I decided to make this post just in case there are folks out there who have not thrown out their HW Q70R soundbar and rear speaker kit SWA 8500s, due to the frustrations involved in trying to enjoy a consistant listening experience. I wanted to let you know that there is a bandaid solution. My personal experience with this setup has not been a pleasant one. Judging by the numerous posts all over the internet during the time that my setup was new, and while I was trying to troubleshoot my issues, I'm not alone. I would also assume that the issues inherent to this particular soundbar/rear speaker combo apply to other combos built around the same time. The Issues include low volume or no sound from the rear speakers, static, hissing, inconsistant sound clarity from rear speakers. Before giving you some advice on how you might overcome these issues, let me say that Samsung support was of no use whatsover during my troubleshooting sessions. I was offered rediculous potential causes and solutions by the agents I spoke to; none of them admitting that there could actually be a design flaw in the equipment that was causing the issue. Going through the troubleshooting sequence with an agent basically consisted of reseting the soundbar, which would generally fix the issues, for a very short time. The issues always came back. The half baked solution that I discovered that mostly solved my issue was discovered somewhat by accident. I found that when the issues occurred, I could disconnect power from the rear speaker module, wait a few seconds and reconnect, resulting in the rear speakers kicking in with the sound clarity and voulume that was expected from a set of surround speakers. Eventually I ended up plugging the rear speaker module into a smart plug and setting up an automation on my Samsung galaxy phone, with the smartthings app, that would trigger the smart plug to switch on 10 seconds after switching on the soundbar. and voila! A mostly working solution. I also set up an automation to swithch off the smart plug killing the power to the rear speaker module 10 seconds after the soundbar was switched off. For the most part, this has worked, with an occasional hiccup, but far less frustrating and less frequent. I realize by now that the HW Q70R and the SWA 8500s are dinosaurs and Samsung has moved on to promote their newer stuff. But I still feel ripped off by Samsung and it's engineers who design this stuff. Anyway, hope this helps someone out there. Who knows, maybe I'll save someone from throwing their soundbar and rear speakers out the window. Lol.
