Multiroom soundbars

Welcome to our Wireless Multiroom categories — last year we had only one award for these, but this year, given the explosion of such systems in the market place, we have drilled deeper to recognise the best overall multiroom system, the best single component, the best portable player, and here the best soundbar which features multiroom abilities. It’s quite sneaky putting such streaming and app control abilities in a soundbar — it’s important, of course, for manufacturers to get that first bit of multiroom gear into your home, as it locks you into their ecosystem. And since Yamaha is famous for its soundbars anyway, some purchasers may be bringing the company’s new version of MusicCast into their home without realising it.

Because at $999, the YSP-1600 is a good soundbar even without its extra abilities (it also won on p15). We say ‘soundbar’, of course, but Yamaha prefers the term ‘Digital Sound Projector’ to reflect the cunning tech

used in all but its entry-level soundbars, where multiple small speakers are used to ‘direct’ the discrete surround channels around your room in an effort to achieve a wide spread of sound. This does not, in our experience, replace the effect of real rear speakers, but Yamaha’s DSP technology does better than most at achieving a wide and immersive soundfield.

The bar is precisely a metre in length (about the width of a 50-inch TV), and uses eight of Yamaha’s usual cunning collection of tiny transducers across the front, each in this case 28mm round, and supported by a pair of 85mm woofers, plus of course the subwoofer. You get one minijack analogue aux in, one optical digital input, one HDMI input (4K passthrough capable; the bar can decode Dolby Digital, DTS, and ProLogic II) and one HDMI output to your TV, which supports the HDMI

Audio Return Channel (ARC), otherwise run an optical or analogue cable from the TV instead,

It’s impressive to find Yamaha’s capable little YST-SW030 subwoofer as part of the deal, which normally retails on its own at $399. It requires a wired connection, but it proved one of the most sensitive subs for soundbars we’ve heard, in that it’s convincingly powerful when delivering big movie soundtracks but unusually inoffensive when underlying daytime TV. In addition to the merits of subtlety, this soundbar and sub combo proved capable of movie sound which was powerful enough to fill even quite a large lounge room, and capable of keeping dialogue clear in the middle even as all hell broke loose around it.

Then, of course, you have all the MusicCast abilities here as well (see p92), including sending via Bluetooth, useful here for listening to TV on Bluetooth headphones. It’s a vast wealth of abilities, and barely drops a point anywhere.

More info: au.yamaha.com