NAKAMICHI DRAGON 11.4.6 Home Surround Sound System REVIEW | Dolby Atmos | DTS:X Pro

[Music] 3,000 Watts where in a/4 in voice coil 3-in woofer don't make me laugh believe me it's not going to be anywhere close in quality to Nakamichi original the company using the Nakamichi name in nomeclature now is just making a bunch of Lifestyle products and has nothing whatsoever I would not order the dragon if my life those are not qu stereo separation in a large space is simply not physically possible possible within the form factor $3,900 is way too much for that using the name Nakamichi when in fact the company is called Grand Holdings out of China is a stretch to make audio files believe it had anything believe you'll have height of all coming from above with any upward firing speaker wow that's it it sounds good on paper but it's never going to come even to power of name dragon that this is a Chinese firing that driver placement insane lobbing issues for Center Channel LOL pleas dispens this is the definition of a that's better say what you want about the dragon behind the comfort of your own keyboard but you have to experience this in person to believe it wow A lot has happened since CES 2023 when I first got to witness the dragon in person since then there were 500 world premier limited editions which sold out in 45 minutes you may have also noticed on their official website that the price has gone up from $34.99 to $38.99 but clearly that hasn't stopped people from wanting one as of right now the dragon is sold out with Nakamichi still needing to catch up with August orders and shipping them out throughout the rest of 2023 so if you want to pre-order one at this point yours won't be shipping out until sometime in early 2024 just FYI but I suggest you make a habit out of checking the official website daily because they are frequently updating it whenever more pre-orders can be made but that's not because Nakamichi is just kicking up their feet saying eh we'll get around to it when we get around to it no my friends this is literally the most ambitious Soundbar system ever made when it comes to craftsmanship parts used and tuning to make it sound its best just take a look at this slide 25 Dragon units produced daily which comprises 700 components four production lines per System 1200 Plus hours of Burnin testing 800 plus hours of acoustic tuning and a0 step hand assembly process to mass produce a beast of this caliber is daunting now I'm not going to go over all the specs again since I went over them in the announcement video I made from January of 2023 so please check that out if you're interested in those specifics but since those many months ago there are a couple updates to the dragon itself although let me just remind you that the dragon has the DOL Atmos processing algorithm designed for Flagship avrs and processors that support Channel counts up to 24.1 point10 and to go along with that the dragon supports dtsx Pro because of the ridiculous Channel count it offers I made a video on the difference between dtsx and dtsx pro if you want to get a more detailed rundown but in a nutshell dtsx is an immersive audio codec that was originally designed for systems up to 12 speakers like 7.1.4 for example although now with the popularity of systems larger than 7.1.4 On The Rise DTS had to create dtsx pro dtsx pro is not a better sounding codec it simply takes a dtsx mastered audio file and processes it more accurately for those larger systems taking very various sounds and objects and placing them more precisely within 3D space in a system of up to 32 speakers dtsx renders immersive audio up to 12 speakers dtsx Pro renders immersive audio for a system containing 13 to 32 speakers you with me oh and FYI in a recent meeting I had with my Nakamichi contact they said the dragon does not support IMAX enhanced nor r3d I know some of you were asking about that so I thought I would relay that news but they also said that doesn't mean it never will so time will tell if that may change down the road another thing the dragon does not support is a Wi-Fi connection which also means no support for chomecast voice assistance Apple AirPlay 2 Etc when I asked about that this was nak kami's official response the absence of built-in Wi-Fi capabilities and voice assistance in dragon is a deliberate Choice driven by our dedication to optimizing every available inch of space to achieve exceptional acoustic SS and Surround processing most Soundbar Solutions on the market utilize a chipset resembling nxp an all-in-one module encompassing decoding Wi-Fi and integrated apps akin to an all-in-one graphics card and a computer these chipsets generally offer a maximum processing capacity of 7.1.4 in contrast dragon can render 11.4.3 audio objects much like a flagship ABR by employing the same ADI chipset commonly found in high-end ABR however this chipset is exclusively dedicated to processing and lacks other functionalities such as Wi-Fi as there is no available space to accommodate an additional module picture the challenge of condensing the entirety of a top tier AVR into a confined space this task becomes especially demanding given the limited space available once the sealed enclosures are in position our priority is to deliver exceptional audio experiences and this design decision ensures the optimal use of the available spatial constraints so there you go that's honestly the same mentality emotiva or Iota have with their preamps lacking Wi-Fi and other bells and whistles you might be more familiar with to focus mainly on premium audio quality now you can form your own opinions about that I'm sure beyond that former update version 2.1 has been released for better dynamic range control and better base response at lower volumes which was implemented after feedback from those who had the world premiere editions also after much testing Nakamichi has concluded that the best base extension you'll experience is if you have the subwoofer cabinets towed in at a 45 degree angle so if you're wondering about subwoof rep placement there you have it another thing I wanted to touch on is that it does have official accessories but they are an added expense but there is a specially made main unit wall mount since it is so long and heavy which is available for $79 there are also surround speaker