Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Plus for TV and Music with Immersive 3D Surround Sound, Virtual 7.1.4 Speaker Setup, Built-in Dual Subwoofers, Advanced Streaming Connectivity, Night Mode, Black

It is a soundbar, short in length and height with respectively tiny speakers. However, Sennheither, making use of audiophile quality of its headphones, was able to create an audiophile soundbar to my ears. They also have Max, which I also tried but I do not have enoughspace for it. In the same room with Plus I have my stereo bookshelves from PMC and I am OK with even stereo music from Ambeo Plus bar next to it for ambience sound. It is, in general in the same class of sounds to me. I also tried Sonos Arc with a sub and era 100 - it kis something that sounds very good but they are in a completely other family of sounds.I have a separate HT room with projector, and this bar is intended to be used in a family room with 55” lg oled tv, mostly for Amazon prime and Netflix watching. One wall of it is just windows from ceiling to floor with light curtains, the opposite wall does not exists - 2 entries to 2 stairways and to a kitchen, ceiling has a 0.34 slope, rather high, , then further away even more complex in geometry. So this soundbar, according to its full online manual should not produce a surround Dolby Atmos sound in this room (you need a shoe box, with no curtains, with bar to be centrally placed - not my case). But it does! And it is much better than wit Arc, era 100 and sub mini from Sonos. Much more spatial, thick, intense, and extremely natural. I use for my tests 4k dvds (streaming is principally worse, especially in sound ) No time to die , chapters 1 (ice cracking) and Chapter 7 - all of it from walking on the street to entering into the action room with sound coming from earpieces of mail characters to shooting scenes (showing a clear 7.1.4 setup with bullets landed clearly behind you) - all works great (and I also can compare it to my other full size audiophile 5.1.4 system with separates as electronics, I used to have 9.1.4 but 5.1.4 is far better sounding to me in my room). The other test was based on Netflix Aletered Carbon shooting scene in season 2, I thin episode 2 - also great. Chapter 14 of Dune Part 1 in a sand storm is outstanding - you are placed within a flyer's cabin and hear all the sounds coming from all around you very clearly positioned and highly refined soundstage - I use 4k dvd (on Netflix it is HD and 5.1? - not anywhere close in sound). In Dune the soundstage is really half of otherwise somewhat dull movie to me. The soundbar produced a very high volume of 3D sound, with no congestion with outstanding bass (its own). Sometimes I was forgetting that it is soundbar, and though I am in my HT room.I observed a clear 7.1.4 ambience soundstage on Underworld 4k discs in 5 movie collection (movie #4, for example) as well.Of course, it is soundbar and no sound comes directly from behind from a separate long term moving sources like a moving car (it works for shootings though great - see above) as you can get from the aforementioned Sonos Arc+era 100+ Sub Mini setup. But those are rather rare and often unnatural to me (what was that?) and this is the price to pay for a single item soundbar, which is perfect for my family room, where surround speakers look out of place and in a way...Again, the sound of Plus is principally better to me than the above Sonos set up.The sound soundstage of Ambeo Plus is very space filling, you sort of feel all of it in a naturally involving way, why with Sonos set up, it is not so such, comparatively.'Blood coast" on Netflix stunned me when a rap music started in one of the episodes, it was so big and be so naturally present. I was stunned..Don’t take me wrong - Sonos system is an outstanding choice #2 for me (especially with era 300s) but in a different way, you cannot really directly to compare these two.Technical comments: I tried first to connect Nvidia shield tv and 4k player to TV and by a single Supra 8k cable to the bar. And had some connection handshake problems - it felt like Ambeo is not on, turns itself off, but, in fact, it was soundbar Plus disconnected, and I was hearing TV speakers, turning on automatically when no soundbar is available. Then I added something on LG tv setup about enhancing 4k hdmi connection in an advanced settings and it worked ok. Now, following Sennheither manual I connect Nvidia and player to the bar directly instead. It works fine. Also, this bar seems to be a massive computer and turning on, restarting, turn on HDMI connections inputs takes some noticable time, you need to wait noticably longer than say wit sonos arc. It does note mean Plus is broken, just it's computer power seems slows things down quit a bit.I also used a 12” sub from Focal which resulted in a full size sound, even more of audiophile sound, but it was too much of excitement in a night watching in a family room. I set it to -10db. Yes, this bar has an audiophile level of available settings! Then I decided to just use the bass from Plus. Excellent - see above about Dune.For music, I use Roon with Supra cat8 cables and Nucleous for lossless streaming with stunning bass not unsimilar or my 12” sub. Say, sub mini sounds very nice but it is a different quality.Update: I added Ambeo sub - it is a new level of sound. Unlike Focal sub, Ambeo sub has integrated seamlessly, probably due to Sennheiser software code. It was a bit difficult to find the right spot and I ended up by putting it on a shelf far behind my seating position (further than tv in front) and above my head out of the way completely - it is light. The sub added a principally better surround soundstage of 7.1.4 setup and sort of removed all congestion from processing (which now vibrates less too). For example, watching Fool me once yesterday I clearly heard as a car drove around me and made some turns behind my back. The soundstage seems better with those small surround speakers like era100, when you hear the SPEAKERS and amazed. With