Sony has just announced the Bravia Theater Trio, a new wireless Dolby Atmos system that splits the difference between a proper surround system and a soundbar, and has been specifically designed with large TVs in mind, to ensure that the soundstage is wider than the TV itself – but will be tempting for anyone who wants a more physically separated sound than the best soundbars alone can deliver.
It can also be expanded into a fuller wireless surround setup, and I got to hear this full-force system in action. But first let’s review the basics.
The Sony Bravia Theater Trio is, as the name suggests, three wireless speakers in one package. It’s what home theater fans call an ‘LCR’ system – meaning left, center and right channels.
There’s a center speaker that looks like a mini soundbar, which connects to your TV via HDMI eARC. And there are left and right speakers that look like little columns with a flat section added at the back so they can be wall mounted.
The center speaker has two woofers and a tweeter, while the side speakers each have a forward-facing woofer and tweeter, and then an 8cm uplifting driver for the Dolby Atmos height channels.
In the simplest terms, this is a 3.0.2-channel system, although Sony says the system is built heavily around virtualizing more in-depth speaker setups. This initial three-speaker system can apparently emulate 24 phantom channels.
Sony says it’s done some clever things with its virtualization technology in the Bravia Theater Trio, including rethinking how these phantom channels work: they’re now designed not only to mimic the placement of a more extensive speaker setup, but also to mimic the “indirect sound sources” of a cinema room’s acoustic signature, including reflections.
So yes, for those who keep track of how psychoacoustic virtualization works, it may be the case that this system uses the reflections of your room to create the feeling of a hero different set of reflections…
To help the system do this as well as possible, it comes with a USB-C microphone that you can use for room calibration. Just connect it to your phone or tablet, fire up Sony’s app and follow the instructions to let it do its best work.
As I mentioned above, this core three-speaker setup can be expanded with additional rear speakers or a subwoofer.
You have two subwoofer choices: the new Sub 8 is a midrange option, while the Sub 9 is an absolutely massive subwoofer by lifestyle engineering standards. It looks like two Sub 8 units glued together with a vent in the middle, and while Sony didn’t confirm the specs, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s not far from the truth.
You also have two rear speaker choices: There’s the existing Bravia Rear 8 or the new Bravia Rear 9, which are more or less the same speakers as the front left and right (woofer, tweeter and upfire combo — in the same design).
Of course, these add-ons will cost you – and the core Bravia Theater Trio package doesn’t come cheap either. Here’s a breakdown of all those options (Sony was only able to provide UK prices before launch, but we’ll update with other prices as we get them):
|
Product |
Price |
|---|---|
|
Bravia Theater Trio |
£2,000 (approx $2,700 / AU$3,800) |
|
Bravia Rear 9 (pair) |
£700 (approx $950 / AU$1,300) |
|
Bravia Rear 8 (pair) |
£449 / $499 / AU$699 |
|
Bravia Sub 9 |
£900 (approx $1,200 / AU$1,700) |
|
Bravia Sub 8 |
£650 (approx $875 / $1,200) |
Sony eats Sonos’ lunch
Before I get to my experience with the performance of these speakers, something that immediately struck me is that this kind of setup is what Sonos’ users have been asking the company to do for years.
Given that Sonos’ whole thing is wireless satellite speakers, its users have asked many, many times (directly and on the r/sonos subreddit) for the ability to use separate left and right front speakers in an LCR setup with its soundbars.
There’s even a third-party app that enables this called SonoSequencr, which is quite popular among Sonos home theater enthusiasts.
It seems crazy that Sony has offered this before Sonos, and with a better spec list than Sonos can offer, because the Bravia Theater Trio offers both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X support (Sonos lacks DTS), and has an HDMI passthrough port (supports 4K 120Hz), so you don’t lose an HDMI port by using it.
Of course, if Sonos ends up offering a setup to compete with this, it could have a big price advantage. You can get a Sonos Beam Gen 2 (as center channel) and two Sonos Era 300 speakers (as surround sound side speakers) for £1,077 at the time of writing, compared to £2,000 for the Sony system.
And there’s also the small problem that in my demo of the Sony system I found it to be quite hit and miss…
Mix it up
I didn’t just get to hear the Bravia Theater Trio core lineup at Sony’s event alone; instead, I heard the full setup, with the original trio, two Rear 9 speakers and two Sub 9 subwoofers (although, somewhat oddly, these were placed next to each other instead of getting an even bass distribution).
In terms of pure physical channels, this is a 7.2.4 setup, but Sony wasn’t able to confirm exactly what the virtualized channel setup it creates using the phantom channels would be – although Sony did confirm that you get 24 phantom channels regardless of how many physical speakers are involved.
First we saw the big musical performance in Sinners at the juke joint. What jumped out immediately is that the system produces a really powerful and warm sound, which is very suitable for banging on drums and making the tonality of the guitars feel solid and electric.
However, I wasn’t too impressed with the separation of different elements in the mix, despite all the Dolby Atmos power going on – and in particular I felt that the vocals were more muted than I expected, especially for a system with an actual separate center speaker.
Moves into the car shoot out No time to diethe surround and positioning effects were given a special chance to shine. The rear effects were solid, but the side effects were especially impressive given that there are no real speakers there.
Based on that, I found the way the sound moved from the front, around the sides and back particularly impressive – it felt like the sound moved smoothly all the way and didn’t jump from the front to the back, which is how it can feel in some simple five-channel systems.
But this demo also showed the same apparent weakness with vocals, with dialogue feeling soft and a bit muddy even in the quieter moments – and even some of the midrange effects didn’t seem to pop quite as strongly as they should (I’ve seen this scene very in demos).
The final demo was the first racing scene in Ready Player Oneand the system produced a lot of sound and fury all around me here… but I thought there was a slight softness in the fine details that held it back – the very sudden sounds didn’t seem quite as dramatically sudden as they should, robbing them of some impact, scale and spectacle.
That last point wasn’t helped by the fact that in all three demos I noticed that the audio and visuals weren’t quite in sync. This is not at all uncommon in HDMI ARC-based systems, but I usually don’t notice it as strongly as I did here – and I think it made a difference when I experienced the crunchy crashes of Ready Player One if you see the effects before you hear them.
Of course, this is far from a review – and I’m really interested to see how the particular Bravia Theater Trio set does on its own. But at this early stage, I’m a little torn: I love the overall concept and design, but I’m concerned about the high price based on the performance I’ve heard so far.
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