Fundamentally, $1,500 soundbars are always aimed at a niche audience. If you want very good sound but don’t want to be bothered (or don’t have the space) to build a dedicated front, rear and dedicated full surround system, spend that much on a single home theater kit . center speaker.Interestingly, while Sennheiser’s $1,499.95 Ambeo Soundbar Plus strikes many as a luxury purchase, this one is actually cheap The company’s two soundbar options. First released in 2019, the Ambeo Soundbar Max is still a workhorse and maintains an incredible price tag of $2,499.95.
When it comes to pumping out captivating and immersive Dolby Atmos audio, the Max (renamed when the Plusbar was introduced) ranks as arguably the best standalone soundbar on the market today. The 13-driver array outperforms many of its competitors such as Sonos, Samsung and Sony. barge cast Lead producer Liam James says the Ambeo is one of the best living room purchases he’s ever made, but coming up with the best-performing sound solution for his New York City apartment is a challenge. admits that they are “throwing money at the problem.”
With Plus, Sennheiser set out to create a smaller, sleeker, cheaper soundbar that showcases the company’s knack for creating spacious sound with advanced 3D audio processing. In addition to Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, it supports a variety of wireless audio add-ons including AirPlay 2, Chromecast, Spotify Connect and standard Bluetooth playback. So it’s packed with software compatibility, and given the price, this is exactly what I want. Plus still costs a lot, but at least there’s other competition in the same ballpark . You can’t say that about Max.
To keep the price down, Sennheiser had to limit the number of drivers it could cram into this soundbar.The Ambeo Soundbar Plus includes seven full-range speakers working together with dual 4-inch subwoofers. increase.That’s obviously not as overkill as the Max, but when paired with virtualized Phantom speakers, the company says this configuration can deliver a 7.1.4 surround experience from a single unit. , which resulted in a less gigantic product. For reference, Max weighs over 40 pounds (!) and is so large that it basically need Hang the TV on the wall.
But the Plus sat in front of my Hisense U8H and didn’t block my view of the bottom of the screen. It’s actually shorter in length than the Sonos Arc. Weighing in at 13.86 pounds, getting it out of the box and on the media stand wasn’t too much of a hassle. The Plus isn’t as impressive as the Max. The stylish design combines a hard plastic top with capacitive controls and fabric covering the front and sides. The whole thing exudes quality and feels beyond rugged. On the front of the soundbar he has two small LEDs. One lights up with “Ambeo” when 3D audio mode is enabled. The other displays Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, or MPEG-H (if one of these codecs is used).
reminder: On desktop, you can click the photo again to enlarge it.
Sennheiser has a remote control that allows you to turn on the unique Ambeo 3D audio processing, switch between presets (movie, music, adaptive, etc.), enable night mode (which cuts deep bass) and enhanced dialogue mode. It contains. It’s easy to use, but oddly, the remote doesn’t have a traditional mute button.i don’t know how you forgot it sound bar remote. Instead, there’s a confusing multi-function ‘o’ button that controls both mute and Amazon Alexa (if voice commands are enabled).
Sennheiser also stifled the long-term potential of the Ambeo Soundbar Plus with one unfortunate hardware decision. The device supports HDMI passthrough and has two inputs for this purpose, but these passthrough ports are HDMI 2.0a only. So the Plus can’t handle 4K 120Hz. Gaming, VRR, and other features deemed essential for Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 owners. It transmits over the HDR format perfectly fine, but I think this is a brutal compromise for such a premium product. It’s enough of a minus to expect the . However, many TVs only have two HDMI ports capable of 4K 120Hz, one of which often doubles as eARC, hogging the soundbar. We’ve gone too far in the HDMI 2.1 era, so we can’t forgive Sennheiser for missing the boat.
If you can live with the Ambeo Soundbar Plus being crippled in the passthrough department, it’s an outstanding performer in just about everything else. The audio it produces is wonderfully clear and rich. You’d expect top-notch sound for the money, but you’d be surprised at how many top-tier soundbars still have a hint of artificiality to the tone.
But Sennheiser is quick to say they want to provide rear speakers specifically for the soundbar. (Third-party subsystems can also be wired directly into the soundbar via the RCA sockets, giving you more flexibility than the Sonos system.)