wall mounts if you need those which are $45 and lastly custom Dragon speaker stands for the surrounds which are $399 I know that may seem like a lot but have you priced out speaker stands lately quality stands are not cheap so yeah now that we got that out of the way let's go over what's in the box all right now that we got everything out of the box let's just take a look at what we got here um obviously we have this gigantic Soundbar uh this does happen to be one of the limited edition Soundbars uh 500 that they released initially in that first wave so obviously this is being passed around to all the various reviewers like myself we've got two subwoofers each with two drivers housed in a single cabinet so we have a total of four drivers on the sides we have the surround speakers clearly they are dipole because they are wedge shaped so they have an AMT tweeter on one side AMT tweeter on the other side and a cool rotating upward firing height speaker it rotates 180° so if you need to rotate it for any reason to get just a better sense of immersion then you can do that we've also got an accessory box this one has the remote a premium HDMI 2.1 cable and the power cable for the main Soundbar itself so there's the HDMI cable it is very nice braided gold tips and here's just a quick shot of the remote inside this accessory box we have more power cables two power cables for the surrounds and two power cables for the subwoofers and lastly we have this information booklet it's really nice leatherbound booklet inside we have a quick start guide as you can see it's got various little diagrams to help you set it up which is nice here's a personal letter from the CEO Raymond Chang himself uh since this is again one of the limited edition ones and lastly we have a very thick owner's manual take a look at this remote remote it's crazy um obviously you got your power button and your mute button here's all the various inputs you can choose from these are all your various EQ presets music Movie game night and you can turn the dsb off all Channel stereo or you can just toggle this off so music is only coming out of the front left and right surround button is the various surround modes you have a Dolby Surround mode for all Dolby content and lpcm 5.1 or 7.1 content for all DTS content you can choose DTS neural X which will be rendered as dtsx Pro and then there's a studio mode and you've got home info back just your various navigation buttons enter in the center you can turn the base up and down and the volume button will adjust the volume of the rest of the speakers these buttons here are pretty cool CR stands for Center so you can turn just the center channel up and down to your liking TR stands for treble so you can decrease or increase the treble if you like real sparkly highs SS stands for side surrounds that are coming out of the bar itself so you can turn those up and down and SB stands for surround back so you can adjust the volume of the surrounds that are behind you and once you have it dialed in exactly how you like it you can save those presets into these buttons here so you can have two presets if you'd like maybe one for movies one for music ahd is a Nakamichi exclusive height processing button there are three different modes for that but I'll get into that a little bit later and lastly you can control the volume of the height channels FH obviously stands for front height and Rh stands for rear height all right let's go over some physical specs of the system itself coming straight from the manual the main unit itself is a 58 in chassis as you can see it almost spans the entire length of this 75 in Samsung frame TV so almost the entire length of the TV it has a total of 10 3-in drivers which counts for the front Sound Stage and also these side surrounds it has four 3in dual angled upfiring speakers the innermost angled at 10° and the outermost angled at 20° and the bar itself has a peak power rating of 1,500 Watts it also has Bluetooth 5.0 inside with Optics HD technology but beyond that it is 7.7 in deep and about 4.4 in high weighing 32.1 lb so yeah I got to say it's definitely not the easiest soundbar to put up high on this mantle here yeah and the system itself can handle 110 volts to 240 volts 50 and 60 htz so that pretty much covers all the different electrical standards in the world really I yes and don't forget about these one two three air motion tweeters which is honestly a first with any Soundbar that I've seen so they went above and beyond with premium components for sure and let's see if it'll focus on this but uh you've got so many acoustic holes punched in it's like over 150,000 I think it was I mean I I'll flash that on the screen right now the exact number but you've got it for the upward firing drivers on the bar itself as well as the front so again just the engineering they put into this was Next Level another design aspect that I wanted to point out is that these little grooves here are where you put in the various cables but as you can see there's some daylight in between the bar itself and the coffee table here because it's got built-in rubber feet so that way the unit itself is not actually touching the surface so I do appreciate that design aspect but just so you can see it a little better here I'm going to put it on on the rug so you can see the inputs a little bit better so my apology is that all these words are upside down but the front of the Soundbar is right here so I don't want to put the AMT tweeters against the ground so I'm just going to keep it like this that little rubber thing is pretty cool it's for cable management but as you can see you've got auxiliary out which is a 3.5 mimer Port Optical out auxiliary in again that's a 3.5 mm Port it's not ca for example Optical in USB and DC in for your power cable and on the other side you've got HDMI 1 which is your arcar Port along with three other HDMI inputs so you can plug in your Apple TV your Playstation or Xbox switch and even a Blu-ray player so this is quite a bit it's like a little mini AVR each subwoofer cabinet contains two 8 in drivers and each has a peak power rating of 500 watts the dimensions are 8.6 in x 12.5 in by 20.5 in and they weigh 33.3 lb each wireless surround module has two 1.5 in AMT tweeters two 3.5 in mid-range drivers one 3-in rotatable upward