Samsung SWA-9000S/EN (Renewed)

I'm really pleased with this speaker assembly, which I have paired with a Samsung HW-MS650 to give a 5.0 (as there's no separate subwoofer) surround sound system that's as good as anything I've heard in the past and better than several systems I've come across. So why only three stars? I'll come to that shortly. For the minute, I'll describe the set-up process, which is very simple. With the soundbar off, plug the supplied wireless dongle into the USB port on your soundbar. Connect the speakers to the wireless amplifier, plug it into the mains and watch the little blinking blue light. That tells you it's waiting to pair with the soundbar. Hold down the volume control on the soundbar remote until 'ID SET' appears in the soundbar display. Turn on the soundbar and the blue light turns solid. You're now good to go. Only you're not; and this is where Samsung loses, quite unnecessarily, a couple of stars. When you test the system, you find that there's almost zero volume in the rear speakers. It took me the best part of an afternoon to work out why. The first problem is that DRC (Dynamic Range Compression) is selected by default. You need to turn it off. You might think that instructions for controlling the rear speaker assembly might be somewhere in the SWA-9000S manual. You would be wrong. They are in the soundbar manual. And they are very primitive. First you turn the soundbar off and long press 'Sound Mode' until DRC appears on the soundbar display, then use the arrow keys to turn it off. Now you need to adjust the volume level, which appears to default to -1, so there's another reason you can't hear it. To do that, turn the soundbar on and then press the 'Sound Control' button repeatedly until 'Rear Speaker Level' appears in the soundbar display. Or that's what should happen. In fact, you'll see 'Rear Speaker L' because of the display limitations. Now you can use the up/down buttons to set the level between -6 and +6. I found +4 to be about right in my (medium sized) sitting room. +6 is definitely too intrusive. There is yet another elephant trap that Samsung have thoughtfully provided. Immediately after the 'Rear Speaker L' option, there's 'Rear Speaker O', which would say 'On/off' if there were space. So, if you're not paying careful attention, there's a fair chance of selecting the wrong one. There's no mention in the manual of what the designers were smoking when they came up with this Byzantine rubbish but I'd be very surprised if it was legal. And a number of reviewers report returning the system having been unable to make it behave satisfactorily. I sympathize with them. It took me a long time. But I hope this explanation helps a bit.

Managed to get a 'renewed' set at about half normal price. Items looked like they had never been opened never mind used. Easy to set up, easy to control, sound unbelievable. Come on Samsung, get some stock available!