Adding the Sound+ subwoofer to the MS750

The Sound+ sub significantly raises the price here, of course, being a $799 addition, but it’s a high-quality and well-finished unit measuring about 32cm per side, with a 10inch driver firing to the rear from a sealed cabinet design. The sub is wireless but unusually you have to insert a wireless dongle into the bar for the two to communicate, but this worked well enough. The results were immediately obvious, dropping the system’s response by at least 10Hz (Samsung claims to 27Hz), so that movies regained that deeper content, while music added both depth and mass. The Bonham kick drum which was previously tight was now also heavy; the Hughes bass guitar which had previously been full was now room-excitingly powerful. How about the crossover between subwoofer and bar, so often a problem? Pretty darned good — a small dip around 100Hz indicated the meeting point, so that the bar takes over earlier than you might expect, holding things solid from 120Hz up. Given the sub’s rear-facing driver, it’s worth experimenting to see how bass level and response vary with distance to the wall, but by keeping relatively low there was less of a ‘pull’ to its position than from rivals here, while the same distortion-cancelling algorithm has been applied to prevent overloading at volume, though frankly, you have to go some to get there. We treated ourselves to the opening scenes of BabyDriver, its musical content given full head, the Blues-Brothery chase scene showing the quality of detail steering amid the impressive soundfield size. There was just nothing not to like. (Eighty minutes later, still watching BabyDriver…)

A fine sub with this great bar made a terrific combination. And since it’s easy to power down the sub and restart the bar, you can choose to enjoy the bar alone for casual viewing, and kick in the extra bass when cranking your movie or music of choice.