Power Cord For Lg Sound Bar
TechRadar Verdict
The sound quality of LG'due south debut Dolby Atmos soundbar is pretty incredible. The power and calibration of its audio beggars conventionalities considering how attractive and compact the system is, while the sense of height in the audio mix is uncanny. The UK price feels a fleck steep, though, and many people - including usa - are currently experiencing HDMI handshake issues.
Pros
- +
Spectacularly powerful audio
- +
Remarkably meaty design
- +
Chromecast back up congenital in
- +
LED display
Cons
- -
Only one HDMI input
- -
HDMI handshake issues
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U.k. price is loftier
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Express rear/overhead channel effects
Dolby Atmos soundbars are the hottest tendency in home amusement audio this yr. Pretty much every major AV brand has included one or more than Atmos soundbar in its 2017 range, and Samsung has already impressed u.s. with a couple of loftier-end models.
Now, it'southward the turn of Samsung'south curvation rival LG to prove that adding Dolby Atmos to a soundbar makes much more sense than you might look it to – run into the LG SJ9 Sound Bar.
LG's debut Atmos soundbar is a 500W, £999/$799 system that comes in just two parts: a chief bar containing a five.i.2 speaker assortment, and a separate wireless subwoofer. And because that it merely has these two parts, it's a brilliant, bold system from the current rex of OLED.
Pattern
The SJ9 is the most bonny Dolby Atmos soundbar we've seen so far. It sits lower than the slightly chunky Samsung HW-K950 and Samsung HW-K850 models, benefits from some cutely rounded ends, and enjoys a really attractive smooth finish versus the industrial grilled finish of Samsung's models.
The simple circular upfiring speakers cut into the top edge look cute, too, as do the couple of strips of silvery metal forth the lesser of the front end border.
The subwoofer sports a more than cubic design than the relatively slim sub y'all go with Samsung'south Atmos soundbars, making information technology potentially a piddling harder to tuck away in your living room. But it likewise looks more attractive, and feels better built.
The just sour note in the SJ9's design is its remote command – information technology'due south too pocket-size, too obliquely labelled, and too random with its push button layout to e'er feel like a comfy companion for such a premium AV product.
Dimensions: 1200 x 58 x 145mm (W x H x D) | Speaker configuration: five.1.two | Claimed audio power: 500W total, broken down into two x 43W fronts, 43W middle, 2 x 43W rears, 2 ten 43W acme, and a 200W subwoofer | Connections: Single 4K/HDR HDMI loopthrough, one optical sound input, 3.5mm audio port, 2-way Bluetooth, wi-fi, USB (service but), Ethernet port
Features
The SJ9 doesn't only depend on its loftier discrete channel count and extreme ability – it's also pretty flexible when it comes to what you lot can connect to it.
In that location'south a 4K-capable HDMI loopthrough, and so you can loop an HDMI output from, say, an Ultra HD Blu-ray deck through the soundbar and onto the Television, with the soundbar extracting the sound rails - including Dolby Atmos if your source supports it - en route. There's as well a iii.5mm sound input and an optical audio connectedness, or you tin choose to become wireless via either Bluetooth 4 or Wi-Fi.
Impressively, the SJ9 supports Chromecast playback, enabling the casting of millions of songs, podcasts and radio stations from your phone straight into the soundbar using services such as Deezer, tunein, Google Play Music, Pandora, iHeart Radio, Rhapsody, and Spotify. Y'all can as well use your phone as a remote to search, play and break music, or adjust the volume.
Confused about which source is currently selected? Y'all can easily rails which audio input you've got selected via a simple only very readable LED on the soundbar's forepart, and you can control the soundbar's volume using many brands of Tv set remote control.
In terms of audio features beyond the speaker configuration and Dolby Atmos support, the SJ9 supports Hi-Res Audio, and provides 24-scrap/192kHz upscaling for 16-scrap/48kHz original sources. LG also claims that the SJ9 employs an adaptive audio system that analyses the frequency levels of the sound yous're feeding it to produce an optimum sound mix based on what you're watching.
For instance, information technology can opt to emphasise dialogue if its algorithms discover that'south the important thing to focus on, or it can focus on making the sound more aggressive for action scenes.
