Adding external speakers to your TV is one the best ways to improve your viewing experience, but it can also be one of the most complicated.

Whereas setting up a TV is a simple matter of plugging it into a wall and hooking up your streaming player (or cable box, if you must), home audio involves all kinds of connections, configurations, and inscrutable technical jargon. The lack of critical consensus doesn't help; peruse the recommendations from The Wirecutter, CNet, TechRadar, and my pals at TechHive, and you'll find that everyone has their own sonic preferences.

While I cannot claim to be an audiophile—I couldn't, for instance, wax poetic on one set of speaker drivers versus another—I've bought and tested enough soundbars and surround sound systems to have a handle on what's really important. As long as you know what you're looking for, buying one yourself needn't be so scary.

Here, then, are some pointers to help guide you through the process.

Pick a number (of speakers)

The one decision that should guide all others is whether to buy just a soundbar, a soundbar and subwoofer, or a soundbar with its own surround sound system. More isn't necessarily better here; surround sound makes sense if your immediate goal is immersive audio for movies and TV, but a smaller number of superior speakers might be a better use of your budget for speech clarity or music playback. Start with some priorities and work outwards from there.

And just to be clear on the numbering system: Because engineers can never resist a chance to confuse everyone else, home audio uses the X.Y.Z format to signify how many audio channels are in a system, where X is the number at ear level, Y is the number of subwoofers, and Z is the number that can project sound upwards. A 3.0 system, for instance, refers to just a soundbar with three speakers inside, while a 5.1.4 system includes three speakers at the front of the room (usually via a soundbar), two at the back, a subwoofer, with four upward-firing elements throughout.

Work out your TV wiring ...

Before you go any further, take a look around the back of your TV and find the HDMI ports. If one of them is labeled HDMI-ARC; you're in great shape; get a soundbar with HDMI input and plug it straight into that port. All your other TV inputs will automatically send audio to the soundbar, and your existing TV remote can control the volume. (If you just bought a new TV with a port labeled "eARC," that's even better, but not essential. It mainly means your TV can support 7.1 audio without a separate receiver, and can play high-quality lossless audio from Blu-ray discs, but only if the soundbar itself supports eARC as well.)

There is one potential pitfall to HDMI-ARC, though: On some TVs, the ARC port is also the one that delivers the highest framerate or color depth for video, and you'll be blocking it up by plugging a soundbar into it. In that case, you'd need a soundbar with its own HDMI output, so it can pass the video signal from a streaming box or game console.

If your TV lacks HDMI-ARC, you'll have to use optical, coaxial, or (for non-surround setups) 3.5mm cables, so make sure to get a soundbar that offers whatever input your TV has.

... and your surround wiring

For surround sound setups, don't forget to consider how you'll wire up the additional speakers. Some systems, like most Vizio surround sound kits, have rear speakers that draw power from the subwoofer, which means you'll have to run wire across the room or put the subwoofer in the back. Others, like Roku's surround sound setup, communicate wirelessly but require outlet power for each satellite speaker. A rare few even have battery-powered rear speakers that are fully wireless, like those in the JBL Bar 9.1. Think about the layout before buying, or risk rearranging your room after.

To Atmos, or not to Atmos

The other big decision to make nowadays is whether to invest in support for Dolby Atmos (or the less-popular DTS:X), which try to position sounds as objects in 3D space. While the tech is impressive, not all Atmos setups work the same way. Systems with ceiling-mounted speakers beat bookshelf speakers that bounce sound off the ceiling, which usually beat soundbars with up-firing speakers inside, which beat "virtualized" systems that simulate 3D sound with software trickery. And once you get under $400, Atmos generally isn't available without sale prices.

Besides, the vast majority of movies and TV shows don't support Atmos, and you'll need a somewhat recent TV with HDMI 2.0 and ARC to take advantage. It's worth seeking out a higher prices, but I wouldn't break your budget over it.

Understand upgradeability

Not all your speaker decisions have to be final. Some soundbars, like those from Sonos and Roku, can connect with subwoofers and surround sound speakers that are sold separately. That's worth considering if you have a limited budget up-front but want the ability to expand over time.

Size up the soundbar

At the risk of stating the obvious, make sure whatever soundbar you're about to buy is short and narrow enough to fit underneath your TV if it's not wall-mounted. And if you want to mount the soundbar, make sure that's an option.

Finally, consider the bells and whistles

Once you've gone through all of that, you can start considering the extras, like Chromecast and AirPlay support, built-in Alexa or Google Assistant voice controls, syncing with other speakers for multi-room audio, and Bluetooth connectivity. These are all nice-to-have features, but most can also be added to your entertainment center after the fact via external streaming devices or smart speakers, so don't let them make or break your buying decision over other factors.

The only notable exception is speech enhancement, which can be essential if you have trouble picking out voices or need to keep the sound down at night. Most decent soundbars have dialog enhancement settings built in, but it doesn't hurt to check. (Here's a helpful list of good ones that do.)

What about A/V receivers?

You'll notice that until now, I've gracefully sidestepped the matter of A/V receivers, which use a central amplifier to power an entire set of external passive speakers. While a receiver setup will give you better sound and more flexibility than a soundbar with its own subwoofer and surround speakers, it's also a much more expensive and complicated proposition. And if you're boldly going down that road, chances are you're more of an audiophile than I am.
 

Google's Fi phone deal: Google Fi is already one of the best alternatives to the major wireless carriers, offering service on T-Mobile's network starting at $20 per month with pay-as-you-go data. Now, Google's sweetening the deal with discounted phones for Fi subscribers. Instead of paying $350 up-front (or $15 per month over two years) for Google's Pixel 4a phone, you can get it for $9 per month over two years, or $15 per month with insurance and broken screen replacement.

