Hey, guys, my Vizio soundbar just came in the mail, so I’m going to be putting together an initial setup tutorial here for the soundbar as well as the subwoofer that came with it. Now, for optimal sound, you’re going to want to put the soundbar in the center area of your television. And for this example, I’m going to be hooking into my TCL Roku TV. And then also, of course, your subwoofer; probably you’re going to want to locate that more so in one of the corners of your viewing room. So once you have the locations for your subwoofer and your soundbar, the next thing that you’re going to want to do is decide on what cable you’re going to be hooking into your soundbar to your television. And that’s going to be dependent on what type of hookups you have with your TV.
Step 1: Determine Soundbar and Subwoofer Placement
- Soundbar Placement: Optimal in the center area of your television.
- Subwoofer Placement: Preferably in one of the corners of your viewing room.
Step 2: Choose Your Connection Cable
So, on the back of the soundbar over on the left-hand side, there are two different ways that you can hook into your TV. And these are going to be the optimal ways that you can go about doing it, whether it’s the digital optical cable or the digital coaxial cable. And that’s going to be either this is the digital coaxial cable or your other option being the digital optical cable. Now, since my TV has a digital optical port that I can plug into on the back, that’s what I’m going to go with. Now, if you don’t have either of those options on the back of your TV, there’s also some other things that you can do over here on the back of the soundbar over on the right-hand side, where the power output is. Over here, you can see there’s a USB input, but then there’s also an auxiliary. Not quite as good as the two digital options on the other side, but you might have to go with this if that’s the only option with your TV. And also in the package, it comes with a thing that looks like a headphone jack on both ends.
Connection Options:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Digital Coaxial | Use if your TV supports it. |
| Digital Optical | Preferred if your TV has a digital optical port. |
| USB and Auxiliary | Consider these if your TV does not support the digital options. |
That’s going to be your auxiliary that you could plug in on one side here and the other side potentially on the back of your TV if you have an auxiliary input. And the other auxiliary option here we have is one side auxiliary, the other end is the left and right speakers, which are white and red. So that also might be something that you can utilize to hook things up. So, if you’re using the digital optical cable, just be careful not to bend it too much. So, one end I’m going to plug in to the backside here.
Step 3: Connect the Cable
And then the other end is going to go right here where this red light is. It’s below my HDMI ports. That’s where the other end of the digital optical cord is going to be plugged into.
Step 4: Power Up the System
The next thing to do is plug in the power adapter for both the soundbar as well as the subwoofer. So, you should get two of these power adapters that come with your system. One of them is going to be for the back of the soundbar. This is the part that you plug in to the back of the right of the soundbar. And then this is going to plug into one of your wall outlets. And then on the subwoofer, this end is going to be plugged into the back. And then, of course, this end is going to be plugged into your wall as well.
Step 5: Pairing the Subwoofer and Soundbar
The subwoofer should come automatically paired with your soundbar. However, it might not be. So if you have to manually do this, then just make sure that your subwoofer is on. That’s the little white LED light indicator here.
And, of course, you can turn on and off your subwoofer with this power button. So again, just make sure that the power is on. Then hold the pairing button for about five seconds until you see the power light flashing.
And then go over to your soundbar and hold down the power button for about five seconds.
And then after the five seconds, let go. And you should see the LED indicators on the front. They’ll flash three times. And that means that the subwoofer is now linked with the soundbar.
Step 6: Remote Setup
So the next thing is to set up the remote. And it’s relatively simple. Just go ahead and pull the back off. And then you should get a couple of batteries that come with the soundbar. Just go ahead and pop those batteries in, put the back cover back on. And then you should be hooked up and ready to go using your remote with your soundbar, just making sure that the soundbar is turned on by clicking the power button. And with your TV and soundbar both on, the soundbar will automatically turn on and begin searching for an active input to hook itself up. The LED indicators on the front of the soundbar will begin cycling in pairs through the inputs until an audio source is detected. So the last step is just simply having it work and play sound through the soundbar and the subwoofer. And this is relatively easy to accomplish because the Vizio soundbar is going to automatically look for the correct audio resource once you have audio actually playing on your television. Now it might be a little bit different for me than you guys; I’m using a smart TV, specifically the TCL Roku television. And what I had to do for the soundbar to find the correct audio source to use, I just went and played a video that had audio on it. So I went to YouTube. I launched one of my YouTube videos, and it was able to find the correct audio source at that point in time. But just to recap, if you guys are having issues with that final step of having your soundbar actually hook into your TV and play sound through it, just make sure that you have your TV powered on, you’re playing something that has sound. And then also make sure that you have your soundbar hooked in properly to one of the different audio ports on the back of your TV as well as on the back of the soundbar itself.
Make sure it’s all plugged in, powered on, as well as your subwoofer. Make sure that’s plugged in and powered on, and it should be able to find the proper audio source at that point in time. You can also manually toggle through the different audio sources with the remote itself. And it’s this little middle button right here. If you click on that, it will also toggle through the different audio resources until you find the one that you’re looking for. And also, if you’re having trouble with your Vizio soundbar, finding the right resource for it to use and play audio through your TV, and it’s not in its automatic pairing mode or searching mode for whatever reason, then you can actually just take out your remote and hold down the input button here right at the top middle, hold it down for maybe about five or so seconds until it goes into this mode where it starts blinking. That just means that it’s trying the different audio sources to see which one it can find to utilize properly. And you’re going to want to make sure that you have audio actually playing on your TV to make it a bit easier for both your TV as well as yourself to know when things are actually working.
So I hope this setup video was helpful. I appreciate you guys stopping by. Subscribe for more and I hope to catch you back here next time.