As mentioned, I was only looking for something approaching high fidelity. I never took any measurements with the Yamaha or the Vizio. The Yamaha may have been marginally more accurate, but not nearly as open and would not play nearly as loud.
When I do serious music listening, I have a much higher end setup in our sun room. But usually my wife and I sit in the living room while music is playing in the sun room (which has the speakers playing in the direction of our sofa in the living room).
Way back when I was younger I spent prodigous time tyring to find audio nirvana. Had lots of neat equipment with names like Audio Research (amps / preamp), Carver (amp / preamp) Kenwood (tuner, still the best I ever had and wish I had it back), Linn (turntable), Win (turntable / strain gauge cartridge), Fidelity Research (tonearm / MC cartridge), and speakers by Dahlquist, Quad, KEF, DCM, and Vandersteen. Spent lots of time sitting speakers just right for imaging, finding the sweet spot on the sofa, cleaning records, adjusting the tone arm for just the right vertical tracking angle. I was one busy son of a gun. Playing a record was a lot like Batman getting ready to battle the joker. But instead of putting on the Bat-Tights, Untility Belt and Bat Cape, I would lay the record on the turntable, clean in with special cleaning tools, clean the stylus, run an anti-static brush over the record, adjust the vertical tracking angle on the tone-arm to that corresponding to the angle used in cutting the record, pick up the tonearm and gently set the stylus in the opening groove. When I was single and dating, the girl had usually started to doze. And in 15 or 20 minutes when things were getting interesting on the sofa, I had to get up and turn the record over and go through all of my other gyrations, then hope the lady in question was still in the mood. Usually they weren't.
Currently I am listening to a pair of Infinity loudspeakers through an Onkyo receiver using an old Panasonic DVD player as my one and only audio source. Total cost of everything in my current system is less than $1,500.00 and this is the most accurate sound I have ever had. Comes closest to music, but still nowhere near the real thing. Some of my older systems had close to 20 times the investment and all sounded good at the time. I don't miss vinyl. Gave away over 3,000 albums in the mid 90's.
I guess I am saying all of this as I know I have read numerous posts where people don't understand why some of us would purchase a soundbar as opposed to having a 5.1 or 7.1 surround system. I have heard many of these types of systems in homes, big box and specialty retailers and still think two channels of stereo give a more accurate rendition of most recorded music. Decent hi-fi mono or stereo (and I give the Vizio above average on the decent scale) is to me much preferrable to the many small satellites placed all around the room. And I really can't understand spending gobs of money for five or seven or more high end speakers to place around a room when there should be very little information coming from any excpet the front two or three. Unfortunately, I have been in many homes with high end setups like this and the people never understodd proper setup of a surround system. Most had their surround speakers loud enough to hear all of the time creating more of a concophony than a coherent sound. The same with their sub-woofers. If they couldn't hear it, they weren't getting their moneys worth.
I have already passed the Yamaha sound bar to my son who is enjoying it. I will probably be quite happy with the Vizio for the next two or three years.
For those of you who purchased the Vizio, I think you have made an excellent choice.
Sorry for the ranting and reminiscing, I will try to avoid that in the future.
