Sennheiser AMBEO SB01

Sennheiser spent a long time developing its first soundbar, and rewrote the rulebook while doing do. The result is an extraordinary bar, though also with an extraordinary price-tag.

So to the product which has redefined the soundbar and what it can do — Sennheiser’s AMBEO soundbar. It is a truly remarkable product, with some specific divergences in philosophy, notably the early decision that it had to work without a subwoofer. To achieve that Sennheiser abandoned the goal of a small bar that won’t block the bottom of your TV — the AMBEO bar is 14cm high, pretty much guaranteeing that you won’t be able to pop it in front of your TV. Nor can you have it in a cabinet under the TV either, because of the upfiring speakers. So you’ll need your TV raised or wall-mounted, with the AMBEO bar benched below. There are no wireless rear speakers you can add for rear surround — the whole concept here was one box which would deliver it all. And it does. But to do so, it ended up costing four thousand dollars a pop.

Equipment

So do remember, as you read on, that for that $4000 you could buy yourself a nice little smart hi-fi system, perhaps something like a Marantz NR1200 which has HDMI inputs, together with good standmount speakers to flank your TV, and that’ll be a wonderful music and movie system. But if it’s a soundbar-style solution you want, this is the biggest soundbar on the market (we think), and it delivers the best sonic performance we’ve yet heard from a bar.

For this the AMBEO soundbar contains 13 drivers, the most visually obvious being the nine drivers arrayed in three sets along the main forward-facing frontage, each set comprising a one-inch aluminium-dome tweeter and twin 6×4-inch longthrow woofers with cellulosesandwich cones. The tweeters sit inside small cones which allow the frontage to present nine matching driver sites.

Two more tweeters sit in the angled ends, ready to use nearby reflective surfaces to create a surround effect. The final two are on the top — two smaller 3.5-inch full-range drivers firing upwards to deliver the height content available from today’s immersive soundtrack mixes.

There are a generous three HDMI inputs, and one HDMI output to your TV, supporting eARC to play multichannel audio including Dolby Atmos from compatible TVs. There are full-size optical and analogue audio inputs, a subwoofer output (available but not required!, said Sennheiser’s Uwe Cremering when we interviewed him; see overleaf), while for networking you have the choice of Wi-Fi or Ethernet network connection; we gave it Ethernet. And there are other ways to send audio — there’s Bluetooth with an easy-tap NFC connection, and Chromecast audio inside.

Performance

When you power it up, the bar starts playing some nice Eno-like ambient music which incorporates plenty of depth information, so it sets you up nicely for the size of sound to come. The front-panel display then tells you to plug in Sennheiser’s calibration microphone to optimise the AMBEO performance. This is entirely worth doing as it identifies reflective surfaces above and to the sides which it can use to create the most accurate and widest possible soundfield. How effective this process is can be heard later by using the app to turn the calibration results on and off.

The calibration microphone is unusually large, having a big base plate and a stick which rises roughly the average height of a human from arse to ear, so that you just pop the base on the couch and the mike will already be at ear height. This is far easier than attaching the usual flat mikes to a tripod or cardboard stand or trying to hold it motionless in front of your nose. The usual sonic whoops act to establish the levels while you stand out of the way, and you’re done.

This is a good time to download and connect the Sennheiser Smart Control app to the soundbar — it’s not essential for use, but it gives access to some settings and information not otherwise available. It pairs quickly,

requesting (for security, it says) that you press two buttons on the bar to make the connection. Buttons on the bar include source selection, volume control, mute, and the AMBEO button, which invokes immersive sound. The nicely-weighted remote control adds direct access to the six variations on AMBEO — Movie, Music, News, Sports, Neutral, and Night.

Sennheiser was immensely sensible in popping Dolby’s latest Atmos test disc in the box for reviewers — it’s the perfect material with which to demo the AMBEO bar’s ability to deliver gut-thrumming bass along with a spread of natural sound having width and front depth beyond all expectation from a front bar. Forest atmosphere or rainfall and thunder emerge as a joined-up and detailed soundfield; it’s bewitchingly immersive.

Of course Dolby’s demo tracks are one thing, but what about real-world content?

We gave it the talk-fest of Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, which has the usual Allen jazz band over the opening credits, and this sounded like it does in a movie theatre, pumping out rhythm from a contained but acoustically defined area in the centre, though not quite using only the centre driver set only, so tied to the screen and yet also imbued with a tangible acoustic (just as stereo can be three-dimensional, mono is by no means one-dimensional). Then Cate Blanchett’s vocal enters, impeccably edged yet smooth in tone. It seemed a ‘wow’ soundfield to emerge from a bar, even remembering of course that it’s a big one. And if the ‘movie’ mode option does, as we suspect, slightly exaggerate the width, there’s never a sense of fakery of phase-manipulation. The only significant tonal change came when we challenged it with Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, a mono soundtrack which the AMBEO button tried to spread and which did then slightly phase the speech.

We ran through action sequences. Occasionally we missed the deepest depth that a separate subwoofer would bring, to the Laketown firestorm before the death of Smaug in the third Hobbit movie, or the climax of the dust-storm in Interstellar. And you can add a subwoofer if

you really crave it. But there’s no shortage of impact or level without one; the bar creates a massive movie sound.

How about music? Soundbars often fall flat when trying to present the intricacies and balance of acoustic music in particular. But not here. Music can be played with or without the AMBEO modes engaged; sometimes we liked them, sometimes we didn’t. It was notable that lower quality sources like Spotify could get lumpier under some AMBEO modes, particularly the bass-lifted Music mode, than when played cleanly in stereo. Then again, open music — acoustic, chill, electronic — was highly enjoyable given the extra AMBEO spread.

We also pulled out some Atmos music, first the Pure Audio Blu-ray of the Choir of King’s College Cambridge, recorded in Atmos in their chapel (accompanied by His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts, no less); the delivery from the soundbar was spacious and fully loaded with the chapel ambience. While we’ve heard a more complete rendition via a full surround system, this is the best soundbar delivery ever!

Roger Waters The Wall has a full Blu-ray Atmos mix

of his stadium concert with extras — and playing this there was a huge split between the AMBEO sound and the non-AMBEO rendition, not only in the shifting of crowd noise far and wide, but in the opening up of the whole musical sound. This was in many ways a more enjoyable performance than from a full surround system, where the subwoofer channel can dominate.

One handy bonus here is the inclusion of Chromecast inside, both allowing you to throw music from a good many apps, including Spotify, and to put the bar under the voice control of Google Assistant from any nearby Google Home.

Conclusion

Now that Sennheiser has lifted the category, other brands are feeling out the high-end. But as yet there’s nothing to compare with Sennheiser’s AMBEO, though we await their own plans for “sons and daughters”, to hear what a lesser AMBEO bar might be like.