Nakamichi Shockwafe Pro 7.1.4 Channel Soundbar Review! Best for the Money or No?

what is going on guys jonah with the home theater diy here today we're going over the nakamichi shockwave pro 7.1.4 channel soundbar so let's get into it alright so i've been using this thing for probably five months now i got it back um during a black friday special so yeah probably five five or so months i've been using it now and i freaking love this thing so it has 600 watts of power or they claim it has 600 watts of power 105 decibels of audio or sound the sound bar itself is 45.5 inches wide and it has six two and a half inch full range drivers as well as two one inch tweeters it comes with an eight inch wireless down firing subwoofer and two rear surround speakers that have a three inch full range driver and one one inch tweeter now this is adobe atmos and dtx compatible sound bar it's one of the very few ones out there that can actually do this sort of surround sound setup now it's able to do this because it has a total of four upward firing speakers two of them are on the soundbar itself right there and then the other two are on the wireless surround speakers now these wireless surround speakers they do connect to the subwoofer via an rca cable and the subwoofer provides the audio signal and the power for them so there's no separate power cable for those but you will need to make sure that they are in somewhat close proximity of the subwoofer but the the cable's actually really really long so you can get a fair distance away from the subwoofer uh with these cables but if you did need to use different cables then you could definitely do that now let's talk about the connections that this sound bar has so of course it has a power input it has three hdmi inputs a single hdmi output that is arc compatible of course or arc compatible it has a hdr passthrough that supports 4k up to 60 frames per second the other inputs include digital optical digital coax auxiliary bluetooth and usb if you want to like plug a flash drive in and play files play an mp3 file or something i doubt you'll want to do that but this usb port also supports firmware updates so if they want to update the firmware later on which is actually what they did with this model originally it didn't support the it didn't support dobie atmos i believe correct me if i'm wrong on you know when you're editing jonah but uh yeah i don't think it supported adobe atmos originally but they included a firmware update that fixed this and allowed it to work properly now interesting enough this thing is packaged extremely well so i don't know if you'd really have to worry about it getting damaged during transit it's very well packaged this thing comes with a ton of cables too so of course it comes with the power cables for you know all the stuff the sound bar and the subwoofer it also comes with an hdmi cable a digital optical cable auxiliary cable and it comes with some nice mounting hardware as well if you want to mount it to the wall but you look if you look here i actually mounted mine to the tv so if i pull my tv out from the wall the sound bar moves with it which is something that i really enjoy so if you want to check that out i have a video on that on how to mount a sound bar to a tv so check that out if you're interested in and moving on now like i said i've been using the sound bar for quite a few months now and i have noticed some things that kind of bothered me and i want to mention those first and then i'll get into what i really enjoyed so first off i had some issues getting the hdmi inputs to work um you know this may have been something with my tv it may have been something with the sound bar but i did do what they call an hdmi refresh and that's essentially where i like unplug the power to the tv the sound bar unplug all the hdmi cables basically let everything sit there for a minute or two plug everything back in and then it finally worked and you know i spent probably 30 minutes just changing cables and just trying to figure out what the heck was going on but uh actually nakamiji support their help desk actually had an answer for this and that's what solved my issue for me probably should have checked there first but i assumed it was just a simple cable issue and got a little carried away with it and then my other main complaint with this is the surround speakers so yes there are two surround speakers that connect to the subwoofer but what i have noticed is that they do cut in and out semi-frequently you know i would say they cut out at least once every four or five minutes and if you're really engaged into a movie or you know you're playing a game or something it can be really distracting it's quite annoying however i was able to kind of fix this issue a little bit i did re-situate my subwoofer and move it around a little bit and that seemed to help you know of course making sure all my connections are good repairing the subwoofer as well so i tried quite a few different things and that seems to resolved it for the most part it's gotten better but it does cut in and out every once in a while and that's kind of to be expected wireless connections they're not perfect it's not the same as a direct wired connection so i'll i'll give him a little leeway on that so now i want to talk about what i really love about this soundbar it sounds incredible and i may have mentioned this already but it really does the low end on it is pretty darn good this subwoofer is strong it's an 8-inch subwoofer so it has it packs some punch to it the mid-range is actually really nice as well and the tweeters seem to handle those high pitches without really crackling or anything like that i haven't noticed any clipping or anything listening to audio and i've turned it up pretty loud now something that i haven't gotten to try out too much is the adobe atmos or the upward firing speakers because i'm in a room with a vaulted ceiling if i were to use the upward firing speakers it's not going to sound like it would if it was in a normal square room or rectangular room where the roof is flat because that's essentially where they're meant to do it they're they're trying to bounce the sound from this up in the air and back down well when your roof is slanted those sounds are going to bounce off at the incorrect angle they're they're used to the or they're actually made for roofs that are flat so it bounces right up and then comes back down at the correct angle to where you're sitting so i haven't really gotten to try that out too much you know i've turned it on and i kind of