Sennheiser – AMBEO Soundbar | Plus 7.1.4 Channel Soundbar Dual Built-in Subwoofers with Advanced Streaming Connectivity – Black
$999.99
Last updated on April 8, 2024 5:13 AM
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5 reviews for Sennheiser – AMBEO Soundbar | Plus 7.1.4 Channel Soundbar Dual Built-in Subwoofers with Advanced Streaming Connectivity – Black
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Sennheiser – AMBEO Soundbar | Plus 7.1.4 Channel Soundbar Dual Built-in Subwoofers with Advanced Streaming Connectivity – Black
$999.99
Jacbo14 –
PROS
+ Truly Amazing Surround Sound From A Single Bar
+ Dolby Atmos and DTS:X Sound Incredible
+ Ambeo Mode Opens Up The Soundstage Significantly
+ Audio Fidelity is Class Leading
+ Ability to Pair Multiple Sennheiser Wireless or Wired 3rd Party Subwoofers
+ Auto Calibration For Your Room With Built-In Mics
+ Dedicated Center Channel and Clear Voice Enhancements
+ Night Mode
+ Lots Of Customizability With Multiple Audio Modes And EQ In App
+ Relatively Compact Footprint
+ Minimalist Design
CONS
– When Using Ambeo Mode With Some Sources, The Audio Can Sometimes Sound “Processed”
– For The Best Experience, You Will Definitely Want To Add A Subwoofer (Extra Cost)
WHAT WOULD MAKE IT BETTER
– Lights on The Top Of The Soundbar That Indicate The Codec Playing (e.g. Dolby Atmos or DTS:X) Aren’t Really Visible When Seated (Need to Use The App To Verify). Add Them To The Front Instead
– The Ability To Buy & Add Optional Dedicated Wireless Surround Sound Speakers Would Be A Nice Add-On For One More Level Of Immersion If People Wanted Them
THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT
The Sennheiser Ambeo Plus soundbar is a great choice for anyone looking for a compact and high-quality audio solution. It is truly a standout in terms of audio quality. Not only does it support high-end audio codecs such as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, but it also offers an immersive, multi-dimensional audio experience with its Ambeo 3D audio capabilities. The ability to add (up to 4) Sennheiser wireless subs, or your own dedicated wired subs from a 3rd party, is amazing for immersion. Sometimes the sound can get a little too “processed”, especially when upmixing stereo or lower channel sources using the Ambeo mode, but in most cases the sound is incredible, and with a few setting adjustments, can easily be tailored to your own preference. After over a week of putting this bar through its paces, I am still frequently amazed by how effective it is at doing exactly what it says it is going to do. It has been a lot of fun pulling out my favorite movies, games, and music to see how I could push this bar, and in almost all cases, it handled them in a way that defied my already high expectations. It does work best when fed the highest end codecs or high-resolution audio, but in all regards it is still a heavyweight performer. It isn’t cheap for a single soundbar, but with the sheer audio fidelity and shockingly good surround sound performance, you’d be hard pressed to find a better all around solution for the price. I highly recommend this if you are in the market for a high-end all-in-one soundbar solution.
THE BREAKDOWN
As an amateur home theater enthusiast, I have a lot of experiences with soundbars at all levels of price, size, and brand. I wouldn’t call myself an audiophile, but I do think I have a pretty discerning ear for sound quality, and can be a bit picky when it comes to my own home set-up. In this regard, I already own the older Sennheiser Ambeo Max soundbar, which is still incredible, but is undeniably big, bulky, and not at all subtle. So when sennheiser announced a smaller, more refined, Ambeo Plus soundbar, I was really excited to see how the brand could take the incredible performance of the Max and bring it to a more affordable, more room friendly, and updated design. In almost all regards, they delivered with huge success.
Unboxing
To start, unboxing and setting up the bar is easy. You do get a sizeable quickstart guide with the bar, but really it comes down to connecting everything (including a sub if you bought one or are bringing your own), powering it up, downloading the app, and then performing the self calibration. The self-calibration uses built-in mics in the bar, so you don’t need an external mic, and takes about 3 minutes to complete. The app has a nice display to walk you through what it is doing during calibration, and if you need to re-calibrate, the process is very seamless. Once calibrated you have a few demos available in the app to showcase the performance of the bar (including DTS:X and Atmost demos), which is a good first introduction into what the unit is capable of.