firing driver and each has a peak power rating of 250 wats the dimensions are 9 in by 8.4 in by 10.7 in and each one weighs 9.2 lb one thing I wanted to touch on as far as the design of these surrounds I do appreciate that it has this big inset little section here and a Groove that the power cord goes down because these are supposed to be set on top of speaker stands so I do appreciate that aesthetic so that it's nice clean lines and then it's not like sticking out you know and also you can see this says R right here so it does in fact matter which surround speaker you put in which position so this will in fact be the right surround that'll go behind me to the right and since I did mention the rotating upboard firing driver um as you can see it's got this little Notch here to tell you where exactly you are within the 180° span as you can see it has pre-notched degrees I mean you could go in between that's totally fine but you can feel that once you hit this Number Two Notch that it just kind of don't it just kind of sits in there so it's nice and snug keep it in Notch number three if you need to a lot of customization and a lot of personalizations you can make to make it sound as best you can so as you can see with a dining table here kitchen island here and it just goes straight into the living room this is an open concept floor plan uh and also because of the gigantic sliding glass doors here and entryway here this is the only place we could put a TV above the fireplace place now I know people are groaning in their seats right now and I get it it's not the most ideal but that's why we chose the Samsung frame so that it can look like a painting when it's not in use but because of this um having a soundbar system in general is just not the most ideal so this is what we're going to have to deal with because you've got this power cord coming down here you see I had to put like a special adhesive thing just to hold this here um and it's plugging into that outlet down there and because it's a Samsung frame and it's got that really long fiber optic cable that goes to the one connect box behind the TV there is a conduit and that one connect wire goes all the way down the conduit and comes out the wall behind this cabinet here U but this cabinet is where we have everything like our Wi-Fi router as you can see there's an Xbox One S right here the Samsung one connect box is that blackbox behind there so you know I'm having to take these HDMI cables feed them all over here so not the most ideal setup I get it this is just for the review but it's just one of those things when you're dealing with an open concept floor plan like I have Soundbars typically aren't the best especially when you have to put the Soundbar on top of the mantle but I wanted to test it out in this space just because I wanted to see a more realworld experience or he a more real world experience instead of having it in my theater cuz my theater also has acoustic panels on the sides and on the ceiling and since this particular Soundbar system relies on audio bouncing off the walls and bouncing out the ceiling those acoustic panels would absorb that so that's another reason I wanted to do this review in my living room instead of in my dedicated home theater space so just wanted to let you know for anybody else who has a similar floor plan that it's going to be a little bit awkward and you might have to get real creative to try and hide some wires or power cords if that's your thing if you like clean lines like I do hey future elen here you may have noticed that I have the Xbox One S and the LG ubk90 4K Blu-ray player uh because when I initially set everything up with the dragon with the Xbox One S um I put in the spatial calibration toolkit disc and I wasn't getting like front wides where they were supposed to be I wasn't getting anything coming out of the heights because apparently with the Xbox One units it's not exactly true Dolby Atmos it's like Microsoft in order to avoid paying the full licensing fee to use Dolby Atmos they like made their own proprietary version of Atmos this may have been completely resolved with the Xbox series X and Series S consoles so if you have those you may not experience this but just so you know that's why I brought in this because as soon as I put the spatial calibration toolkit in the LG ubk90 then the dragon was outputting the correct information in the correct channels so just FYI Xbox One output of Dolby Atmos is actually like pseudo Atmos just thought i' let you know oh hello let's go over the app shall we sign up interesting I can't even access the app until I sign up with an email okay then tell us your setup TV Samsung most used device I mean it's not currently hooked up but uh Apple TV 4K I guess often used device yeah Nintendo switch authorized connections to Dragon turn on Bluetooth yes okay yeah dragon is on switch to Blue Bluetooth done navigate to the Bluetooth screen in your iPhone settings select Bluetooth Dragon hold down the input and demo buttons on the main unit together so there are in fact touch sensitive buttons here on the top input and demo together and that says waiting app pair all right next pair hooray successful tap a component or ahd to adjust cool you can adjust the side surrounds the surrounds that come out of the main unit itself as well as the back surrounds and the center channel ding okay you can adjust the volume of the main unit right here in the app let's keep it at 15 for now adjust the treble adjust the base you can adjust the subwoofers your left left and your left right right right left right right left right right all Channel stereo here's all your inputs these are your audio processing options we'll just stick with Dolby around for now these are all your preset EQ options or you can even have no EQ whatsoever remote oh cool you can use the app to navigate and information okay cool that's nice that it tells you what audio format it is currently since nothing is playing on right now you can see it just says PCM 2.0 so it's just a nice handy quick way to know if you are in fact getting DOL Atmos or dtsx Etc o Settings app preferences max volume level alert master volume limit man's Dragon pairing Dragon concierge okay email us if you have any questions or call us FAQs nice product registration if you want to do