As it stands, Sennheiser simply doesn’t offer rear surround, so the Ambeo Soundbar Plus did a great job of filling my room with spatial audio, but rather than immersing me, it gave me a 180-degree presentation. The height effect was more pronounced in Atmos content that made heavy use of height influence, but without the illusion that something was going on behind the scenes. This is an area where competing multi-speaker systems objectively win.
Once your Ambeo Soundbar Plus is connected, install Sennheiser’s Smart Control app on your iOS or Android device to complete setup, adjust settings and run sound optimization tests. This process takes several minutes and the test tones involved can be quite loud. It is not recommended to run it in the middle of the night. Once done, the soundbar will be able to better understand the room and adjust its spatial output accordingly.
I often enabled the “Ambeo” feature when watching both movies and TV. It works regardless of what content is being played, and its purpose is to enhance the surround effect for a wider soundstage and grander scale, or to create a spacious mix of stereo content. Sennheiser has put a lot of time and effort into his 3D work and has been shown to: In many cases Avoids the annoying reverb-like “arena” effect often seen when devices virtualize surround audio. With the Ambeo on the “boost” setting in Sennheiser’s app, you can certainly hear some of it, but in my room the normal level was the right balance. Still, sometimes I preferred to leave it off when watching her native Atmos content. The voice cuts through cleanly without any additional processing.
Music is where Ambeo’s spatialization tricks can succeed or fail, and I’ve rarely used it, except when playing Atmos mixes on Apple Music. (Still, as often mentioned, Atmos mixes are often inferior to stereo.) musicThe Sennheiser’s vocal response and midrange are excellent, and the sound isn’t barren or tinny.
We tested the Ambeo Soundbar Plus both with and without Sennheiser’s wireless subsystem. Lonely, the soundbar still works well enough, operating at 400 watts of amplification power.I have seen sand dunes and black adam HBO Max and Soundbar Plus brought captivating, cinematic Atmos sound to both films.all Last of Us It’s crisp, from the dialogue to the beautiful musical score underneath.Probably the biggest highlight so far was streaming All Quiet on the Western Front from netflix. War movies always make good demomes, and this was no exception.
Use the graphic EQ to customize the soundbar presets to your liking.If you want to boost the center channel to bring voices further forward in the mix, you can. Adding the Sennheiser Sub to the equation introduces a whole new layer of low-end power. Wirelessly linked to the soundbar, Sennheiser adjusts the sound profile between both devices and splits the frequencies for the best performance, as the Sennheiser app gives you complete control over the power of your sub , at least it’s an option if you’re worried about complaints from your neighbors.
Night mode does its job too, truncating all that growling bass playback, but I’d only consider it for late-night viewing, and there’s a way to take the punch out of the Ambeo Plus. AirPlay 2, Google Chromecast (for audio), and Bluetooth all worked as expected. And while I rarely fuss with voice control from gear, setting up Alexa and testing a few commands went smoothly. Sennheiser’s Smart Control app is great, and I love that I can always see how many channels the soundbar is receiving from the content I’m playing.
In conclusion, I think Sennheiser’s Ambeo Soundbar Plus is a great product in terms of pure sonic performance. But you can’t get around how big an investment it is. Choosing the Sonos Arc saves you a lot of money and gives you multi-room audio integration that Ambeo can’t match. Meanwhile, something like Samsung’s Q990B Atmos soundbar offers a great surround experience as it comes with rear satellite speakers. Sennheiser could do really well by bringing its own rear surround to the market.
For now, the Ambeo Soundbar Plus offers many of the same benefits as the original Max. You’re getting a level of clarity and tonality that many soundbars haven’t even begun to come close to. I don’t think there is. But for a single unit in the right environment, the plus sometimes sounds like a surprise.
I wish Sennheiser had gone that far and future-proofed this $1,500 soundbar with HDMI 2.1 passthrough. If you don’t mind that and have a garbage bag full of disposable cash, the Plus delivers on its promise of being a one-stop-shop for stellar home theater sound. It’s a total luxury buy, but a good one.
Photo by Chris Welch/The Verge
