SENNHEISER AMBEO Soundbar Max - Soundbar for TV with 13 Speakers - 5.1.4 Sound Experience with Dolby Atmos & DTS:X, Home Theater Audio with deep 30Hz Bass without extra Subwoofer

I used to have a full 5.1 surround sound system in my family room. While the surround effect is not quite as prominent from the back I love the new overhead effects from the ATMOS capability. It sounds fantastic with stereo music as well. I am very happy with the soundbar. It is so much easier to use as it it doesn't require a separate receiver.

This is a very large speaker. I designed the wall around it. Shown with the Max is a 75" OLED TV. It's the perfect size for larger panels. I use the subwoofer out via cable to a Klipsch powered sub. There have been software issues over the past 9 months. Twice I've had to unplug the speaker to unbrick it. The most important thing is to calibrate it with the supplied microphone. I didn't for months and was not happy with the sound quality. Acoustically the range was limited, vocals were terrible in movies and with Ambeo sound shaping on the sound was hollow and distant. Then I calibrated it, took all of 5 minutes. BOOM! Entirely different sound experience. It really opened up spatially and vocals are focused, tight, and understandable.

This is an initial rating as hopefully my issue will be resolved. I powered on the Soundbar, updated the firmware, completed the room calibration and then connected my devices. I am having an issue where the sound cuts out and instead and I hear a loud, constant buzzing sound. This has occurred while using my PS5, PS4, Cable box and Nintendo switch. I've confirmed the TV settings are set to the correct audio out settings and I've also verified the same on the consoles. The TV I'm using is a 3 week old LG CX 65" OLED. I have the Soundbar and the TV connected via the eARC ports and I connected the consoles directly to the Soundbar. I've also tested having the consoles connected to the HDMI 2.1 ports on the TV but the issue still occurs. I've tried using different HDMI cables (The PS5 cable, the Sennheiser cable as well as a Zeskit Maya 8K 48Gbps Certified Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable). I'm not sure if I am doing something wrong but from all accounts the connectivity is pretty straight. The sound works initially but then after a couple minutes the buzzing occurs. If I can somehow get this issue resolved I will revisit this rating and amend.

This is by far the best sound bar I’ve ever owned. The sound is amazing, the Dolby atmos sound is incredible and immersive. It took me about 20 minutes to setup and calibrate. I immediately put in one of the hobbit movies in 4K and the sound is incredible. The only con I have with it is it’s pretty heavy and is pretty large but all in all amazing. I highly recommend it.

To most Americans, the name Sennheiser is just another confusing German word, like gemütlichkeit. To any audio professional, Sennheiser is one of the greatest badges in pro audio, coming in right behind Neumann and Neve. As a sound engineer with 40 years experience, I have owned two fantastic pairs of Senn. headphones, several wireless mic systems, and I still own eight world-class Sennheiser studio microphones I would never part with. Their products are simply exceptional, and after throwing good money ($1300) away on a Naim Muso-2 soundbar, I had enough of the pretenders and I bought this. The product support is bad. Instructions are provided as picto-glyphs. If you have questions you'll wind up in Reddit forums looking for answers. But for sound – this thing is a ballsy heavy-hitter in a league of its own. Where it fails is in the eARC HDMI connectivity, which is as simple to set up as plugging in one cable. But it will then randomly mute the input, and will never produce audio again even if you reset to factory specs and do a firmware update. What does work, infuriatingly, is to unplug it and plug it back in 5 minutes later. Then presto, good as new. Another fail is no communication between the Ambeo and DirecTV's Genie remotes. No code, and no interest from either side to fix this. So your LG or Samsung or Sony remote will drive the volume if you have it setup correctly in the TV settings, but if you happen to have satellite with DirecTV, you need a minimum of two remotes, or the Genie and the app open on your phone. This bar retails at $2500 and I got it during a holiday sale at $1699. Very happy I didn't blow that extra $800 because it's not worth that. But in a regular-sized living room with a 65" TV, you're all set.

If you have a sound system and your significant other is sick of the speakers and electronics, this is the sound bar to buy.You’re going to need a sub. And the Ambio mic and setup will do a very good job of marrying them together. (I have a KEF RB 400 which works well with the bar.) Once you give it access to your home network, something you should not have to give it, you can set it up fairly easily. I got around networking it to my wi-fi by running an Ethernet cable to it.My two complaints are these: the side firing speakers should be aimed 45° to the back, not the front, to widen the sound stage, and it should have at least two tweeters rear firing on each end to improve "presence". The final demerit is for the remote: seemingly every remote on the planet has the volume on the left side of the face of the remote, and the channels or whatever on the right side, for some odd reason Sennhiser knows better than this, which can get frustrating since the reason we buy a sound bar is for the sound, not a memory training device.

This sound bar is incredible! Sounds great! Lots of volume and clarity. Ambeo is fairly good for 3D audio processing. And this is coming from someone who is using DIRAC in their vehicle and their main home theater room. You will need a separate sub for this soundbar. Yes, this will not be a replacement for AVR home theater set-ups. We use this soundbar in the bedroom paired with a REL T5/X 8 inch woofer. If I had buy the sub over again, I would use a SVS 3000 mini. Keep in mind that this sound bar is not going to really give you true 5.1.4, but it does an outstanding job of trying to do it. So if space is a limiting factor for choosing this over a true AVR experience, this would be the one to get!