There'due south besides a carve up sound processing system that tin can slightly reshape the sound depending on what book level you've got selected, so that you always get the most constructive and accurate audio at whatever volume level. There are a series of different audio presets (including Movie and Music options) to play with - though note that if the SJ9 detects a Dolby Atmos source, that's the only sound option you can use.
Y'all can conform the sound delay from the soundbar between 0 and 300ms (though pleasingly we didn't feel the need to arrange this at all with the sources we played on the SJ9), and the SJ9 tin can exist integrated into LG'due south Music Flow wireless speaker network. You lot tin can besides utilise LG'south upcoming NP8540, NP8740, NP8340 and NP8350 wi-fi speakers as optional rears if y'all wish.
Ane concluding proficient trick of the SJ9 is that despite its headline-grabbing Dolby Atmos talents, LG confirms that can also decode DTS soundtracks (which actually make up the majority of the soundtracks on Blu-rays) to v.ane. Samsung's Atmos soundbars, by comparison, currently but decode DTS into stereo.
The loopthrough issue
Earlier getting into how the SJ9 sounds, we feel the demand to report some issues with its HDMI loopthrough. Nosotros experienced pregnant issues with getting 4K HDR Blu-ray pictures from our Oppo UDP-203 Ultra Hd Blu-ray Player to pass through to a Samsung KS9500 TV correctly.
Using the default Motorcar HDR and resolution picture settings on my Oppo (settings which worked only fine with the Samsung K850 and K950 Dolby Atmos audio bars, when using exactly the same HDMI cables) through the SJ9, we couldn't get a picture to appear on the Tv at all unless we turned off the TV'south UHD Colour setting for the relevant HDMI input ... even though this should exist set to On for any HDR sources.
The but way nosotros could go a picture to announced on the Samsung TV with HDMI UHD Colour on was to switch the colour output on the Oppo to YCbCr 4:2:ii. Neither the Auto nor four:iv:4 settings worked. Even when nosotros got a picture to play OK in 4K HDR, sometimes bizarrely the picture would disappear once more when we pressed end and tried to telephone call upwardly the Oppo's menus, leaving us having to toggle the TV'south UHD Colour On/Off feature again, or reset the Oppo by belongings down its remote's Resolution push for 3 seconds.
A adequately cursory search online reveals quite a few other users experiencing similar problems, so we approached LG for an explanation and received the following response: "LG has been fabricated aware of an issue when attempting to connect an external 4K device to certain LG soundbars. In some limited cases the soundbar is unable to identify the source to transmit the proper output betoken. The issue appears to be related to the fashion the Extended Display Identification (EDID) tables are interpreting the source information in specific situations. LG engineers are now working on a firmware update to accost this issue to be made available starting at the cease of June to affected LG soundbar customers. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."
If possible we will try to accept another look at an SJ9 after the promised firmware is introduced, to come across if it does indeed fix things. Only, for now, know it has some problems here.
Performance
Correct, that's (near of) the bad news. The very good news is that when the SJ9 worked, it sounded brilliant.
For starters, it produces a remarkably large audio stage that extends sideways and upward much further than those produced by nearly 'single body' soundbars. The sense of verticality is particularly outstanding, since too as stretching pretty much from screen to ceiling (no matter how high your ceiling might be!) the wall of audio is able to place details within information technology with jaw-dropping precision.
With the soundbar placed below our Idiot box screen information technology managed to pinpoint the relative position of actors' voices along both the horizontal and vertical axes even when the voices are coming from points onscreen as little equally two inches higher up, below or to the side of each other.
While nigh of the really fine sound detail accurateness inevitably takes place in relatively close proximity to the screen, the detail positioning does extend all the fashion to the ceiling when yous're dealing with extreme sound furnishings such as helicopters or planes flight overhead, and all the way to your side walls when dealing with left and correct audio furnishings that are taking identify off screen.
The SJ9 underpins its arguably peerless audio detail precision with huge amounts of power too. You can turn it to massive, room-filling volumes without it suffering even a hint of distortion and without information technology starting to sound either likewise bright in the treble range or two heavy in the bass range.
The subwoofer really gels pretty much flawlessly with the SJ9's mid-range drivers; bass gets seriously deep, yet there's no sense of whatever gap in the dynamic range betwixt the deepest bass depths and the lower mid-range.