App & Remote
Speaking of the app, beyond calibration & demos, you can adjust pretty much everything you would want to via the app. This includes sound profiles (e.g. movie, music, neutral, adaptive, etc.), adjust the center volume and clear voice setting, night mode, EQ your sound profiles, adjust the strength of the Ambeo virtualization, adjust your subwoofer volume, view what codecs are playing and how many channels they use, firmware updates, and more. In general the app is responsive and works well, but I always prefer reaching for the remote when I can over my phone. Thankfully, the remote is pretty nice, with the ability to adjust most common things you would be changing regularly (like sound profiles and night mode) all from the remote. The only weird thing that takes some getting used to is the multi-function button, which does act as a mute for TV, and play/pause for music, but does take away having a dedicated always available mute button for all cases.
Design
As for the actual design of the bar, it isn’t small per-say, but is certainly more in-line with soundbar sizes today (and is much smaller than the massive Ambeo Max). Its about 41” wide, 3” tall, and 4” deep. Its wrapped in a cloth cover that looks good, and has a matte black cover with the sennheiser logo and touch controls that looks very sleek. Behind the metal grills you can see the up-firing drivers and built-in subwoofers. There is an LED lightstrip on the top that acts as the visual cue for things like volume, input, firmware updates, calibration status, voice assistant, and much more. There is a little guide that comes with the bar on how to interpret the different light color and pattern cues of the LEDs, but generally it isn’t too bad to get the hang of. It isn’t quite as nice as a dedicated screen on the front of the bar to give you information, but does look a bit more modern and once you get used to it, tells you most everything you need to know. There are also little LED indicators on the top that turn on if you are sending Dolby Atmos or DTS:X context to the bar, but they can really only be seen when standing over the bar, so their utility is less relevant when just sitting down to enjoy some content. To view codec info, more often than not you will want to use the app. All around, it is a nicely designed soundbar that is more understated than most, including its big brother the Ambeo Max.
Sound Quality
While the soundbar may be more understated in design, it is definitely not when it comes to what counts most: the sound quality. I have heard lots of soundbars do virtual surround sound, but this one truly needs to be heard to be believed. It doesn’t just make the sound “bigger”, but it genuinely feels like there are speakers in your room you didn’t know were there. I won’t go as far as to say it is as accurate or high fidelity as having dedicated surround speakers all over your room, but there are times where you wouldn’t know the difference. This is most noticeable with Dolby Atmos or DTS:X movies. One of my favorites to test is Ready Player One, during the opening race scene. It genuinely sounded like a train was flying past the left side of my room, and that king kong was overhead. When I played the opening chase from No Time To Die, you could hear gunshots whizzing around the room like it was full of speakers. My room is not perfectly symmetrical, with the right side opening up to a hallway, but I still very much had the impression of surround sound on both sides of me, even in spite of less surfaces to reflect sound off of than an ideal room would have.
Likewise, music sounds great on the Ambeo Plus, with clear vocals and an ability to really scale the sound beyond the small footprint of the bar. Where the sound only really begins to falter a bit for me is when upscaling stereo or lower channel sources up to 7.1.4 with the Ambeo mode. At times the sound can almost be too “processed” sounding, and you lose some of the detail from those stereo tracks. Thankfully, you can easily turn off the Ambeo mode and set the bar to “Neutral” for a much more faithful representation of the tracks in those cases.
One of my favorite features is the ability to add your own subwoofers to the bar. I have two subs I used previously with my room, and they calibrated perfectly with my Ambeo Plus. Once added, the subs blended great into the soundscape, and really opened up the low-end frequencies that the Plus can’t hit on its own. It doesn’t sound bad at all without a sub, but if you really want to take things to the next level, I highly recommend adding the wireless one that goes with the plus, or a wired sub of your own. Likewise, I wish that Sennheiser sold optional wireless rear speakers you could sync to the bar. It is amazing for surround sound on its own, but with dedicated rear speakers that could sync to the bar and calibrate, it would take the bar that much higher for those of us who want the option, since rear surround sound is always the hardest to emulate with virtualization. Overall though, it really is one of the best sounding all-in-one speakers I have ever heard, and will blow you away with what it can do when given the right material. If you want the one of the absolute best soundbars on the market today, and you don’t want to fill your room with speakers, you should definitely put this one high on your list.