that and log out okay I mean not the most incredibly detailed or robust app you could say but uh pretty nifty that you can do this on the phone itself uh without having to access the onscreen display so that's pretty nice to be able to do that seamlessly oh yeah ahd effects Max wide vocal off keep that at Max adjust the surrounds specifically inner surround so you can adjust the volume of the left and right channels and the center the inner surrounds and the outer surrounds and inner Heights and outer heights yeah does the job okay let's dive into this onscreen display shall we this little menu system we got here that is on the TV so as you saw on the app it's like a little mini version of this but you can't customize it as much as you can with the good oldfashioned onscreen display so as you can see at the top top left we are in the audio section surround mode again these are just things you can access via the app as well stereo all Channel stereo native no surround sound up mixing the audio plays as encoded on content Source Dolby Surround recommended for video maximum Dolby Surround upmixing includes height effects Studio this is interesting because obviously you can see the inner surrounds and the outer surrounds those are the highlighted and green there when you choose Studio mod mode these no longer produce surround information they're just duplicates of what's going on in the front Sound Stage so as you can see here the main units inner and outer surrounds are repurpose to enhance the left and right main channels so if you just want some extra punch from your left and right you can turn it to Studio mode uh you got a bunch of equalizer settings audio setup holy cow Channel level volume setup so you can adjust these in the app app or on the remote itself but there's just a couple of extra things in here on the on-screen display that is not accessible via the remote or the app so if you want to just take the customization to the next level I suggest that you go through this menu system and then any minor adjustments that you want to make along the way you can do that in the app or on the remote itself so you can adjust the volume of the main unit left and right channels Center Channel inner surrounds outer surrounds and front surround balance which as you can see here adjusts the level balance between front and left and right surround speakers like in my case so the sliding door is actually closer to the TV than the wall on the other side so my living room setup is a bit asymmetrical in that way so I just might have to do some front surround balance to kind of make it more centered surround speakers back surrounds side surrounds and again you can also adjust the balance left to right if you've got a wall that's closer than the other wall restore default settings no quad subwoofer setup again you can access this in the app as well but you can turn off various subwoofers to have a particular combination if maybe one of your subwoofers is a little bit too close to a wall and it's vibrating a lot of things you can adjust that and as you can see oh look at that it's no longer activated it is off quad Subs balance adjust the level between the left and right subwoofers again if one is sounding a little bit more boomy than the other you can adjust the level of low frequency effect or LF um you cannot increase it you can only decrease it if it's just a little bit too much height effects okay the dragon itself has this proprietary thing called 8hd or adaptive height dispersion default it's on Max maximum height effect regardless of content type so it really pushes those height channels to their Max so you can really hear them bouncing off the ceiling so it is essentially maximizing the volume level of those height effects coming out cuz like in my case with the ceiling being so high from the Soundbar the effects might not be that great if it's one of the other options it might be a little bit too subtle so let's just go through you can turn the ahd off to deliver height performance perance like the movie director intended that's debatable I mean again because it just depends on how high your ceiling is cuz if your if your ceiling is too high and those height effects are just so subtle maybe like some very atmospheric things happening you might not really get much bouncing off the ceiling anyway that may be not enough for some of you focal optimize height delivery for a Center focus 3D Sound Stage Yeah so basically it's just saying it it's trying to keep the focus more centered which some of you may prefer and finally ahd wide optimize height delivery for a wider field of view Sound Stage so that might work better for my situation since my walls are asymmetrical and kind of far away we'll just leave it at default we'll keep it at Max main unit inner Heights you can adjust those main unit outer Heights and rear height level and rear height balance master volume adjust the base adjust the treble surround modes again here's another place that you can access the surround modes and equalizer presets you can also set some favorite settings so if you've got it all locked in you've got all the volume set to how you like it you can save up to two different setting presets advanced audio settings it does have a night mode so that's cool if you're needing to keep things a little quieter if people are going to bed what's great is that it's not just off and on you've got 50% night mode and then you've got 100% night mode full compression between loud and quiet scenes Dolby and DTS content only so apparently it doesn't work for music you can also just toggle these surround speakers on and off lip sync adjustments if the dialogue coming out of people's mouths is not quite in sync you can add some millisecond delays here as you can see sooer crossover change that determine the highest base frequencies the subwoofer will display kind of crazy that the default is 200 let's just set that to 120 because that's your LF standard and dtsx dialogue control is gray out I imagine I'm only able to adjust that setting when I am watching something that is encoded in dtsx moving on let's go to video HDMI C OneTouch play on on or off I want that on cuz as you can see in the description there enable HDMI CC commands between Dragon Cinema system and external C enabled Source devices