Best New 2023 Soundbar Systems - A Prediction

yep here is where we preview what I foresee as the three best Soundbar systems money can buy we were to take an epic time machine Journey all the way to let's say fall 2023 after everything has hopefully been released the first system is the refinement on a popular line the second a company's entry into a higher tier and third well a creation reset level event hey what's up my soundbar curiosos Daniel here from Never Enough Tech first up the latest installment of Samsung's very popular q900 line and successor to the 2022 q990b wait for it the q990cc now I kind of naively thought that the q990b was a minor release you know maintaining the channel count from the previous year were the two previous versions the T and the a both up the channel count by two the B year so 2022 was a you know smooth out the bumps year and 2023 would be attention grabbing this is decidedly not the case now the q990b is probably the world's best overall sounding sound bar a consumer can buy at the time of this recording but if excitement for a product is proportional to tangible added goodies over the last version the sea is amongst the least exciting products to ever exist which is absolutely impressive as when the sea releases it's probably going to still be the best all-around sounding Soundbar system money can buy so what has changed with the c the first Improvement category better Q Symphony 3.0 I've heard panthered about so enhanced coordination between the TV and the system which is promoted as boosting dialogue and 3D sound typically to take advantage of the newest Q Symphony benefits you need a very new Samsung TV typically One released the same year as the bar so that prickly requirement dramatically limits how many customers actually benefit from the latest Q Symphony features particularly in the short term the second Improvement category improved AI neural engines and making them more Central in sound crafting assisting and clear dialogue highlighting Ambient sound details and remastering 3D audio giving it more contour and intelligibility as I understand these improvements will largely be delivered via an enhanced version of Samsung's space fit Sound Room tuning feature and an AI boosted adaptive sound mode it could very well be that the C Sound is significantly better than the B I doubt it but I love being proved wrong either way I suspect the bee will retain more of its value than it would otherwise as the sea may very well be the B with a side loaded software update okay let's spice it up a bit next up the tippity top model of the 2023 JBL Soundbar lineup the JBL bar 1300x I don't know where the X came from I'm just going to keep saying it because it's fun now you might be wondering if the 1300x is merely some slick new way to write JBL bar 9.1 uh no while there are clear design carryovers like detachable rear speakers Gray in general shape the 1300x is a far more intimidating animal signaling JBL wants a system that can unapologetically ride alongside the big boys for context the JBL bar 9.1 released in 2020 a 5.1.4 channel system would fall between the 700 and 1000 Channel count was that is the previous Flagship the 9.1 Falls significantly short of the 23 lines second tier bar so yes JBL has dramatically upped their game the 1300x is a seventeen hundred dollar 1170 watt 11.1.4 Channel system matching Samsung's q950a and q990b's previous unmatched Channel count some Friendly Fire there as they are owned by the same company though the 1300x does fall short of Samsung by a single driver reportedly having 21. but I'm going a little nutty because after watching this cartoon a thousand times I only see 19 drivers and adding one for the woofer gets you to only 20. so about that woofer many are saying it's a 12 incher and they may very well be right but official material says 10 inches either the bloggers were misled or we have a JBL comps team not communicating well with engineering type situation the 1300x speaker configuration does not seem to match the official 11.1.4 specification by looks anyway I mentioned this because one of jbl's talking points is its six upward firing speakers one more than the previous leader in this category the LG sn95qr so why is this not an 11.1.6 Channel system I don't know it also doesn't have 11 horizontal channels in the traditional sense it has nine the best I can tell that is if you encounter this system torn apart on the street somewhere after a soundbar mugging when reporting to the Soundbar police you would describe this as a 9.1.6 system here is my traditional read on the channel placement so for horizontal channels ear level channels we have a left Center and right and two surround channels on the front of the bar but they're angled out and a rear and rear surround on the detachables so five ear level channels on the bar and four on the detachables so 9. High channels two left and two right upward firing channels on the bar they're angled differently to improved height dispersion so so something like a front and mid directly overhead High Channel left and right on the detachables you got a single upward firing driver on each making up the rear height left and right so officially documented as 11.1.4 again by looks and I'd say tradition 9.1.6 the features as you would expect you got e-arc three HDMI inputs that's good and based on the JBL bar 1000 specs I would expect Dolby vision and HDR 10 pass through I have not found any documentation to suggest 8K or 4K 120 hertz pass through so guessing you're stuck with 4K 60hz correct me if I'm wrong not surprisingly you get compatibility with the jbl1 app that is looking improved I think though I don't have a lot of experience with it though I do think these EQ controls look promising you got AirPlay Chromecast and Alexa multi-room audio support So three multi-room Technologies if that's your thing and yes I forgot to mention that the detachable speakers can act as a standalone Bluetooth speaker pair one of the most hyped sound features is harman's multi-beam