noticed a difference but i don't i don't believe in my setup that i'll get to experience that in full i may need to move this over to one of the bedrooms that we have and try it out there just to get a better experience for it but for one of from what other people have said it really it does sound pretty good you know adobe atmos and dtsx i do talk about it a lot it is an interesting concept and it's fun good lord i'm not sure if you see my cat that's mr kitty right there he's uh he's got the zooms we call it so back to what i was saying so dtsx and dolby atmos those are pretty cool things that the sound bar does have but if you're just using it as a standard you know seven channels is what it has it sounds incredible like i really i wish i could show it in the video and you could understand how it sounds but there's no way i could get you to experience it without actually sitting in my my living room but just trust me on this for the price range on the sound bar it's really a steal i think it's down to like 660 dollars i think when i bought it was right over 700 or may have been around the same price i really it's been so long i don't remember now i'll put the current price on the screen but that's subject to change all the time but for the price range i don't think you'll get anything like it with any other manufacturer everyone else a system like this is gonna cost anywhere from twelve hundred to seventeen eighteen hundred dollars and for nakamichi to get that for even half the price that's it's a crazy good steal and really i just if someone wants to get a high-end sound bar this is the one that i've been recommending to everyone because it's really like one of the best sound bars that i've listened to other than like you know a 1200 sony sound i don't remember the model but i've listened to some really expensive sound bars that of course they're going to blow this thing out of the water because cats are still zooming man because they're just so much more expensive the drivers in them are just way more expensive and way higher quality i think for the price this is probably the best you're gonna get when it comes to uh you know consumer sound bars one thing that sets the nakamichi shockwave pro apart from all other sound bars is its gigantic and extremely extensive remote control so most soundbar remotes that's literally like volume up volume down subwoofer up subwoofer down mute and source buttons that's it well with this with this remote you have so much more control um so of course you have all your inputs on it then it has some really handy uh different modes for movies game music then there's also a clear voice stereo and direct setting that changed the surround setting and how the audio is being processed you have sse which is their three different processing engines that they have spatial surround and elevation then there's a nice little setting for the size of the room so my living room i would say is pretty small it's not a large living room by any means but having this setting there it actually expands out and it kind of changes the audio processing to match the size of the room which is really cool a lot of sound bars don't do that then at the bottom the remote you can easily turn up and down the treble dialog the surround sound the subwoofer all of that so that's really interesting and like i said most sound bars don't have this extensive of a remote control you have to go in with their tiny little remote and you're scrolling through all these different settings on a tiny little led screen and it just makes it really really difficult well with this nakamichi shockwave it's really simple because everything's in the remote control now what i did have some issues with i did mention that i had issues with the hdmi and i had to do an hdmi refresh something that comes along with that hdmi cec is not working properly for me on mine so if i use my tvs remote control with hdmi cec i should be able to adjust the volume of the nakamichi shockwave pro unfortunately mine doesn't do that however that's not really an issue for me here i'll grab my remote i use we use a fire tv cube in our living room so basically there's volume controls on this so when i use this it changes the volume for the the sound bar so it's not really an issue for me however i am going to continue working on that and see if i can get it working properly maybe i need to change out some hdmi cables some more originally i was using a digital optical cable and i was just kind of testing out to see how it sounded from digital optical to hdmi and then i kind of set up i set it up with digital optical and i kind of just left it there for a little while and then now recently i've gone through and changed it to hdmi and i'm really testing going back and forth to see the difference is there really a difference between optical and hdmi you know i've mentioned this before and how optical doesn't support 7 channels of audio it supports 5.1 channels of audio so with this it's you're losing 2 channels somewhere i i did notice quite a difference from doing digital optical and hdmi so that is something that you do want to keep in mind if at all possible you need to make sure you use hdmi with this unit otherwise you are going to lose some quality with it i've said it once and i'll say it again the nakamichi shockwave pro will be my recommendation for higher end sound bars moving forward it's just like i said one of my favorite sound bars that i've ever listened to and at the price point it can't be beat so if you're in the market for a sound bar i highly highly highly recommend this unit over a lot of the other ones i will be doing more sound bar reviews and if you have a unit that you'd like me to review please leave that in the comments below i'm looking to purchase and kind of test i want to see what's out there what's working well and just try out a bunch of different units actually i just bought the samsung soundbar r650 that's in my bedroom now and i'm testing that and i will do a review on that soon and yeah so if you have any suggestions for me please leave those in the comments below if you aren't subscribed to the channel please click subscribe it really helps me out i appreciate it like the video if you learned something and we'll see you guys next time peace

Channel: Jonah Matthes

Views: 59,031

Keywords: soundbar, sound bar, tv, receiver, a/v receiver, projector, speakers, projector screen, HDMI, Nakamichi, Shockwafe, Pro, 7.1.4, 7 channels

Id: gO5ikkbqnw8

Length: 12min 17sec (737 seconds)

Published: Wed May 06 2020