Plus + sub you hear a movie scene around you. Also Ambeo Light setting is much better in my room. Regular increases the range quite to far, needs a bigger room to feel it with no problem.Update: I finally added a sub from Bowers and Wilkins asw608 on spikes. The Ambeo sub did not work for me, probably because it is upfiring and it has automatic setup only. I generally think that it is only a sub for a soundbar, with not really an audiphile sound quality, while asw608 is a Hi Fi quality sub with many controls, just for a smaller space. I added it also because when I add a sub on the Smart app to the soundbar, it turns on a crossover (even if there is no sub connected!) apparently at 80Hz, which IMMEDIATELY IMPROVES THE SPEECH QUALITY by far. Addition of ASW608 also dramatically removes sound congestion and respectively improves the 3D soundstage because no power is used to run internal subs and, in particular, this also reduces the bar’s vibrations.Another Update: I returned to Sennheiser Ambeo sub because it clearly provides much better immersion due it's special design as it is calibrated as one system with the bar. Other wired subs are not calibrated within this system. Only Ambeo sub. Negative is that Ambeo sub sometimes does sound clearly wrong on some movie soundtracks in some small places: can be too much on some songs in movies or it does some cracking noise/ nock occasionally. But over the immersion is stunning especially in terms of background sound like wind or waves on a boat in Road House.Technical comment: in my room I tried to put the sub at front and rear walls, and next to a sofa. All locations were very ineffective and did not do an immersion magic. Then, I put it half way next to a side wall and the soundstage became magical. The bass is extremely detailed and goes extremely low.Also, I did not really have connection problems with the bar, however it takes some time before it connects via eArc to my LG Oled TV. I did have a couple times when the bar refused to calibrate, in which cases I had to unplug it first. The Smart app also sometimes needed to be restarted.Highly recommended!

I’ll start by saying this soundbar is superb acoustically. Growing up in an audiophile(ish) household, I’ve always been taught that clean, powerful sound always trumps loud. You can push a clean sound far harder with better results than just making something loud. This soundbar has audio quality in spades.Fanstastic bright highs, clear full mids, and though the lows aren’t going to match what you can get out of a quality subwoofer, the two 4” drivers do a very nice job, especially if space is limited or you live in an apartment where neighbors might be a bit perturbed by your listening habits.Another review suggested giving this some time to open up to really get the full experience and range from it and it’s true. I believe the AMBEO algorithm is doing a lot of work to analyze the room for the best experience initially, so it errs on the side of caution until enough audio analysis is done to brighten the sound floor. The lows especially are noticeable as being lacking at first, but it’ll adjust and when it does, wow, very, very nice.Alright, that’s the positive. Here’s the negative. ***End your reading here if you just wanted to hear the good. If I could lace the rest of this with expletives, I would, because this has to be the worst experience I’ve ever had getting something A/V related to work properly.***This is not necessarily Sennheiser’s fault, so take whatever with a grain of salt, but this is a complaint about the industry overall and unfortunately Sennheiser is going to get some flak from me.I have never had to restart things so many times in my life and I work in IT. The audio sounds fantastic when it’s in sync. Unfortunately, using eARC and CEC, this is a nightmare of an experience. The audio sync drifts within 30 seconds to nearly a 3 second audio delay near constantly.I have tried all manner of disabling and reenabling things from CEC, delaying audio on the TV, on the soundbar, changing cables (8K, eARC certified), rebooting the TV, game console (Xbox Series S), the soundbar itself, setting lip sync from auto to manual and back within the Sennheiser phone app, disabling Dolby Atmos in the TV, DTS:X on other devices, bypassing all the cool fun 3D audio functions, even resorting to using Toslink optical, and it just keeps coming back.The worst part is.. sometimes.. it works fine. That is seriously infuriating. I can’t troubleshoot something if I can’t reproduce the issue and reliably disable or enable something to fix it. If there was a single setting that when disabled or enabled, fix the whole thing, I would’ve found it. When I get to that moment where I have dialed it in and think I have it fixed, the next day, it’s like everything forgot what it was supposed to do.This is where my frustration lies. I’ve read up on CEC, eARC, and all of this extensively and it seems the consensus has come down to manufacturers just can’t get their act (that would be a far stronger word[s], trust me) together and continuously cause more user frustration than they’re helping. At least with Toslink, you plug it in and it works, but even that is failing here.This is a 1K+ soundbar. I’ve been waiting and saving to get this for over a year when I first saw reviews of it. And the thing is, I don’t want to get rid of it. It’s so very nice, it has everything I want and sounds fantastic. Why, then, are all of these issues coming up? Is it my TV? Maybe, but I don’t have thousands of dollars to throw at TVs just to see which one works with the soundbar. All of this is insane.Yeah, pretty lame to be complaining this much about a soundbar, but I’m not alone in my frustration and seriously, I researched what was supposed to be one of the best and paid serious cash to get it and this is the result. An endlessly frustrating experience. I mean, at least I can listen to Spotify on it, I guess. That works, sounds great. Sorry Sennheiser, don’t mean to 1 star you, but come on.