CactusMan –
I have owned several sound bars and home theater systems over the last 15 years, as well as some Sennheiser headphones and earbuds, and I am honestly blown away at what this soundbar is capable of.
For the last 4-years I’ve been using a JBL 3.1 Soundbar in my living room, and a 10+ year old Sony HT-CT260. The Sony was a great value back in the day for the build and sound quality, having held up without issue over several moves from apartments to houses. The JBL, on the other hand, was something that I always thought sounded better on the showroom floor of Best Buy than in my house. Needless to say, I opted to replace my living room experience with one of the priciest soundbars on the market, the Sennheiser Ambeo Plus. While not Sennheiser’s flagship, that would be the even more expensive Ambeo Max soundbar, this thing did not disappoint at all.
Out of the box you get the soundbar itself, a nice hefty remote, power cable, and a premium HDMI 2.1 cable capable of supporting eARC and UHD, HDR (including Dolby Vision). The remote even has little rubber pads on the bottom to prevent it from slipping off an armrest or coffee table. Setup was a breeze, and since my 4-year-old Sony 4K TV doesn’t support eARC, I continued setup with standard ARC and plugged both my Xbox Series X and Apple TV 4K right into the back two HDMI ports. It’s nice to know this supports the latest standards should I upgrade my TV in the future. Also, side note, the ENTIRE box and packaging, excluding the plastic handle, is fully recyclable so nicely done Sennheiser.
Once booted up, I followed the instructions and downloaded the Sennheiser Smart Control app. This part was REALLY cool, in my opinion. The app and the soundbar’s built in microphones worked together to essentially SONAR my living room, bursting out digital soundbites and scanning how long they take to echo off the walls so that it can digitally place speakers around the room for a pseudo-7.1.4 Dolby Atomos experience. Other reviews I’ve seen call this a 5.1 system, and I agree based on the speaker setup of the unit, but in all honesty the sound beaming capabilities of this soundbar give Sennheiser a good argument for calling this thing a 7.1.4 system.
The sound profile on this bar is phenomenal. I didn’t have a way to measure its sound curve, but to my ears, comparatively to both my JBL and Sony soundbars, this unit delivers such clear crisp clarity across all frequencies. My JBL really felt like the bar itself had very little bass and mid-range, and the sub would only really fill in the bass leaving the whole audio experience to feel a little piercing and just not at all full. That is the opposite on this soundbar, where I can clear here every frequency with superb clarity. The bass on this unit is quite substantial for its size and I was quite impressed, though I think it could benefit from pairing subwoofer to achieve a true home theater experience. For that I would suggest looking into either a wired subwoofer (which is very cool that this thing has an option for) or Sennheiser’s own Ambeo Sub that pairs wirelessly to the Ambeo Plus. Cheaper soundbars don’t generally give you the option to add a wired subwoofer, so you’re usually stuck with the one it comes with the unit, or one sold from the manufacturer designed to pair with your bar. The fact that they give you the option is very nice, especially since you’re already buying a +$1K soundbar and their wireless option at $600 retail is certainly not the cheapest option.
The sound profiles that I used primarily were Normal, Movie and Adaptive, and I chose to leave the Ambeo setting turned on for most of my listening. The Ambeo setting is what essentially the magic behind the 3D listening experience of this soundbar. Most soundbars do a nice job with stereo and some Dolby Audio, but Dolby Atmos with the Ambeo setting turned on is just an incredible home theater experience. One of my first times booting up the unit was to play NBA 2K 2023, and the sound immersion was unlike anything I ever expected to get out of a soundbar. It literally sounded like I had speakers behind me, giving me a feeling of being in an NBA arena. Movies and TV shows sound even more amazing, and there’s TONS of content mixed in Dolby Atmos available on Netflix, Apple TV+, and tons of others. Heck, YouTube TV even supports 5.1 audio, so my general TV watching experience has been improved for content that supports it. Just incredible sound immersion.