technology JBL first introduced this into their smaller bars like the multi-beam 5.0 to give it a spatial boost but JBL wants you to hear what multi-beam can do when it's gotten more noise makers to work with the 1300x is also looking to end all your dialogue problems with pure voice which is present across the entire 23 lineup the claim is that pure voice boost dialogue and Loud scenes making it discernible at all times it's not hard hard to make dialogue discernible at all times but it's difficult to make it discernible and natural at the same time so that will be a particular point of interest when I review the 1300x is scheduled to arrive at my doorstep in late February so look for my dedicated hardcore deep dive review in early March okay the last one but definitely not least let's call it a product that is not so much looking to sit at the big boy table but rather burn it to the ground and replace it with the bedazzled Throne now unless you've been hibernating 500 feet underground in a bunker you have probably heard that Nakamichi is resurrecting its Dragon brand with the recently revealed don't call it a sound bar Soundbar system the Nakamichi Dragon 11.4.6 while in this case the dragon came out of nowhere this is not its first sighting the dragon emerge just not so much to invent new categories but rather to push existing product categories to something like their highest foreseeable potential anyway the Nakamichi dragon 11.4.6 is no different it's a 3 000 watt 11.4.6 Channel audio system that happens to look a lot like a soundbar system in either case it's supporting five more channels than the next closest Soundbar system whatever those might be Nakamichi wants potential customers to think high-end AVR alternative as it supports more channels than all AVR systems that same people might want to buy for home use I think you need to sell out north of thirty thousand dollars for an 11.4.6 AVR system and well that does not even cover amplification or the speakers themselves in contrast because you're probably curious the q990c and 1300x with 11.1.4 channels or an AVR language 15.1 channels is a different tier in the AVR space running as low as 4 500 the good news the dragon costs only 112 dollars per driver the bad news you have to buy 31 of them at a time so that puts you at 3 500 which is the expected MSRP this is an astronomical price for a soundbar system but merely a rounding error for a full AVR system that supports 11.4.6 so just how loud does this thing get well 125 decibels SPL which I believe to technically be divorce level loud you know if you're thinking on going that direction and want to reduce your net worth maybe the dragon is for you don't worry this channel is a 100 male safe space first up the main unit yep that's what Nakamichi calls it I'm going to call it a sound bar because I have eyes it's 58 inches wide so just two inches shy of five feet 4.4 inches tall so who needs to see the bottom of the TV anyway and 7.6 inches deep grow up it weighs 31.5 pounds making it 10 pounds lighter than the ambio but typically the sound bar on these multi-piece sets fall well below 20 pounds this is a pretty interesting detail the sound bar housing is made of a single piece of stainless steel the manufacturing process was so out there that they had to use a vehicle panel supplier to get it machined the housing has a hundred and sixteen thousand Precision drilled holes for The Grille the sound bar is a 7.0.4 channel speaker with 17 drivers the left right and Center are traditional Flagship channels in that they each have two woofers and a tweeter so same with the q990b and Klipsch Cinema 1200 the woofers are all three inches round and frankly generic looking the tweeters are AMT or air motion Transformer tweeters I don't have experience with this variant they are generally associated with higher end audio and are pricier than the kinds of tweeters you might normally find on a sound bar they are promoted as having very low Distortion at high volumes exceptional detail and being particularly well suited at emphasizing spatial effects the surround left and right channels are packaged Behind These angled edges on the sides you will find an additional woofer acting as your wide angle left and right channels the four upward firing drivers are all the same three inch woofers like the JBL bar 1300x they are dual angled which I suppose gets you something like again a front and mid overhead High Channel left and right so about those omnimotion Wireless surrounds each is nine inches wide 8.4 inches deep and 10 inches tall this is freaking huge for an all-in-one box Soundbar system speaker it's not a as tall as an A9 speaker which is a different animal but it's bigger in every other aspect at 8.8 pounds it's near one and a half times the weight of an A9 speaker bottom line these are not anywhere near the norm from a physicality perspective so as impressive as these surrounds are which Nakamichi is calling reference level there are only two of them not four as with the Nakamichi 9.2 which perhaps has a viable claim for best 3D Audio Soundbar system performance some might think I'm being a little silly but this only two thing gives me pause and places a little devil on my shoulder saying can this Monument of sound exceed or even match the nuts and bolts spatial effectiveness of the 9.2 I'm a warrior anyway both surrounds are admittedly the increasingly normal 2.0.1 channel speakers however the two ear level channels are unique in that they offer both a woofer and a tweeter which is uncommon outside of the three most important channels on the front of the sound bar though the aspect of the surrounds that's perhaps drawing the most attention is the rotating upward firing drivers which explains the omnimotion moniker though in this case Omni is short for half of omni or 180 degrees now with a system of this caliber one's imagination May Embark towards a motor driven upward firing speaker that spins around in real time to optimize the listening experience uh no it's not