Help! The sound from our new Sony flat panel TV is awful.......?

We have recently bought a Sony KDL-32W5810 flat panel TV and although after reading many reviews on various flat panel TV's we were aware that the sound would not be very good, we were not expecting it to be as bad as it is. The picture is great, the space saving and movability a big bonus, BUT compared to our previous Panasonic CRT tele the sound is really crap. Very 'woolly at low levels and distorts at high levels. In fact we were almost tempted to sell the Sony and keep the old CRT tv ! Well we are not going that route but we neither have the money (just retired on fairly basic pension) nor, for that matter the space, for a full home cinema surround sound system. We are not looking for deep B just clear sound in both speech and music comparable at least to that you got on premium brand CRT televisions. Can anyone suggest the most economical options for us. We do NOT want to have wires strung all over the place. We are aware of the existence of 'sound bars' but the reviews we have seen of the 'affordable to us' ones do not seem very encouraging.