Another slap-up strength of the SJ9's audio is its treatment of vocals. It can accurately identify voices within the sound 'wall', but it also does a neat task of keeping vocals articulate and forrard in the mix even during very dumbo sound moments. Fifty-fifty better, these voices always sound perfectly contextualised within their onscreen environment, rather than artificial or forced.
One other clever thing near the SJ9'southward audio direction is the way information technology deals with ambient effects and musical scoring. These sorts of soundtrack elements can go problematic when yous don't accept whatever 'real' rear speakers to assist out, yet the fashion the SJ9 places them at the left/right edges and bottom of its sound 'wall' proves surprisingly effective in ensuring that they're still potent without taking on undue prominence in the mix.
Despite its winningly aggressive approach to films, the SJ9 is also a very capable music performer: CDs sound make clean, open and well timed, and once again the subwoofer yet ties in very effectively with the work existence done by the speakers in the principal soundbar. With streamed compressed sound files, the upsampling does a mostly very fine chore of opening upward the dynamic range, expanding both the treble and, peculiarly, bass ends of music of all types without the results sounding forced, amorphous or impuissant. Even very dense tracks such as Placebo'southward Taste In Men and Ride'south Seagull play without the sort of sibilance or 'swirling' ebbs and flows that tin characterise playback of such tracks on lesser speakers.
That said, there are a few bug here. Relatively quiet tracks and moments tin lack the delicacy and warmth you get with practiced dedicated hi-fi speakers and while the SJ9 delivers a remarkably detailed vertical wall of sound in front of y'all, in that location's no real sense of whatsoever sound coming from directly above you every bit yous would expect to hear with a full Atmos speaker array.
The Samsung K850 organization works slightly ameliorate in this respect, since although information technology doesn't wrap you in the full Atmos 'bubble' of sound due to its lack of any rear speakers, its angled peak speakers do at least occasionally evangelize a sense of sound coming from straight overhead.
Nosotros besides didn't feel whatever real sense of surround audio from the SJ9, despite it conveying dedicated 'rear channel' drivers at the extremities of its principal soundbar. The best y'all tin say is that you experience fleeting sounds to your left and right sides during very sharp transitions, or with pronounced ambient effects such as blowing wind.
Finally, while the SJ9 handles DTS sources better than Samsung'south Atmos soundbars currently do, it still seems a shame that it doesn't also decode DTS:X. Certainly its DTS v.i mixes sound markedly smaller in scale and less dynamic than its Dolby Atmos playback.
Other soundbars to consider
Superior though the SJ9 is with its features and most aspects of its functioning, its £999 UK prices feels a bit too expensive, peculiarly given that information technology's available for just $799 in the US. Even with post-Brexit prices we would've hoped to see that U.s. price translating to £899 or fifty-fifty £799.
That said, if yous can push button your upkeep a flake higher, Samsung's HW-K950 is the ultimate Dolby Atmos sound organisation thanks to its inclusion of powerful wireless rear speakers and the fashion angled up-firing speakers in both the forepart soundbar and the rears create the Atmos bubble of sound surprisingly assuredly.
Similarly, Samsung's HW-K850 ditches the HW-K950's rears and crucially doesn't include 'pseudo' rear channel speakers in its soundbar component like the SJ9 does, denying it some of the soundstage width and clarity you get with the SJ9. Withal, it does manage to push its meridian effects further forward than the SJ9, giving you lot more than of a sense of Atmos effects appearing in a higher place yous.
Verdict
If you lot buy an SJ9 now you may find yourself having to wrestle with HDMI loopthrough issues until LG releases its promised firmware update. Nosotros'd too argue that information technology'southward a touch expensive for a soundbar without real rear speakers.
The SJ9 is nonetheless a by and large stunning and in some means unique bit of home cinema kit. Information technology looks stunningly compact and pretty, it'due south surprisingly potent and flexible with music, and best of all it'southward capable of delivering an immense, cinematic soundstage that justifies its Atmos claims past delivering almost miraculously authentic vertical effects.
- Looking for other options? These are the best soundbars of 2017
Source: https://www.techradar.com/au/reviews/lg-sj9-soundbar
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