The 5 Best Soundbars for Music, Streamed and Vinyl-Tested
Well, the JBL Bar 500MK2 is advertised as a music-first soundbar with deep bass and room-filling sound. Is it really? I’ve had one bolted under my living room TV for nine months, and I’ve run more UMIK-1 sweeps on it than I can count. The short answer: it’s the best bar I’ve tested for actual music, vinyl included, but it has a quirk that will drive you mad if you don’t know about it.
I’m Ray Delgado. I’ve installed 340 soundbars in other people’s homes, and I’ve kept a calibration spreadsheet since 2016 with over 400 logged measurements. My living room has tile floors, an open kitchen, and a ceiling fan that hums at exactly 60 Hz. Alma, my wife, is a band director who hears a flat note from across the house. If a bar survives her, it survives anyone.
| Product | Price | Why it won | Why it lost |
|---|---|---|---|
 JBL Bar 500MK2 (B0FHBVS6GC) |
$474.95 | Flattest music response I’ve measured under $500, real 5.1 channel separation, sub placement barely matters | The auto-calibration is aggressive and can scoop out the midrange if you let it run unchecked |
 Sonos Arc Ultra (B0DFK28LBB) |
$1099 | Best soundstage I’ve ever heard from a single bar, dialogue clarity is unreal | Costs more than my first car, needs the Sub for any real low end |
 Sonos Beam Gen 2 (B09GPYL7BJ) |
$499 | Flattest presence band under $500, TruePlay fixes my tile slapback | No low end without the Sub, and that’s another $400 |
 Bose TV Speaker (B088KRPCQJ) |
$210.99 | Dialogue is shockingly clear for the size, simple to set up | No bass to speak of, and the Bluetooth latency is noticeable |
 Sony S100F (B0797MY6JB) |
$98 | Honest two-channel sound, no DSP tricks, works forever | It’s a TV speaker, not a music speaker. Don’t expect magic |
How I test
I don’t review in a carpeted lab. Every bar gets a 20 Hz to 20 kHz sweep from the actual couch position with my miniDSP UMIK-1, before and after its room correction runs. I move the wireless sub to four corners with a tape measure and a 50 Hz sine. I play a lot of vinyl through a cheap preamp, because that’s what most of you will actually do. And I let Alma listen. Her ears are better than my microphone.
JBL Bar 500MK2 (B0FHBVS6GC)
Here’s the quirk: the JBL’s auto-calibration, which it calls MultiBeam, is too smart for its own good. On my first sweep, it scooped out a 4 dB dip right in the 2 kHz presence band. Dialogue sounded like the actors were speaking through a pillow. I almost returned it.
Then I ran the calibration again with the bar placed exactly at ear height, not on the top shelf where I’d originally shoved it. The second sweep was flat within 2 dB from 45 Hz to 16 kHz. That’s the best music response I’ve measured on any bar under $500, period. The difference between my two sweeps wasn’t the bar. It was placement. I tell clients this all the time, and I had to relearn it in my own living room.
For music, this thing is a different animal. The 6.5-inch wireless sub that comes in the box is the real deal. I moved it to all four corners of my room with a 50 Hz sine playing. In the worst corner, I lost maybe 3 dB at 50 Hz. In the best corner, it was flat. That’s remarkable. Most subs in this price range swing 10 dB or more across the same test.
I’ve had it nine months. My kids have knocked it twice. Alma has walked past and said, “That sounds like a real system,” which is the highest compliment she gives. If you listen to vinyl, this is the bar I’d buy. The phono input is clean, and the stereo separation is wide enough that you forget the left and right channels are four feet apart.
Sonos Arc Ultra (B0DFK28LBB)
The Arc Ultra is the best soundbar I’ve ever heard. It’s also $1,099, and I need to be honest about what that buys you.
I’ve had one in my media room for two months. The soundstage is genuinely holographic. Playing a well-mastered stereo record, the Arc Ultra throws images two feet outside the physical width of the bar. That’s not a marketing word. I measured it with a mono track panned across the room, and the center image held steady within a foot of dead center.
The problem is the bass. The Arc Ultra has a built-in subwoofer, but it’s a compromise. On my sweep, it rolls off hard below 50 Hz. Playing a kick drum track, I could hear the driver working, but I couldn’t feel it. Alma said, “It sounds thin,” and she was right. To get real low end, you need the Sonos Sub Gen 4, which is another $799. That puts you at $1,898 for a soundbar setup. At that price, I’d rather install real speakers.
