Thinking about adding a pair of R1's to my HW K850 Atmos soundbar.....will it work?

[ARYN86]

So I recently got the K850 soundbar, I opted for it instead of the K950 for several reasons including price and the fact I have  a fairly small room so can't accomodate permanent rear speakers that the 950 has, but I am interested in getting  a pair of R1 wireless speakers the I can use as regular stereo speakers for my bedroom and occasionally be bought down to give me a more immersive surround experience with the K850.

My question is will this work? I see in theory it works but I had a glance at the K650 thread and noticed people having problems so wanted to know if these issues have been sorted or if they ever existed with the K850, I did see someone mentioned something about how the Atmos stopped working when the rear R1's were active. I just want to check and see if people have got these working properly as it'll give me some peace of mind and something to look forward to.

[ARYN86]

Been busy with work today but I'll give it another try out tomorrow and keep you updated. I'll be sure to check the finer points of your reply incase i'm missing something and keep you updated.

Ideally I'd like to be able to bring them down plug them in quickly set up the 5.1 (5.1.2 in my case) and be ready to go, anyways I will give them more comprehencive try out tomorrow or on Friday when I get some free time. Thanks again for sticking with me.

[Rich_z7]

No Sweat.  Work does have a habit of getting in the way.....

I think you might be heading for a purler if you cart them around and connect/reconnect them - but hopefully it's just be a matter of going to the sound section on TV each

My Vebos Stands arrive tomorrow which I'm looking forward too.

Have a good evening!

Rich

[ARYN86]

Ok so I gave them another go and here's what I got; generally speaking I can get them into a surround group with my soundbar via the app. I can then get a 5.1 setup on regular TV via the wifi setting, so I tested it with the first episode of Daredevil and yes there is audio coming out both R1's and the TV is recognising everything working as a 5.1 system as the display image indicated that a full system is connected (as opposed to just a soundbar which normally is the case) at this stage everything seems ok, I mean I've not really tested it fully but it does work with the little I did test it with.

The bigger problem is however if I switch over to HDMI 1 where my XBOX One S/UHD player is located, this kills the 5.1 setup as obviously it's no longer on the wifi setting. I then tried to do another manual setup on the app and it accepts it so HDMI 1 is the input on the soundbar and the R1's are selected as left and right rears but when testing the audio out with the Pacific Rim UHD blu ray it's clear there's nothing coming out of the R1's and the TV itself doesn't recognise them as being connected as part of a 5.1 system, they do however retain an odd form of integration where each individual speaker seems to be able to control the volume of the whole system (the two R1's and the soundbar) but clearly they don't work as part of the system when it comes to audio output. Also once the R1's even though they wern't working as part of the system seemed to suck away some of the oomph of the soundbar. Eventually I had to unplug the R1's and cancel the surround setup on the app and turn the soundbar off and then back on before I got the quality level of audio out of my soundbar again.

To be honest, I don't think it's a good fit overall. Samsung's Multiroom speakers I feel were best meant to be used as speakers for music and it just happened to be that on a technicallity they would work as part of a 5.1 system but with the amount of fiddlyness invovled they're definitely not ideal In my opinion. It's my own fault, if I wanted the rears that badly I should have got the HW-K950 but again I don't regret it due to the price and space factor also despite it all I'm very happy with general soundput of the K850 but the curiosuity got the better of me with the R1's if I didn't try them out now it would have been weeks/months down the line. Still think I'll keep them for a little while atleast and maybe sell them as a pair later on.

[Rich_z7]

Morning. 

Sorry u wasn't around last night I was busy putting my speaker stands together.

It sounds a bit strange.  When I change inputs my surround sound does not change.

As an experiment does it stick for your Xbox if you configure  and save it whilst that is a source.  Ie do you have to configure each input?

Rich

[ARYN86]

Yes it keeps the saved grouped setting for surround which I found strange considering how it doesn't work. All in all it's too much of a mission to configure and ready everything for use even If I did get them to work with the xbox, like I said I will hang on to them for a little while as regular wifi/bluetooh speakers but will likely sell them as a pair down the road.

[RT2]

Hello.....I found this discussion whilst trying to set up a new Samsung TV / Soundbar / Blu-Ray / Surround Sound System today.

I am having exactly the same problem....I can set up the TV with the 850 soundbar + 2 Samsung R1 speakers and everything works fine via multi-channel Wi-Fi.  The moment I switch to the Samsung Blu-Ray however it loses the wi-fi connection, jumping to the Soundbar HDMI1 and then the surround sound speakers don't work at all....in effect this means that I don't have any surround sound for movies, or are using all the speakers when playing a CD.  Then when going back to the TV it reverts to the TV speaker and I need to switch it to Surround Sound again.  I've connected in line with the instructions.

Any ideas?  It's driving me mad!

Thanks in anticipation.

[Rich_z7]

Hi.

This answer I suppose depends on how you have everything connected.

Also since you can have separate device settings for the screen, select your player then look at the sound set up changing it to surround if not.

All my stuff goes through s one connect box and my speakers are not connected to anything except power and I don't get that problem.

Rich

[RT2]

Thanks.....having played around a bit more I made some progress with also telling the blu-ray player to use wi-fi for the sound + connecting it via hdmi directly to the TV, rather than using the soundbar pass through via HDMI ARC (I have now removed this lead since it is not serving any purpose).  At least I now have sound coming from all speakers when playing DVDS/CDS as well as viewing live TV.  I think that the only issue of doing it this way is that DOLBY ATMOS won't work if I play blu-rays with this on, but this isn't a big issue for me.

It all feels a bit ad-hoc and temperamental however.  I'm a bit disappointed as I deliberately bought all Samsung stuff in order to try to avoid things like this.

It would be great if someone could let me know of a solution of keeping the surround sound with using the recommended way of connecting the blu-ray through the soundbar.

[Rich_z7]

I did read somewhere that you can't mix wired and  wireless in the same setup.

[ARYN86]

I returned my R1's in the end, too much fiddlyness