Right now my audio solution is a Pioneer VSX-832 receiver, Audioengine P4 stereo speakers, and am Audioengine subwoofer. It sounds fine but is kind of a cable management nightmare and the speakers don't actually fit on our TV stand right now so it looks a mess.
I'm considering replacing that setup with a soundbar and small subwoofer. I know real home theater nerds sneer at soundbars, but realistically we're not going to do surround sound. Our living room is super narrow so the sofa is only about 6 feet from the TV and that's with it up against a wall, so there's no putting rear speakers in here. When we tried we hated it. It just doesn't work well in the room.
I'm okay with basically a 2.1 system but I'm wondering if I could do that in a way that's compact, looks nice, and has a center channel so we can hear some goddamn dialog occasionally.
Would a nice soundbar actually be an upgrade from this situation?
Do you guys have ghost kitchens over there? Because there are several dead-seeming restaurants in my neighborhood that are actually just ten different restaurants on door dash and never appear to have actual customers because they just have delivery people running in and out.