Some other things to consider with this soundbar:
• I found that audio from my TV to the sound bar via HDMI ARC sounded worse than audio from devices directly connected to the soundbar. Turns out my TV had a setting turned on called Clear Audio Plus. Turning this setting off greatly improved my sound quality. There may be a similar setting on your TV to check if you aren’t getting the sound profile you are expecting.
• I personally bought the Ambeo Sub to pair with this bar, and I would highly recommend it. This bar can support pairing up to 4 wireless Ambeo Subs, which may be overkill for some and useful for others. It just adds that little bit of low end it was missing.
• If you do pair this with a subwoofer, or if you move, replace or add furniture in your room, then you’ll want to re-calibrate your soundbar to adjust to your new space/layout.
• There were a handful of times the first day after setup where the app couldn’t find the soundbar on my network, but I haven’t had any issues since then.
• You can link Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, and it also supports Chromecast. I haven’t used these features yet, I already have several home assistants around the house that it seems overkill to me to have it in the soundbar itself, though I imagine if you are casting content then you could use voice control to pause or rewind content.
• This soundbar is Apple AirPlay compatible, and I loved this feature for listing to my Apple Music library while doing chores around the house.
• The Ambeo Subwoofer is $599, on top of the $1,500 soundbar. Other wired options are available for much cheaper, but beware of degrading your overall experience by pairing a cheap sub with a high end soundbar.
Sennheiser is known for audio quality, and they hold true with this offering. What this soundbar offers is the ability to basically add Dolby Atmos, not just surround sound, to your house or apartment without the need for rear speakers. That is incredible. Yes, you are paying a bit of a premium, but it’s a quality known brand in this space, and quite frankly you are getting incredible sound quality and features for the price.
pb22 –
After listening to the sound that comes out from this Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Plus all i can say is this is really a state-of-the-art audio system as described by manufacturer, this has been designed to deliver a truly immersive and high-quality sound experience. With its 7.1.4 channel configuration, the soundbar offers a true surround sound experience, putting the listener right in the middle of the action. The AMBEO technology further enhances the soundstage and provides clear voice and detailed sound that is a real treat to the ears.
The soundbar has two built-in subwoofers that are designed to deliver powerful bass and enhance the overall audio experience. The subwoofers are optimized to work with the soundbar and provide a smooth, distortion-free sound, making the AMBEO Soundbar an ideal choice for music, movies, and gaming.you can connect around 4 external wireless subwoofers to this and comes with all latest HDMI 2.1, RJ45, USB, Optical and RCA Ports
The AMBEO Soundbar features advanced streaming connectivity options, allowing users to easily stream audio content from their smart devices, gaming consoles, and other sources. The soundbar supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, built-in chromecast and AirPlay 2, making it easy to connect with different devices and enjoy audio content wirelessly. The soundbar also supports high-resolution audio formats like DTS-X Dolby Atmos ensuring that users can enjoy their favorite songs and movies in the highest quality.
One of the nicest feature this soundbar have is room calibration it will take couple of minutes to analyze the space calibrate and fill the whole room with best sound
In terms of design, the AMBEO Soundbar is sleek and modern, making it a perfect addition to any home entertainment setup. The soundbar is finished in black, giving it a sophisticated look, and the compact design makes it easy to integrate into any living space. The soundbar is also designed to be user-friendly, with simple controls and an intuitive interface, making it easy to adjust the audio settings to suit your preferences and the remote comes with this soundbar is of premium quality come with lot of presets too, The Smart Control app is a life saver you can control all the functions of the soundbar via this app
One of the standout features of the AMBEO Soundbar is its ability to create a virtual 360 surround sound experience without the need for additional speakers. This makes it an ideal choice for those who want a premium sound system but do not have the space for multiple speakers. The AMBEO technology uses advanced algorithms to create a spacious and realistic soundstage, putting the listener right in the middle of the action.
