appreciate about this band is the effort they took to record their debut album. It is superb. The track Nagavalli is a test for any system not just to play loud but to stay in control. Sadly; this Samsung falls apart. It just cant keep up with fast bass and the immense drive from those electric guitars. Munzs voice goes for a toss too. The sound is all over the place. The sub woofer is disconnected from the rest of the speakers. It cant keep up with a fast paced drummer and starts buckling. It is the sound you get when the cone has extended but hasnt gone back to rest before which the next bass note strikes. The sub woofer is effectively doing double duty in this system and it is hopeless. A genre as extreme as this is ruled out. It is not a fair comparison but the very same track on my Trigon-Blumenhofer set up, at 50% gain sounds as good as the band playing live. There is not a hint of strain or ear fatigue and you are definitely motivated towards snapping your neck.
Movies. The bench test includes animated feature such as the hilarious Secret life of Pets, Disneys musical Frozen, Logan and Mission Impossible Rogue Nation. The latter being the worst movie in this group but works for a sound check. In one word, this system shines for movies. It felt like the dome tweeters woke up, the sub woofer did not loose the plot and dialog was crystal clear. Excellent channel separation too. This is something I never expected. In some ways, this Samsung surpases some of those cheap and budget Pioneer, Onkyo and Yamaha Htib units. Yes; it cant keep up on lower frequencies due to the tiny sub woofer and thats about the only flaw. You are otherwise treated to a very good movie experience. If you did a blind test, you will be surprised by the capability of this system. I must remind everyone one that the system was playing in a fairly large room as well.
What else can you do with this Htib? Well there are some Samsung Smart bits but they are hopeless. There is Netflix, YouTube, a Browser and you can install Apps but I rather not go down that road as the interface is sluggish. Navigating your hard drive plugged into usb could be faster too. LGs WebOS is by far the best system Ive seen. Wireless connects without a hitch and the system auto updates firmware if you choose to do so. The system supports Dlna too. You also get digital and analog audio inputs, bluetooth and a programmable remote.
To be honest, I did not expect much from this little Samsung. Little systems can only do so much. One must remember some of the conveniences on offer as a one box system too. It is compact, reduces a bit of clutter by means of wireless rear speakers and offers decent connectivity.
To end, if you are space starved and dont have too much money to blow, a little Htib like this can take care of your music and movie needs. Just dont go in with high expectations.
Pictures
https://goo.gl/photos/8JLy9bT9WbHQLoNS6