so that just means I can use my Samsung TV remote to adjust volume and stuff instead of being forced to use the dragon remote video upscaling personalized Source name okay that's it as far as video is concerned we're going to skip calibration for now we're going to do that at the end system settings Subs plus surrounds Wireless frequency default is 5.8 GHz and is recommended Auto 1 is 5.2 GHz but as it says in the description here change only if interference occurred so if your Wi-Fi is getting in the way and it's making things weird then you can try and see if Auto One fixes that otherwise probably just keep it at default Wireless frequency strength again if your Wi-Fi is getting in the way and causing interference you can actually have the frequency boosted and you can boost it 3 plus Max but by default it's at number two I haven't had any interference so far so I'm just going to keep it at default subwoofers manual pairing if for any reason your subwoofers become disconnected and same thing with these surrounds main unit display you can change the brightness plus three is the brightest goes down to plus one and zero but even zero isn't completely gone it's just pretty dim on screen display your pop location will be on the bottom left or Center bottom right whatever I like bottom left energy saving mode it'll turn off after 30 minutes with no activity or you can just turn energy saving mode off uh or you can have 90 minutes or 120 minutes so we'll keep it at 30 I like that firmware upgrade I currently have the latest version restore factory defaults units feet meters and that's it as far as system all right now let's go to calibration by default it has it on a mediumsized room as you can see the couch and the surrounds move whenever you change it so oh yeah median room my couch is further away or a large room my couch is even further away and custom setup this is pretty darn cool when you go into custom setup custom room size preset loaded to set custom room size go to calibration Advan sound setup room size calibration so let's just right there Advanced sound setup so let's do that room size calibration wow so this is where you can get pretty precise let's get some measurements done H from the sound bar to the couch okay my listening area was just about 11 ft from the Soundbar left side wall is 10 and a half like I said it is asymmetrical just FY and Nakamichi it's kind of weird when you're dealing with feet but then you're dealing with decimals of feet since there are 12 in in a foot doesn't really make sense to have decimals because that's a factor of 10 whereas inches is different so if there's maybe a firm warre upgrade where you can dial in 10 ft 10 in that would make more sense right side wall 5 and 1/2 so with the dragon not having any sort of room calibration software built in you know like so onos or Samsung or even Sony where you can either do something within an app or it comes with a calibration microphone since the dragon doesn't come with anything like that I do appreciate how customized I can still make this just to make sure that everything is calibrated properly ceiling main units distance from the ceiling to the main unit 5 ft yeah the sound bar is up very high surround speaker the main units distance relative to the surround speakers we'll say 16.3 subwoofers from the listening position we'll say 11.5 location in the room subwoofers positioned at the front of the room back of the room yeah they're at the front left surrounds distance relative to the seating location 5 and2 ft save custom room size yeah man ding saved and then you can reset to default settings if you need to volume level calibration test tone channels individual all so even though it doesn't come with a calibration microphone it at least has test tones that you can do so that's cool select Channel below to play test tone Oh so we got some pink noise coming through that's typically what you'll get in an AVR so this is mainly for level matching just to make sure all of the speakers are reaching your main listening position at the same volume so I'm just going to use my DB meter Pro app on my phone and we'll try and set all of these levels so they match when I'm sitting in the center of my couch I'm also turning up the volume of the main unit to 20 cuz honestly it gets really loud folks I'm just telling you so I know it can go much much louder than that but let's actually raise it to 30 cuz you know reference levels reference levels are meant to be loud and not necessarily how loud you normally listen to things wow those High channels were hot cool so with the main unit being at level 30 I calibrated all the speakers to hover around 60 DB I mean you can make your system as loud as you want but that's personally what I did just now all right so that covers calibration at least what you're able to do in the menu itself pretty freaking cool man thank you for joining me on this rundown of the menu so one of the first demos I did was I popped in the spatial audio calibration toolkit Blu-ray disc to see how accurate the channel separation was and honestly that's where the dragon like most Soundbar systems had some shortcomings at least in my open concept living room with the walls being unevenly spaced apart and having basically no back wall whatsoever the surround backs just ired audio backwards Into Thin Air so again this is not the most ideal system for open concept floor plans especially with the surrounds being somewhat within walking Pathways around the living room I had to make a conscious effort to make sure I didn't trip over them or knock them over when navigating my way around the room okay so playing back pink noise from the calibration toolkit when I got to the front wides it came out of the side surround speakers which made it sound like it was coming from a very wide Source yes but front wides any traditional system are positioned between the front Sound Stage and the surrounds and I didn't really get that pinpoint accuracy since it's meant to be bounced off a wall the same goes for the surrounds and the surround backs because they're also made to bounce audio off nearby walls although the height channels reproduced audio decent again not pinpoint accurate but unlike other Soundbar systems I've reviewed in the past despite the dragon having pretty small 