This soundbar also have handsfree voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Apple and Google Assistant and also can be integrated with Spotify, Tidal etc
In conclusion, the Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Plus is a premium sound system that offers an immersive and high-quality audio experience. With, advanced connectivity options, and sleek design, the soundbar is a great choice for those who want a premium sound system for their home entertainment setup. The soundbar’s ability to create a virtual surround sound experience without the need for additional speakers makes it a versatile and convenient choice for lot of music lovers
BbTech –
Background
Got this as an enhancement to a 55” television that has limited audio capabilities. I opted for a soundbar because I wanted something simple and straight forward to set up, and I wanted it to just work without anyone having to do anything to use it.
Size and placement
I had concerns about the size, as the TV stand I use is about the smallest possible for the 55” TV I am using it with. The stand is only 42 inches wide. My 55” TV is 48.5 inches wide, so it actually hangs over the sides a bit. I actually bought a specific TV because of this, which lets the legs be set closer to the center, but this also means the legs are closer together than the width of the speaker, so the soundbar has to be set in front of legs. Another 55″ TV I had couldn’t fit on this stand. This all turned out to not be an issue. I did have to push the TV back a bit to make room for the soundbar. In fact I had to push it back as far as it could be pushed without the legs going off the back, but in the end, everything did just fit. The soundbar is about 41.5 inches wide, so it just fits the width of the 42” cabinet, so it looks good. Anything bigger would have hung over the sides. The speaker is also the exact height to the bottom of the TV, about 3 inches, so it completely covers the area under the TV, and the legs, hiding them from view, without obstructing the TV screen at all.
Front to back, from the back of the rearmost leg of the TV to the front of the speaker bar required a depth of 15 inches on the TV stand. Because it has to be placed in front of the legs, the speaker is about 3.5-4 inches in front of the TV. If you have a pedestal stand, or the legs of your tv are less than 42” apart, you will need to have at least 5 inches between the front of the legs/pedestal and the front of the cabinet.
This is definitely the largest soundbar I could have fit into my setup. Anything bigger would not have fit.
Hookup
Physically connecting between the TV and the soundbar was very straight forward. Accompanied with the soundbar in the box was an HDMI cable, a power cable, and the remote. I ran the two cables under the TV to connect them. As the soundbar completely covers the opening under the TV All of the connections are completely hidden.
All in all, once everything was connected and it was placed in front of the TV, it looked really nice. The soundbar itself is quite subtle and looks elegant.
The only issue I had with connecting the soundbar to the TV was using the correct HDMI ports, on both the TV, and on the soundbar. Installation instructions included with the speaker were very clear, the problems I had were user error. I needed to connect the soundbar to the HDMI port on my TV that supported ARC. I assumed that would be HDMI1 and I also assumed HDMI1 was the primary HDMI port on the back of my TV. My TV has 4 ports, 1 on the back, 3 on the sides. It turned out the primary port on the back of my TV was actually HDMI4, and HDMI1, which supported ARC was on the side. I also connected it to the wrong HDMI port on the soundbar. There are 3 HDMI ports on the back and I had it flipped which order they were in. Before figuring that out, I was trying to select the ARC option under sound in the TV settings, but while it was shown on the menu, it was not selectable. Once I figured out I was plugged into the wrong ports and got the cable connected between the correct two ports, it just worked automatically. I didn’t actually have to change any settings.
Note above I stated I connected it to the ARC port, not the eARC port. This apparently means I won’t be able to take full advantage of all of the features of this soundbar.
Setup/Calibration
Now that I had the physical connections in place, I installed the SennHeiser app on my phone. I told it to discover new devices and it prompted me if I was trying to set up headphones or a soundbar and I selected the soundbar option. The app then showed the soundbar as being discovered. Note, I had not connected it to my Internet yet at that time, so it had to have detected it through bluetooth. It then prompted me for my wifi password. After giving it the password, it detected a software update and I told it to proceed with installing it. This took quite a while, and after some time, the device disconnected. I wasn’t really sure what was going on at this point. Was it still updating, rebooting, had it not come back up correctly? I just didn’t really know. It had an option to forget the device, so I tried that and then I tried to rediscover it and it couldn’t detect it again. It kept saying no device was found. I presume it was still going through the upgrade process, but there wasn’t any sort of progress indicator or anything. Eventually, after some time, something happened. Like my TV switched inputs or something. I woke my phone back up and it had rediscovered the device. I switched back to the FireTV device on the TV, and selected the soundbar again on the app. It searched for an update, but this time stated it was already up to date. I went through a few more steps using the app, including performing its sound calibration which only took a couple of minutes.