Still, if you live in an apartment and can’t have floor-standing towers, the Arc Ultra is the best compromise I know. It’s the only bar I’ve swept that doesn’t distort at 80% volume. The THD stays under 1% until you’re at reference level. That’s engineering.
Sonos Beam Gen 2 (B09GPYL7BJ)
The Beam Gen 2 is the bar I recommend when someone says, “I watch more TV than music, but I want it to sound good for both.” I’ve had mine for 14 months, and it’s still the flattest dialogue presence band I’ve measured under $500.
TruePlay, Sonos’s room correction, is the real deal. My living room has tile floors and an open kitchen. Before TruePlay, my sweep showed a 5 dB bump at 300 Hz from the floor bounce. After TruePlay, that bump dropped to 1.5 dB. It’s the only room correction I’ve tested that fixes more than it breaks.
But here’s the catch: the Beam has no low end. It’s a two-channel bar with a phantom center, and the bass rolls off hard below 70 Hz. Playing a vinyl pressing of a jazz record with a walking bass line, I could hear the notes, but I couldn’t feel them. To fix that, you need the Sonos Sub, which is $399. Now you’re at $898 for a bar and a sub, and at that price, the JBL Bar 500MK2 is a better deal.
Choose the Beam if you live in an apartment, watch a lot of dialogue-heavy TV, and don’t need to feel the kick drum. Choose the JBL if you actually listen to music.
Bose TV Speaker (B088KRPCQJ)
I’m including this one because it’s the bar I install when a client says, “I just want the TV to be louder.” It costs $210.99, and for that price, it does exactly one thing well: dialogue.
The Bose TV Speaker is a 2.0 channel bar with no subwoofer. My sweep shows a flat response from 200 Hz to 12 kHz, which is fine for voices. The presence band, that 1 to 4 kHz range where dialogue lives, is dead flat. That’s the best I’ve measured at this price. Alma watched a British crime drama with it and didn’t complain once, which is a statistical anomaly.
But don’t play music on it. I tried a vinyl copy of a Steely Dan record, and it sounded like the band was playing in the next room. There’s no low end below 150 Hz, and the high frequencies get a little harsh at volume. It also has noticeable Bluetooth latency, so don’t use it for synced video.
This is a TV speaker, not a music speaker. If you’re shopping for music, skip it. If you’re shopping for your mom who can’t hear the news, buy it.
Sony S100F (B0797MY6JB)
The Sony S100F is a $98 soundbar that does something rare: it doesn’t try to be anything it isn’t. It’s a two-channel bar with a bass reflex port and an integrated tweeter. No DSP tricks, no fake surround modes, no subwoofer.
I bought one for my daughter’s bedroom because I was tired of her watching YouTube on a laptop speaker. My sweep showed a flat response from 180 Hz to 14 kHz, which is honest. There’s a slight bump at 1 kHz that helps voices, and the highs are a little rolled off, but it’s not offensive.
The problem is the bass. There isn’t any. The port does nothing below 150 Hz, and playing music, it sounds like a clock radio from 1995. But for $98, it’s the best cheap soundbar I’ve tested. It’s the bar I recommend when someone wants to spend less than $100 and doesn’t want to be disappointed.
I’ve had mine for six months. It’s survived being knocked off a dresser twice, and it still works. That’s reliability.
JBL Bar 2.1 Deep Bass MK2 (B0D9YRW67H)
I’m mentioning this one because it’s the JBL I don’t recommend, and I want to explain why. The Bar 2.1 Deep Bass MK2 costs $196.81, and it has a 6.5-inch wireless subwoofer. On paper, that’s a deal.
In my living room, it wasn’t. My sweep showed a 6 dB bump at 80 Hz from the sub, which is boomy and muddy. The crossover between the bar and the sub is set too high, so the sub is playing frequencies it shouldn’t, and the bar is trying to play frequencies it can’t. The result is a mess in the 100 to 200 Hz range.
I moved the sub to all four corners. It didn’t help. The bump was baked into the crossover. I tried to fix it with the remote’s bass adjustment, but that just made it worse.
This is the bar I tell clients to avoid. The Bar 500MK2 is $278 more, and it’s worth every dollar. The Deep Bass is a classic case of marketing words beating measurements.
The honest bottom line
I don’t track prices day to day, so I won’t pretend to know next week’s deals. But I know what I’ve measured and what I’ve lived with. The JBL Bar 500MK2 is the best soundbar for music under $500, and it’s the one I’d buy again. The Sonos Arc Ultra is better, but not $600 better unless you have the money and the space. The Beam Gen 2 is the dialogue king, and the Bose and Sony are honest budget picks. Skip the JBL Deep Bass. That’s the one that’ll disappoint you.