3-in upward firing drivers it's the power behind the drivers that allows for audio to actually be bounced off my 10-ft ceiling the middle height drivers in the main unit were probably the most accurate sounding like they were in the middle of my ceiling although it was more accurate when I actually looked up at the ceiling than my brain was able to determine oh yep that's definitely coming from the ceiling but when I was just looking right at the TV eh it sounded like it was high for sure but not right in the middle of the ceiling but I get it you're going to get the most accurate placement of height objects when actual speakers are on the ceiling it's just psycho Acoustics yo but it was a delight when watching movies like neona on Netflix surprising me with effects clearly coming from the ceiling at certain moments or the crowds cheering in the Coliseum battles of gladiator or the chime noise whenever a player respawns in Jumanji the next level or the rainf falling in the final hand toand combat scene of John Wick which by the way is one of the best tight Channel test out there because I think the mixing Engineers purposely made the rain so loud in the mix just FYI so yes if you're trying to go for dead-on pinpoint accuracy with every sound effect this is probably not the system for you you'll need a traditional system for that level of detail but because of the many speakers in the dragon system firing at many angles the ability to fill a room with audio is unprecedented honestly if you own Gladiator especially in dtsx on 4K Blu-ray I encourage you to demo the Coliseum battles and hear how you are literally in the crowd surrounded by cheering fans kudos to that sound design team on that aspect alone so despite the channel accuracy limitations relying on audio bouncing off surfaces you cannot deny the sheer power of the system the volume can go up to 100 my friends guess where I left it while watching 4K Blu-rays in this large open concept living area 20 no joke and that was still loud to me even one of my daughters was like Daddy it's too loud just to test it out I turned it up to 30 one time when watching Scott peram versus the world and after like 30 seconds I just had to turn it down I mean these ears are my career dude so I'm not about to damage my hearing just for the sake of curiosity but now you might be thinking well why make it so powerful so your ears will bleed if you crank it all the way up trust me you want your system to have that much headro why because that way when the action picks up explosions happening bullets whizzing All Around The Sound Stage shouting from all around music triumphantly blaring you don't want your system to come up short in those moments and the dragon performed with flying colors in those instances one big caveat to what I'm about to say is that I can't vouch for flagship Wireless Systems like the Sony ht9 or Samsung Q 990c because I have yet to experience those systems firsthand but every other Wisa or Wireless Soundbar system I reviewed personally always failed when it came to intense action scenes when you have a processor that's packed within the small footprint of a thin little Soundbar or little sound send Puck for that matter it just can't handle it when a lot of audio objects and channels are Eng gaug simultaneously the sound gets compressed because it exceeds its processing and power capabilities even your budget friendly avrs suffer from that because they're having to simultaneously power your speakers and process all those channels at the same time that's why I always recommend eventually having an AVR with preouts because while the convenience of having a processor and amplifier contained within one Chassy is great your dynamic range and Headroom greatly improve when you leave it up to X external amps to power your speakers the dragon is the only plug-and-play system I've experienced where that was never an issue quiet scenes were quiet yet detailed with dialogue sounding so crisp and intelligible with those AMT tweeters and when it got loud it stayed loud so this is basically a soundbar system that acts like an AVR with external amps that's a first for me also I don't know what it is about AMT Style tweeters but I just prefer their sound over soft Dome tweeters their horizontal and vertical dispersion is topnotch which is great in my living room since it's wide and because my ears are situated slightly below the main unit Nakamichi obviously recommends having both the surround speakers and main unit as close to ear level as possible for best results but it still performed very well even in my unique circumstance now let's talk about base response shall we this was also the first time a soundbar system was able to give me the cinema quality based response that I've heard from very capable wired subwo that I have in my dedicated theater room of course with the Dragonite always rocked all four subwo when demoing movies and they did not disappoint what I personally look for when trying to pick out bass response while watching movies is a subwoofers articulation meaning being able to do so many different forms of bass like low wide rumbles that are omnidirectional quick blasts that I can feel in my chest and aggressive mid-base rumbles that I can feel coming up through the bottom of the couch I experienced all three with the dragon but that's not to say they were Flawless you can adjust the base level up to 10 either on the remote or in the app and I kept it at five I didn't want to crank it since that's just not how I personally like my base response but even at level five there were instances where the soap woofers bottom out do you know what I'm talking about well I'll do my best to try and recreate the sound you ready yeah have you heard that before it's like something that engaged the subwoofers made it kind of die mid sound effect right I heard that particular sound a couple times when the planes were dive bombing the aircraft carriers in Midway and surprisingly I heard it with a few gunshots in the first John Wick but speaking of John Wick when he kills that dude in the club bathroom and you can hear some Basse heavy dance music playing in the adjacent room oh my goodness that's the deep wide base I'm talking about and there was no bottoming out in that Scene It pressurized my whole living