Despite the little minor hiccups, with cable misplacement and software updating, the whole process was pretty quick. I would say from the time I opened the box to the time the calibration was complete was probably only about 20 minutes.
Performance
There were a few demos on the app that played some sample sounds through the soundbar. They were interesting and all sounded good, but I really wanted to hear how it sounded, for what I expect will be my primary use case, and that is watching TV, and not just television, but movies, so I switched over to Disney+ to look for something I thought might have some good sound effects to test it out with. I picked Star Wars, Rogue One.
First Impression- With the understanding that I am not even taking full advantage of all of its capabilities because I don’t have a subwoofer and I don’t have eARC capability, it sounds great… to me. I preface this with the fact I am not an audiophile. Maybe when I was younger I was, or maybe I wanted to believe I was, but today, I am definitely not. If I were, I am not sure I would have even been looking at a soundbar. I went with a soundbar for exactly what this gave me. Easy setup, great sound with little hassle. No amplifier needed, no speakers and no wires. Just sit it in front of the TV and plug it in. However, I still appreciate good sound when I hear it and this sounds great to me. It was rich and deep. I was surprised actually at the deep rumblings I could hear considering there is no subwoofer connected. To put it into perspective. I have a dog who is not particularly fond of thunderstorms. When the scene in Rogue One came on where the rebel base was being bombed, she didn’t like it and she actually left the room.
Chromecast, Alexa and other built in Services
A feature it has, which I was not aware of when I ordered it, but which I will certainly use, is integrated Chromecast. My TV already has integrated Chromecast, so I could have just cast to the TV and had the sound go through the TV to the soundbar, but having it integrated directly into the soundbar lets me cast to the soundbar directly while leaving the TV turned off. I didn’t have to do anything to set this up. I just selected Cast from my device, saw the name I gave the soundbar when I set it up and selected it. This worked the first time, but later, it doesn’t seem to be working anymore. I can still cast through the TV, but not the speakers directly. I may have changed a setting and I haven’t figured out what yet. Sound stops playing on my device when I hit cast, but the sound doesn’t come out of the soundbar.
I tested Chromecast above using Amazon Music. But then I saw, the soundbar supports Alexa directly. I am heavily invested in the Amazon Ecosystem. I tried speaking to it, but it didn’t work at first. I went back to the App on my phone. The microphone in the soundbar that enables Alexa is apparently disabled by default. I went through the setup process, provided my Amazon Credentials and enabled the Microphone. I also gave it control of the Firetv stick I use with this TV, which I usually control with an echo speaker in the room. It transferred me from the Sennheiser app to the Alexa app to do this, and after doing this, I was able to play Amazon Music through the Alexa App and it came out of the speakers. However, controlling the Firetv, it only seemed to be able to turn it on and off. Anything else seemed too complicated for it. It is definitely is not as capable as the Echo speaker. I also tried telling it to play one of my playlists. It couldn’t seem do that either. It seemed audibly telling the built in Alexa to play my music is not possible, but playing it through the Alexa App works fine. I ended up turning the built in Alexa back off and switching control back to my Echo Speaker. It would be cool if it worked, being able to control the TV with the soundbar. Would be a great feature, but I was not able to get it to work at the moment.
It apparently also supports Airplay if you are an IOS user, and a few other services as well.
