Ever since I got my hands on my LG CX OLED television (it’s great, by the way), I’ve been itching to upgrade my overall setup to what can loosely be called a home theater setup. Having sorted the picture quality with the OLED, the next tech investment in my endeavor would naturally have been getting a proper sound system.
I wasn’t counting much on the TV speakers to blow my mind, honestly. While the LG CX supports Dolby Atmos through its 2.2 speaker setup, you know how TV speakers are. That said, I did have a Sony home theater supporting Dolby Digital 5.1 with me. So I did what any logical man would have done in my place. I plugged it into my television using HDMI ARC and had a 600W output ready with surround sound.
But then, here’s the thing. Once you have heard of something with the promise of more, it is hard to keep your thoughts away from it. The LG TV had introduced me to the concept of Dolby Atmos and it felt like everything that was missing from my existing configuration. After all, what good is Dolby Vision on my TV if it doesn’t have the perfect audio quality to match it, right?
Dolby Atmo..what now?
For those of you who haven’t spent hours watching videos and reading material online on Dolby Atmos, let me bring you up to speed. To put it simply, Dolby Atmos is the next logical evolution to surround sound or Dolby Digital. A 5.1 or a 7.1 setup can cover and replicate spatial sound well but has its limitations. Yes, seven speakers can cover a lot of spatial points but there will be gaps. And unless you have speakers on the roof, how do you even cover audio coming from the top?
Dolby Atmos setup can take care of these issues easily. By supporting overhead channels (either through roof-mounted speakers or upward-firing speakers), Dolby Atmos can cover a whole lot more audio points than a traditional surround sound setup. There can be multiple configurations in an Atmos setup. Some systems come with five speakers in the front, two in the back, and two upward-firing speakers in a 7.1.2 setup. Others offer three front speakers, two rear ones, and up to four upward-firing speakers in a 5.1.4 setup (or 9.1 as JBL misleadingly likes to call it).
The result is a much more immersive experience that can replicate a theater setup much better than surround sound alone. Club it with Dolby Vision (which is an HDR standard for videos by Dolby again) and you have the ultimate home theater setup.
Choosing the right DOLBY Atmos soundbar in my budget
Like I mentioned before, I had a Sony HT-RT40 Dolby Digital 5.1 channel home theater with me before. It isn’t the most expensive or the most sophisticated 5.1 setup you will find but has done a decent job so far. I wanted to replace it with something that looked as good and offered audio quality that justified the upgrade. Not having a lot of Atmos options in India, I narrowed my search to four options.
JBL 9.1
Essentially a 5.1.4 setup with two rear speakers and four upward-firing speakers. Also the cheapest among the decent options with a price tag of around US$1,150 in my country. What I loved about these was the fact that the rear speakers were truly wireless and work around 6-7 hours on battery. You can also plug in a micro-USB cable and never worry about having to charge them (at the cost of battery life in the long term). They also have a microphone that allows calibrating the whole setup once the speakers are in place.
Samsung HW-Q950T
Initially, my heart was on this baby, given the good things I’ve read about this soundbar. If you get the rear speakers (sold separately), you have a 9.1.4 setup. Sounds pretty exciting, if you ask me. The sound quality has been lauded by most reviewers. Enough, in fact, to match the ones from Sonos.
That said, it’s not the cheapest offering in the market. The soundbar alone was close to ~US$1,800 with another couple of hundred dollars spend on the rear speakers. However, the biggest dealbreaker for me was the fact that it did not come with an automatic room calibration option. I had some doubts about doing it perfectly on my own (and, well, the price, of course).
Sony HT-ST5000
Another pricey option from Sony that I did not consider because the rep at the Sony showroom told me I had no way to add rear speakers to this setup. Enough said.
LG SN10YG
Another decent offering that I held back on shortlisting because the soundbar does not support eARC. As I understand, HDMI ARC can only support up to 5.1 channels so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend more time researching how this thing works.
After considering all these options, I chose the cheapest, yet a promising one. The JBL 9.1 (5.1.4 essentially) replaced my Dolby Digital 5.1 setup. It was pretty simple to install and setup. That said, JBL has a reputation for not making the most flawless products. Unfortunately, I got a firsthand taste of that. It took me a couple of tries to calibrate this thing. You can’t really get the Atmos effect until you’ve calibrated and I was getting an error repeatedly when trying to do it. I eventually did a factory reset and it worked.
Things work as they should, although there have been rare occasions where the audio from the TV drops for no reason and I have to turn the soundbar off and on again to get it back. Not the smoothest experience, but something I can live with.
So, how well does it work, Atmos and all?
But now to the main question for which I created this lengthy post. How does it feel compared to the Dolby Digital 5.1 setup? Honestly, for me, the biggest difference has been in the level of bass and treble that the new soundbar has brought. It has been a game-changer and, honestly, the biggest change that makes my setup feel like a proper home theater. That’s understandable though, given I wasn’t using the best 5.1 setup. Probably, a similar costing 5.1 setup would have replicated it too.
On the whole Atmos thing, it is definitely a better experience than what I had with 5.1. But the difference doesn’t feel too much, to be honest. I have a decently high room and I haven’t yet felt the whole audio coming from the top thing to a great extent. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, I just feel it isn’t as prominent as I was expecting it to be. But not taking any points away from the technology, content that supports Atmos (not everything is currently encoded to support Atmos) does feel different and rich overall. I can definitely feel audio coming from different points when watching a movie that is supported on Atmos. It’s just that my 5.1 also did some of these things to a lesser extent.
The other issue is there isn’t a whole lot of Atmos-ready content in the market right now. Once you have seen a handful of YouTube videos, it is only the most recent shows and movies on Netflix or Prime that offer Atmos audio. For the most part, my speakers run on 5.1. Of course, that would change in the future as more new content is built for Atmos and Dolby Vision.
So, is it Dolby Digital Or Dolby Atmos then?
All in all, I don’t have too many regrets about my purchase. Given I was coming from a relatively low-end Dolby Digital 5.1 setup, it feels like a good upgrade. However, if you have a decent 5.1 or 7.1 setup already, I would say you’re not missing out on too much. Yes, it is better and richer. But if you have to throw your existing setup out, I would suggest you save some money. Till at least there is enough content with Atmos support.
On the other hand, if you’re on the lookout for a new home theater system, you should definitely futureproof your purchase and get an Atmos-enabled soundbar.
