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OPINION: It was the story of two soundbar launches in Berlin. There was the extravagantly designed and extravagantly costly Beosound Theatre from Bang & Olufsen, and the extra sensibly designed and far cheaper Ambeo Plus bar from Sennheiser.
I can see the place Bang & Olufsen goes with the Beosound Theatre. I’ve not seen or heard it in motion myself, however one other journalist reported the Theatre was seen as a long-term funding in a product, one thing that will final ten years or extra, its modular nature permitting it to be upgraded to final even longer and sustain the newest expertise.
However I don’t assume that individuals, particularly house theatre followers, fairly care about that. I believe folks preserve issues for so long as they need, and the house cinema market has at all times had a way of upgrading and scaling to your wants however shopping for a £5000+ soundbar locks you in. Shopping for the Beosound Theatre appears like a dedication, and for what is basically an audio improve, it’s a really large dedication. You’re not shopping for this soundbar to spice up your Toshiba-branded TV.
Bang Olufsen Beosound Theatre
The Ambeo Plus is, at the very least for me, extra my vibe. It’s compact, modern, helps all the most important audio codecs out of the field, can stream from just about any wi-fi supply accessible and (hallelujah) has HDMI inputs to plug in different bodily sources. It’s a soundbar that, from a function facet, has all you’ll ever actually need.
And like its larger sibling, it sounds a lot bigger than its dimension would recommend, due to Ambeo processing mixed with bespoke upfiring drivers that produced a taller, larger sound. Within the transient demo I had, switching between having the Ambeo on and off resulted in a drastically totally different efficiency. With it off, the results gripped tightly to the display screen whereas with the Ambeo processing, the peak, area and width was expansive. You might genuinely hear the rain drops from the Dolby Atmos demo excessive above.
Nevertheless, the difficulty with compact immersive soundbars is that they’re not actually immersive sufficient. The Sennheiser doesn’t help any rear audio system that I do know off to fill within the areas behind you, so they’re at all times front-heavy.
In contrast to the larger and renamed Ambeo Max soundbar, it may possibly’t produce that sense of results simply behind you or to your facet. It could help as much as 4 subwoofers, which feels like overkill, however the three linked to the Ambeo Plus supplied loads of enjoyable and energy with the low-end frequency efficiency. What I might have favored is to have heard the bass efficiency with out the subwoofers linked as that will actually verify whether or not that is an ‘all-in-one’.
So there’s a side of compromise with compact immersive soundbars – they’re compromised from the get-go as a result of they’re smaller – however from what I’ve heard the Ambeo Plus does a fairly good job of getting round these points at a worth that received’t scare as many individuals away.
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