room easily so while they're not perfect having some limitations on what they can handle at certain times they are still the best subwoofers I've heard to date that come with a system like this and yes even though Nakamichi says this is a quad subwoofer system I know a lot of you out there are going to call them out saying it's not a true pushpull style system that it's not a proper isobaric configuration Etc I get it and you're right it's obviously not the same as four subwoofers in four corners of the room but that would be even more difficult and more expensive to ship if that were the case Nakamichi thought long and hard how they could get some serious power in the low frequencies within a smaller footprint easier to ship the entire system as a whole you know let's now go in the opposite direction and talk about night mode and lowlevel listening let me just start off by saying night mode works very well while reviewing the system whenever my kids would go to bed I would turn on night mode and disengage two out of the four subwoofers but it would still get very low even at quieter volumes due to that Firmware 2.1 update I assume dialogue was still intelligible too and the reason I know it works so well is because one day I forgot to turn the night mode off and I popped in the racing scene from Ready Player 1 and I was underwhelmed I thought to myself uh-oh why do I suddenly need to turn the volume up to 30 and it still doesn't have that much impact then it dawned on me oh right night mode once I turned it off Boom the Dynamics of that racing scene were back in full force I also played some video games while reviewing this of course although I don't have the latest and greatest gaming cons conss at the moment but I was able to play Tears of the Kingdom on the switch which sounded spectacular oh my gosh I turned on the game EQ preset and left it on Dolby Surround so it would upmix the 5.1 soundtrack to Atmos essentially and wow it was like I was in Hyrule I also own an Xbox One S so I played some Jedi Fallen order and some Halo infinite multiplayer action what was most impressive about those games was the subtleties environmental sounds of the surround ing Wildlife or just the air or chirps and beeps of nearby Tech not to mention the music man the soundtracks to both Fallen order and Halo infinite were stunning filling the room and really selling the moment multiplayer battles and Halo infinite were pretty immersive but like when I was watching movies the pinpoint accuracy of friends and foes moving around the Sound Stage wasn't the best but still pretty darn good I do remember quite a few times where people firing their weapons on a platform above me sounded above me not exactly where they were located in 3D space but still up which definitely helped get my bearings on where I needed to Target my next enemy right but again room filling sound full stop and not in a muddy or bloated way a real sense of immersion that was very engaging now as I mentioned previously keeping the volume only at 20 when watching 4K Blu-rays of course I needed to turn it up a bit when watching a streaming Source like Netflix or Disney plus just a little sometimes turning it up to 25 or 30 depending on what I was watching but it still sounded great even content that was originally mixed in 5.1 although sometimes not all the time the height effects in particular would sometimes be a little funky since the Dolby up mixer is trying to determine which sounds to put in the height speakers so I remember at times hearing sounds coming from the Heights and then suddenly cutting out but then quickly firing up once again but it varied quite a bit with what I was watching from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver to X Files to the N Geo documentary animals closeup 95% of the time it was great but there was just those little intermittent anomalies that would creep up but honestly I may have experienced the exact same thing with any other Soundbar or AVR system because it could have been the mix itself but I do appreciate the ability to select the native audio preset so that it's presented in its original mix so you may have to resort to that from time to time just FYI but just like when playing video games the soundtrack to the animals up close documentary was incredible okay so along those same lines let's talk about music shall we specifically stereo all Channel stereo and Dolby Surround up mixing my Nakamichi contact specifically wanted me to listen to a select few songs using Dolby Surround up mixing which are as follows Duran Duran The Reflex Dance Mix Hold Me Now by the Thompson and twins Rolling in the Deep by Adele and Shape of My Heart by Sting in the initial moments of the reflex Dance Mix it's got a cool effect going from the main unit and then transitioning to include the heights as well bass response was also complimenting the rest of the music very well vocals were very crisp and the size of the Sound Stage was massive pretty much the same can be said about the rest of the songs on the list with Adele's voice coming through so well I mean that should be a given because her voice is just amazing but I think the most impressive was Shape of My Heart by Sting since it's a more acoustic Arrangement so the plucking of strings is so present in the mix but also everything else sounded so rich and detailed like Sting's vocals reaching to the tops of my ciling amazing but as I'm listening to these songs of course I switch between stereo and all Channel stereo 2 I'm just going to say it outright I just don't like all Channel stereo what's most off-putting about it is that it places vocals everywhere oh my God e David it just messes with my brain in a way that I don't particularly enjoy stereo on the other hand was large and Powerful surprisingly though stereo sounded just a tad boxy at times like I could hear the qualities of the shape of the Soundbar itself not all the time but sometimes it came through sounding just a tad Hollow but even then stereo still easily filled the room I have to say though I guess it's because the system was designed for surround sound I honestly preferred listening to music in the Dolby Surround mode big surprise to me let me tell you normally I want to hear music how it was intended but the richness and depth were more present