Seriously, the sound quality of old TV's has changed to those that are sold today. Just listen to this video I recorded, all from my Sega Genesis live on camera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krXjsuPIaz4

As far as I could tell, that is quite loud, and quite well in the bass and mid response, that new TV's just can't compete too. Most the new TV's have are just treble, and that's it.

Some of the new flat screens, especially the larger ones have excellent bass response for what they are. I find it kind of incredible how they are using digital EQ to trick small speakers into sounding a lot better than they physically should be able to, and then a powerful amplifier to pull it all together.

I have a Samsung 40" LCD from '08 that can kinda do this. It seems to have a subwoofer that is 2" that basically goes through a long vertical plastic tube that seems to emulate bass response and does it quite decent.

Still not as good as my rectangular set though.

The Zenith TV I grew up with like the one in my avatar, had a 10" full range speaker behind the bottom grill. Had great sound. When that TV finally died my Dad bought a tabletop Emerson, disconnected the little speaker in it, stacked it on top of the old Zenith and used the old Zenith's speaker.

My Sony LCD set from '08 has pretty decent sounding front firing speakers. Good mids and highs and even a trace of bass. Also has a set of always active variable audio outputs that I hook to a JBL powered sub-woofer. With the TV and that sub, I rarely ever turn on the surround receiver. Watching "TheCoolTV" channel right now it's putting out the bass.

Seems like pretty much all new sets have a minimal speaker setup just to make a sound, intended for customer to use a "sound bar" or AV receiver with.

The Zenith TV I grew up with like the one in my avatar, had a 10" full range speaker behind the bottom grill. Had great sound. When that TV finally died my Dad bought a tabletop Emerson, disconnected the little speaker in it, stacked it on top of the old Zenith and used the old Zenith's speaker.

My Sony LCD set from '08 has pretty decent sounding front firing speakers. Good mids and highs and even a trace of bass. Also has a set of always active variable audio outputs that I hook to a JBL powered sub-woofer. With the TV and that sub, I rarely ever turn on the surround receiver. Watching "TheCoolTV" channel right now it's putting out the bass.

Seems like pretty much all new sets have a minimal speaker setup just to make a sound, intended for customer to use a "sound bar" or AV receiver with.

I buy the better line, amplified computer speakers from the thrifts. I plug them into the headphone jack of the small sets.
Sure makes a difference. :yes:

In my experience, the TVs of the 50s had good bass, but poor overall accuracy (especially in music). In the 60s, they were worse; even in some of the big TV-stereo-phono consoles, where the TV would have it's own 5" oval speaker and not even pump the TV sound through the stereo... A few of the late 50s and early 60s Zenith consoles had decent sound, and even bass & treble controls on a few of the very high-end B&W consoles.

Best TV sound IMHO, is the early-mid '80s Sony consoles (KV-2675, etc). Those had great sealed speaker boxes, and well-engineered sound.

Charles

Not a lot of high frequencies to reproduce prior to mid '70s when the networks distributed the audio over phone lines limited to about 5 kHz. Of course local shows had full audio bandwidth and I could hear the difference when they would switch local to network.

In my experience, the TVs of the 50s had good bass, but poor overall accuracy (especially in music). In the 60s, they were worse; even in some of the big TV-stereo-phono consoles, where the TV would have it's own 5" oval speaker and not even pump the TV sound through the stereo... A few of the late 50s and early 60s Zenith consoles had decent sound, and even bass & treble controls on a few of the very high-end B&W consoles.

Best TV sound IMHO, is the early-mid '80s Sony consoles (KV-2675, etc). Those had great sealed speaker boxes, and well-engineered sound.

Charles

Too bad they didn't put that fine engineering into the CRT's used in those sets. :D

The 2005ish Sony WEGA LCD rear projector I have has a really good sound system.

Lots of empty space inside the cabinet so they even stuffed in a Subwoofer, the Amp is 25 wpc as I remember, you can easily do without any other surround system with this set.

The Plasma OTOH has really lousy sound and the cabinet rattles at higher volume, there's not much room for decent speakers inside so this isn't unexpected.
I don't use the built in sound at all anymore, it all goes through an external system.