motorized you've got to get off your bum and make it happen yourself which means your friends will be far less impressed but also it won't break down in an unfortunate position so be happy about that anyway the high drivers are rotatable because depending on the peculiarities of the room along with the eccentricities of the owner's desired speaker placement well with boring zero percent Omni motion rears your speaker mounting position may result in a sub-optimal high driver orientation this happens pretty much anytime you mount to the back wall where the high drivers Orient straightforward which is probably not where you're sitting with omnimotion however the rear speakers may be situated you can turn the high drivers as needed to help maximize height effects from your seated position okay the subs that's right two of them which is the Nakamichi way I suppose unlike the rest of the components each sub is not remarkable in size each is 12 and a half by 8.6 by 25 inches and weighs 32 pounds Channel count and drivers so each sub is actually an 0.2.0 speaker with a woofer pointing left and right on each unit explaining the quad moniker each have an isobaric configuration I'm not an expert but it seems It's associated with some power efficiencies and allows for similar performance in smaller housing I hope to get smarter when I get my hands on these Subs but in the meantime if you want to read the most catty thread out there on this speaker technology pursue this page Nakamichi is claiming four channels here that is probably pushing it a bit as there are two woofers on each sub and they're not independent so they share an air source also it's not clear if the two sub units are receiving different signals in any case there are four side firing woofers that can probably be felt in the deepest depths of your butt okay system features first codec support yes dtsx and Atmos are supported but something more interesting is happening I'll do my best to explain this system not only has enough channels but enough processing power so 15 digital amplifiers probably Etc to render Atmos and dtsx tracks at let's say a professional theater level so in the case of Atmos let's call it AVR level Atmos the dragon can decode up to 24.1.10 channels so yes 35 discrete channels in the DTs case well the dragon is dtsx pro compatible meaning it can decode up to 32 channels yes you might be feeling it deep in your stomach the sad part of this realization means every sound bar was given a let's say lesser 3D decoder ring so a ring that supports only up to 7.1.4 channels because 10 years ago it was somewhat Unthinkable that Sound Bars were going to ever get that ridiculous oops so with the luster decoder ring after a sound bars Channel level exceeds 7.1.4 which is no longer uncommon it's kind of a do your thing in regards to how it's going to use XS channels to support the 3D audio format this is often resolved just by doubling down on a channel though some manufacturers may be more creative in any case neither of these techniques are ideal Dolby and DTS know best how to use channels for the atmos and dtsx effects you want the cheapest AVR that supports dtsx Pro is 3 500 so even most avrs are stuck with this sound bar level rendering so yes mostly a sad story for your now completely defunct Soundbar and maybe AVR too some good news though your existing Blu-rays are compatible with this enhanced rendering tool no need to find better Blu-rays the dragon is just capable of Distributing the metadata to all the channels not merely a subset more specs three HDMI inputs 8K and 4K 120 hertz Dolby Vision HDR 10 plus pass through and more I don't think the dragon connects to the Internet so no integrated services or voice assistance no air player chromecasts so if this bothers you you can put a Chromecast in one of the three HDMI ports to give the thing some internet Savvy Bluetooth is supported and early reports from the dragon CES Suite suggest promising music playback though I'm more interested in the music over HDMI performance I don't have all the information on the sound shaping options and can't seem to get a clear view of the remote which is the sole controller of the Dragon no app but listening to the CEO keynote on this thing it seems as though there will be relatively high levels of customization one detail the CEO shared is that you can choose how many Subs you want to use so zero to four in any combination perhaps looking into existing Nakamichi products might provide clues and to other kinds of sound adjustments customers can access I talk about the 9.2 remote in far too much detail in this review no doubt the dragon comes across as believably disruptive I'm almost more interested in what the industry response will be than the sound will the dragon spark a category of Ultra Premium Soundbar systems at a higher price point are the jumbo corporations willing to invest a lot in development and a Nutty expensive product that may not sell at the kind of scale that makes business sense I'm kind of hoping that the response or existing plans are not necessarily to follow Nakamichi but to experiment with additional components to naturally move the sound separation closer to that of higher end AVR setups hopefully relying a little less on Extreme DSP techniques but maintaining the relative ease of setup and relative affordability of Soundbar systems compared to Mid and high-end avrs before I go if you haven't seen it take 10 minutes or so to listen to the CES keynote on the dragon 11.4.6 lots of interesting insights into the aims of the CEO and how impractical the development process was okay wrapping this up throw me some likes and Subs if you accidentally got this far catch you on the next one [Music] thank you

Channel: NeverEnoughTech

Views: 30,771

Keywords: 2023, nakamichi dragon 11.4.6, nakamichi shockwafe ultra 9.2.4, jbl bar 1300 x, avr dolby atmos, DTS, dts x pro, amt tweeter, Best soundbar systems 2023

Id: SXo6I4L-Kkg

Length: 21min 48sec (1308 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2023