Dolby Atmos soundbars are everywhere now – gone are they days when having a Dolby Atmos set up in your living room involved masses of speakers, encapsulating your entire living room with 4km of cable and taking a hammer to your roof, while your concerned spouse looks on in dismay.
Not any more. Dolby Atmos dedicated soundbars are a much simpler avenue to explore and other than mains cables don’t require any dedicated speaker cables.
Whilst a Dolby Atmos soundbar may not sound as good as a dedicated full Atmos AV set up, they are certainly anything but lacking. The sounds that can be achieved from these units are nothing short of incredible, so much so that I’ve had to do a little thinking myself as which direction I would like to go with my own setup.
I’m having a first look at the LG SJ9 soundbar, LG’s flagship bar this year which offers full Dolby Atmos support in a 5.1.2 configuration, pushing out an incredible 500w of power, through the main bar and its dedicated wireless sub woofer.
First off it is worth noting that all Dolby Atmos soundbars are big units, and the SJ9 is no exception, coming in at just over 47″ long. Inside are your front speakers (centre, left and right) and on the top are your Dolby Atmos upward firing speakers, which blast sound up to the ceiling which in turn bounces down thus creating the Dolby Atmos effect.
Around the back of the soundbar you can find two 4k HDCP2.2 ready HDMI inputs as well as optical and a Ethernet connection, should you wish to hard wire the unit to take advantage of the SJ9’s networking capability. Google Chromecast is built in of course – this can also be achieved through a dedicated WiFi connection The SJ9 also has 24bit up sampling and of course there is also APTX Bluetooth on board as well.
LG seem to have really nailed the styling with the SJ9 as its designed to blend in perfectly with the incredibly thin W7 wall paper OLED television, so it is as unobtrusive as it can be without sacrificing any quality of sound.
I’ll have to reserve judgement on the SJ9 until i can get my hands on a demonstration unit, which should be hitting our stores soon. From what I’ve heard from the Samsung HWK950 I have very high expectations from the SJ9.
Click to find out more about the LG SJ9.
Author: Garrett, Plymouth Store
