view : It was the taradiddle of two soundbar launches in Berlin . There was the lavishly designed and lavishly expensiveBeosound Theatrefrom Bang & Olufsen , and the more sensibly plan and much less expensiveAmbeo Plusbar from Sennheiser .
I can see where Bang & Olufsen is go with the Beosound Theatre . I ’ve not seen or heard it in action myself , but another diarist reported the Theatre was envision as a long - full term investment funds in a product , something that would last ten years or more , its modular nature allow it to be upgrade to last even longer and keep up the up-to-the-minute engineering .
But I do n’t intend that people , especially home theatre fans , quite care about that . I think people keep things for as long as they want , and the home base cinema grocery has always had a sense of upgrading and scale to your motive but buying a £ 5000 + soundbar lock you in . Buying the Beosound Theatre feel like a commitment , and for what is essentially an audio frequency upgrade , it ’s a very big loyalty . You ’re not buying this soundbar to boost your Toshiba - brandmark video .
The Ambeo Plus is , at least for me , more my vibration . It ’s stocky , sleek , supports all the major audio formatting out of the boxwood , can stream from pretty much any wireless source available and ( hallelujah ) hasHDMIinputs to plug in other physical source . It ’s a soundbar that , from a feature side , has all you ’ll ever really need .
And like its bigger sibling , it sounds much larger than its size would suggest , thanks to Ambeo processing aggregate with bespoke upfiring drivers that produced a magniloquent , bigger sound . In the brief demo I had , change over between having the Ambeo on and off lead in a drastically different performance . With it off , the upshot fascinate tightly to the concealment whereas with the Ambeo processing , the tiptop , space and width was expansive . You could genuinely hear the pelting set down from theDolby Atmosdemo high above .
However , the issue with compact immersive soundbars is that they ’re not genuinely immersive enough . The Sennheiser does n’t support any rear loudspeaker system that I know off to satiate in the blank space behind you , so they are always front - heavy .
Unlike the large and renamed Ambeo Max soundbar , it ca n’t produce that good sense of effects just behind you or to your side . It can support up to four subwoofer , which sounds like overkill , but the three connected to the Ambeo Plus provided plenty of fun and world power with the low - end frequency carrying into action . What I would have like is to have hear the basso performance without the subwoofer get in touch as that would really confirm whether this is an ‘ all - in - one ’ .
So there ’s an aspect of via media with compact immersive soundbars – they are compromised from the get - go because they ’re lowly – but from what I ’ve heard the Ambeo Plus does a middling ripe occupation of acquire around those issue at a cost that wo n’t scare off as many citizenry away .
