The world of 3D sound is about to get even easier, as Samsung expands its soundbar offering to provide an extra two and four channels of surround.
Having your own personal home theatre may start with the picture, but sound is just as important, and some may argue more so. What’s a great movie experience if you can’t hear the audio the way the director envisioned it, with action scenes sounding all around you, not just in front where the centre channel normally goes?
Sound has come a long way for movies, and while it’s normal to expect a surround sound experience in four, five, or seven channels (plus a subwoofer), the world of 3D sound is where home theatre sound has begun shifting to, involving technologies like DTS:X and Dolby Atmos to get it happening.
Support for those technologies is one part of the equation, but the other part can be a little more complicated. While a 4K Blu-ray player or a 4K Apple TV can get you the 3D sound-capable stream with a 4K Ultra HD movie (Apple’s support coming in tvOS 12), you still need the hardware to play it, and that can be tricky.
Special amplifiers and speaker systems tend to be one of the obvious directions to go, but soundbars that fire the audio up into your room and bounce it off walls is one of the other ways these can exist, and companies like Samsung have been working on solutions for this for at least two years now.
This year, though, Samsung is stepping it up a notch, expanding its understanding of sound dimensionality to support more sound around you, delivering both a 5.1.2 and a 7.1.4 offering.
The 5.1.2 will arrive in the HW-N850 (above), echoing Samsung’s existing technology and providing five speakers in one soundbar, the subwoofer, and two upward facing speakers sitting on top of the soundbar, all coming together to create that 5.1.2 needed for 3D sound.
In that setup, the two speakers bouncing sound around the room create the feeling of dimensionality, but it’s not the be-all and end-all for Samsung’s play for sound this year.
That will come in a 7.1.4 offering, the HW-N950 (above), which is similar, but adds two rear speakers for the extra two channels, both of which fire up as well. That delivers seven channels of sound all around, as well as four channels that bounce in the room around you, creating what is essentially a bubble of sound for your home theatre experience.
Both support Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, with the systems supporting 24-bit Hi-Res Audio, 32-bit upscaling, HDMI 2.1 support, optical, and WiFi and Bluetooth, complete with Amazon Alexa support, as well.
“Australians are increasingly looking to soundbars to complete their home entertainment set-up and we are seeing greater demand for products that deliver a rich and immersive audio to support the TV viewing experience,” said Hass Mahdi, Head of Audio Visual at Samsung in Australia.
“The N950 and N850 are defining products for Samsung and a testament to our deep commitment to deliver products that break new ground for our offering and give Australians an incredible experience,” he said.
Developed at Samsung’s LA-based Audio Lab, it’s not just a showcase of what Samsung can do in the home, but what it can do with the Harman/Kardon understanding of audio it gained when it acquired the parent company Harman last year, and this speaker system even shows the two brands sitting side by side.
As for pricing, Samsung has set the 5.1.2 N850 at $1499, while the extra two rear speakers with two more upward facing speakers ups the price to $1999.
We haven’t heard whether N850 owners will be able to upgrade to the N950 simply by grabbing the extra speakers, but our guess is that this is probably one of those decisions you’ll need to make at the time of purchase, and not later.
However, both will be available from select retailers towards the middle of August.
Comments are closed.