The caveat is that you're locked into two years of service with Google. If you don't activate the phone within 30 days of getting it, or you cancel before the 24 months are up, you'll be on the hook for the phone's full price. (It's also sort of strange that this deal isn't available with Google's fancier Pixel 4a or Pixel 5 phones.) But if your data needs are somewhat limited, it's still a lot cheaper than what major carriers charge for service alone.

iPhone 5G confusion: With the arrival of 5G support on the iPhone 12, Apple now faces the unenviable task of communicating what type of network users are accessing at any given moment. As I noted last week, the iPhone 12 supports all three flavors of 5G—low-band, mid-band, and high-band—which range from slower and more broadly available to faster and scarcely available anywhere. Each carrier uses a different combination of these variants, in some cases with their own special branding.

To signify what type of 5G you're getting, the iPhone 12 status bar will display one of three icons: "5G" for low- or mid-band connectivity, "5G UW" for Verizon's high-band network, and "5G+" AT&T's high-band network. But even if you see one of those icons, that doesn't necessarily mean you're using 5G. As VentureBeat points out, the new iPhones include a "Smart Data mode" that will switch to 4G networks if they offer a faster connection, yet they'll still display a 5G icon when that happens.

While the Smart Data feature itself makes sense, not knowing which network your phone is using means you can't really evaluate whether 5G is living up to the hype. And that might just be the point.

Trouble for youtube-dl: As I mentioned back in March, youtube-dl is a powerful and free utility for downloading videos or audio from YouTube (and from some other sources). Last week, however, the tool wound up in the crosshairs of the music industry, which demanded that the software-building site GitHub remove all instances of youtube-dl's code. While the software has plenty of legitimate uses for research and archival, the industry naturally honed in on the piracy prospects.

For now, this doesn't seem to have affected the availability of youtube-dl or graphical versions like ViDL and youtube-dl-gui, which make the tool much easier to use. Still, now feels like a good time to secure your own copies of these programs, in case they become harder to acquire in the future.
 

A multi-room music refresher: Since we're on the topic of home entertainment this week, here's a reminder on how to set up whole-home audio with your smart speakers and streaming devices. If you have multiple Echo speakers and Fire TV devices; Google Home, Nest, and Chromecast devices; or Apple TV boxes and AirPlay speakers, you can group them together and play music or podcasts throughout the house. Here's how to set up each system:

• Echo speakers and Fire TV devices: Open the Alexa app on your phone, head to Devices, hit the + button in the top-right corner, and select "Set Up Multi-Room Music." Select your speakers, smart displays, or streaming players, then give the group a name, which you'll use while asking Alexa to play music.
• Google Home, Nest, and Chromecast: Open the Google Home app on your phone, hit the + button in the top-left corner, and select "Create Speaker Group." Select any number of speakers, smart displays, or streaming players, then give the group a name. You can either ask Google to play music on this group, or start playback from any app that supports Chromecast.
• Apple TV and AirPlay speakers: Just swipe down from the top-right of your phone to open Control Center (or swipe up from the bottom on iPhones with home buttons), then hit the circular AirPlay icon in the music panel. Select any number of AirPlay speakers or Apple TV boxes on which to begin playback.

A widget for Google Photos: Google is continuing its embrace of home screen widget support in iOS 14. With the latest version of Google Photos, you can now add a "Your memories" widget that picks a random photos highlight from years past. (To add widgets, long-press any empty part of the home screen, then hit the + button in the top-right corner. This brings up the widget picker, where you'll find the options for Google Photos.)

Since I store all my pictures in Google Photos, this sort of thing has been on my wishlist since widget support arrived last month. I'm glad Google made it happen, though it does make me wonder why no such equivalent exists on Android.

Real-world copy and paste: A neat new app called Clip Drop lets you copy real world objects and paste fully-cropped images of them onto your computer. Just install Clip Drop's desktop app, then use the companion iOS or Android apps to start clipping.

Of course, there is a catch: The free app is essentially just a demo, limiting you to 10 copied objects before you hit a $40 per year paywall. I imagine some graphic designers will find Clip Drop to be worth the price. For the rest of us, it's a technically-impressive toy to play with for a few minutes.
 

• John Gruber has a thorough review of the new iPad Air.
• Apple opens "Express" stores with plexiglass-shielded checkout counters.
• How (and why) to enable end-to-end encryption in Zoom.
• Echo Dot 2020 review: Buy the older version for less.
• Read Gizmodo's roundup of weird and wild Android launchers.
• "McBroken" is a website that shows where McDonald's ice cream machines are offline.
• Lessons on gadget repair from a restored Nintendo Entertainment System.

We're running a bit long today, so let's break out the bullet points for this morning's deals:

• Seagate has a 2 TB portable hard drive for $53 today,
• Seagate's Xbox-branded 4 TB drive (which works anywhere) is also on sale for $88.
• The Lenovo Chromebook Duet hits an even lower price of $249 at Best Buy.
• Apple's AirPods Pro have returned to $200 on Amazon.
• Amazon has some modest iPad discounts: $299 for the basic iPad, $749 for the 11-inch Pro, and $950 for the 12.9-inch Pro.
• Nice deals on fancy ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptops: $1,000 with Core-i5 and 512 GB of storage, $1200 with Core-i7 and 1 TB of storage.

Have you noticed an uptick in the number of deal alert emails I've been sending lately? That's partly because I've spotted more notable deals as the holidays approach, and partly because I'm rededicating myself to keeping you in the loop.

To that end, I've also added a deal alert channel to Advisorator's chat room on Slack, and have been dropping some links in there for deals that don't quite merit an entire email. Drop in and say hello, or feel free to share any other deals you've come across.

Have a sonically-enriched week,
Jared