Summary
This was just what I needed. So simple to install. It greatly improves the movie watching experience, making it so much more immersive. I am very happy I chose this soundbar. For me, the smaller size, and the streaming support and integrated Chromecast and Airplay make this even better device, for me, than the original soundbar Max. I am very happy with it.
k1zit –
The level of immersive sound that this soundbar is able to produce is incredible; especially given it’s sleek and minimalist form factor. If you’re looking for a serious home theatre audio experience but you either don’t have the space for a traditional 7.1 surround system, or simply don’t want to deal with the added complexity, this is a fantastic alternative. Over the course of the last week, I have paired this soundbar with my smart TV and have put it through its paces by playing PS5 titles, watching 4k blurays, and streaming content through platforms like Netflix, Disney Plus, and YouTube. Regardless of what content I watched, the audio always sounded extremely high quality. The bass that this soundbar is capable of producing is impressive due to it’s built-in dual 4 inch subwoofers. The mids are clear and crisp due to it’s seven high-end aluminum cone drivers. The AMBEO surround sound virtualization technique that this soundbar uses is very positionally accurate and did a phenomenal job of filling the entire room. Although watching & listening standard audio format content sounded great, hearing Dolby Atmos content was on another level (you can tell when the soundbar has detected Dolby Atmos content as the “Dolby Atmos” LED will turn on). Personally, I found some of the best selection of Dolby Atmos content on Netflix which made my experience with this soundbar that much better. Watching “Extraction” and “The Gray Man” blew my mind. It truly felt like I had side and rear speakers. Bullets sounded like they were flying above me and around me. Sound effects during action scenes sounded rich and defined. Explosions sounded thunderous and boomy without getting muddled or distorted. The only sound signature that didn’t seem to be quite on par with the rest of the high end audio experience was the dialogue. While it sounded clear and crisp, the vocal reproduction didn’t have the vibrancy and richness that I was expecting from such a high end soundbar. I tried several different audio presets but it still didn’t quite meet my expectations. I stumbled across the “voice enhancement” feature and VOILA; what a massive difference! I have found that for Dolby Atmos content the “Movie” + “Voice” presets sound the best to me. Non Dolby Atmos content sounded the best to me when using “Neutral” + “Voice” or “Adaptive” + “Voice”. Keeping the “AMBEO” surround tech feature on was a must for me; especially when playing video games. The immersive experience that is lost without it is pretty significant.
In terms of setup, it was a breeze. The soundbar has multiple inputs for all of your audio sources (eARC HDMI, 2 additional HMDI inputs, an ethernet port, fiber optical input, USB-A, composite L+R input, and a subwoofer preout). Yes, you can connect an external subwoofer to this soundbar if you truly want to take the low frequency channel to the next level. For me, the built-in dual subwoofers were more than enough to provide ample bass for my 1400 sq foot townhome living room. The Sennheiser “Smart Control” app is a must download if you get this soundbar. It allows you to properly calibrate the soundbar depending on your environment. It does so by using 4 built-in far field high-precision microphones along with it’s proprietary algorithm to detect things like sound reflection and refraction. Just make sure the room is quiet, sit back for a few minutes, and let it do it’s thing. The app also allows you to select all the different features that are found on the remote like the audio presets, volume, sources, etc. Speaking of the remote, it is very high quality! It has a very good heft to it and I love the included rubber feet; they do such a good job of keeping the remote stationary that they almost feel like magnets! Despite how superb the remote feels, the only minor cons that I have with this soundbar have to do with the remote. The first minor annoyance is that Sennheiser decided not to illuminate the buttons. It would be great to see Sennheiser put a sensor on the remote that illuminates the buttons when it’s picked up. The second minor con is that there’s no dedicated mute button. While you can use the circular multi-purpose button located at the top of the remote, you have to hold it down for a few seconds and then it takes a few more seconds for it to mute/unmute. This is a viable solution but I would have preferred the ability to instantly mute.
Overall, this is hands-down the best soundbar I’ve ever heard. There’s no comparison with the sub two-hundred dollar Yamaha soundbar that it’s replacing in my living room. The difference in high quality audio was instantly noticeable. A very welcome surprise was how amazing music sounded with this soundbar. I can’t stress enough how impressed I am with music playback on this thing. Listening to Diana Krall and Sarah Brightman on the “Music” preset gave me a similar experience to when I heard Super Audio CDs for the first time back in the day. The vocals are so rich with depth. Mids and highs are crisp and clear. Instruments are easily discernable and sound so natural. Other genres like electronic, reggae, and classical also sounded fantastic! If you’re looking for a high end and hassle-free audio experience for both movies and music, you’ve gotta check out this Ambeo Soundbar Plus!