in Dolby Surround after listening to the tracks I already mentioned I went down a classical rabbit hole with pieces like Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Talis by Von Williams the water Goblin Symphony by dorj the spring movements from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and the second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony why did I choose classical most music you'll listen to on the radio or streaming is mostly the same volume from start to finish but classical gives you Dynamics a lot of times starting off quiet and then hitting you with some huge sweeping moments later on my goodness that the dragon handled those crescendos so well no compression no instances where it came up short just filling the room during the intense moments and retaining the High Fidelity details of the subtle in intimate moments I was blown away again this was in the Dolby Surround mode and I did not regret it at all to me it just sounded better than the stereo mode full stop although for you high-fi stereo files out there it is a true stereo output with music only coming out of the front left and right speakers but I don't know what it is about the way the dragon is made or how the software decodes music but I just enjoyed it more in Dolby Surround mode so this may not be the system for you ride or die stereo music fans out there I don't [Music] know so just to recap is the dragon absolutely perfect no can it replicate the pinpoint accuracy of a traditional AVR system with speakers all around and up high no do the subwoofers bottom out sometimes yeah but having said that this is still the best sounding Soundbar system I have experienced to date this truly is a hybrid system giving you the easy plug-and-play setup you'd expect from a soundbar system yet giving you power you'd only expect from an AVR system with external amps I was truly impressed with its dynamic range getting loud when the action picked up but retaining the details during quiet scenes like if you in an actual movie theater but on the flip side being able to limit that dynamic range with night mode since I imagine it's probably going to get a little too loud for some some but I sure did have fun reviewing this when we sit at the dinner table as a family we're back quite a bit from the TV if we happen to be watching something while we're eating normally that means the experience isn't that great needing to turn up the volume significantly to hear everything not with the dragon everything can be heard from anywhere in our open concept floor plan sitting on the couch washing dishes at the kitchen island and of course at the dinner table other than the occasional subwoofer mishaps never never once did the dragon give me any Distortion even at loud volumes again you want that extra headro to handle the loud moments and the dragon passes that test better than any other Soundbar some final thoughts I have about this system though like in the intro of course there will be haters and naysayers trolls will always find a way to troll but after going through all the comments of my announcement video from January the negative comments paled in comparison to the positivity surrounding this this system I'd say about 95% of the comments were positive so it honestly took a while to find that many negative ones but even though it's not a perfect Soundbar I have to give some major kudos to nakamii CEO Raymond Chang there is a reason no other manufacturer has released a plug-and-play system of this caliber before because it is expensive to assemble and expensive to ship because it is so heavy any other Soundbar system I can easily lift on my own not the dragon that box is so long and heavy that bringing this Beast into my living room was a two-person job it is made with premium parts from the stainless steel chassis to the 7 AMT tweeters now I know it's not for all of you out there I know people will still have negative things to say in the comment section once this video is released that's just a give it but honestly I say bring it on Ray and Chang took a huge gamble trying to bridge the gap between easy setup of of a soundbar system packed with the raw power and premium Fidelity of a traditional wired system with separate components and obviously it's already paid off there is clearly a market for this type of system people are willing to pay premium prices for convenience while getting insane power I honestly hope this has ruffled many feathers of the top brass working for other companies like Sony Samsung Clips Den or Yamaha now they're thinking uh so people are willing to spend that much huh well how can we put our skin in the premium Soundbar game then so don't be surprised if you start to see more systems like this in 2024 or 2025 from everyone else this is the first of its kind so sure it needs some improvements but being a first it is incredible what Nakamichi have pulled off with the dragon and whether it be with future firmo updates or perhaps the Dragon 2 it's only going to get better from here on out so I'm excited to see what the future holds for this little niche within home audio are you wow thank you for sticking with me through this review of the Nakamichi Dragon 11.4.2 home theater system and now it's your turn are you still salivating over it do you think it's now too much power for your listening space are you refreshing the pre-sale page over and over so you can order yours ASAP let's start a convers ation in the comments below people as always please be kind to each other out there don't just watch TV and movies experience the unprecedented power of the Dragon in your own living room and of course always be listening

Channel: Ealan Osborne

Views: 105,673

Keywords: home theater, home audio, home cinema, cinema, audio, sound, hifi, hifi audio, hifi sound, loudspeaker, surround sound, film, films, movies, tv, television, uhd, 4k, dolby atmos, dts x, auro 3d, imax enhanced, imax, immersive audio, immersive sound, 3d audio, dragon, nakamichi, nakamichi dragon, nakamichi dragon review, soundbar, avr, home theater system, nakamichi 11.4.6 dragon, nakamichi dragon 11.4.6 test, nakamichi dragon 11.4.6 unboxing, product review, review, unboxing, unbox

Id: LG-HP5lJ_OI

Length: 55min 45sec (3345 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 10 2023