![]() ![]() If you’re more into streaming media rather than the physical (i.e. For eARC to work on the Beam, however, your TV will have to support it too, and not many TV sets manufactured before 2019 do. The beauty of this setup is that it allows you to connect as many video sources as your TV permits, and you’ll also be able to pipe audio from your TV’s smart apps to the Beam.īesides HDMI-ARC, the Beam also supports eARC, an “enhanced” version of ARC that allows for lossless audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, which are commonly found on Blu-ray discs. Overall, the Beam looks and feels pleasingly small and handsome, and it fit nicely in front of my 55-inch LG C9 OLED TV, blocking only a slender, barely noticeable portion of the bottom of the screen.Īside from its HDMI-eARC interface, the Sonos Beam also has an ethernet port, along with a power port and a button for pairing additional Sonos speakers.īecause the Beam has just the single HDMI-ARC interface, you don’t connect video sources directly to the soundbar instead, you plug them into the HDMI inputs of your TV, which in turn sends audio down to the beam via the HDMI-ARC connection. Measuring 25.63 x 3.94 x 2.72 inches (WxDxH) and weighing in at 6.2 pounds, the new Beam is almost exactly the same size and weight as its predecessor, but instead of a fabric-covered circumference, the second-gen Beam has a new, perforated enclosure, similar to the larger Sonos Arc. Both the Beam and the Sonos Arc will be getting a firmware update later this year that will allow them to decode DTS audio, but until then, you’ll need to offload DTS decoding to another device, such as a Blu-ray player or a Blu-ray-equipped game console (just set it to output PCM audio rather than bitstream). A bigger problem is that the Beam doesn’t support DTS audio at all-or at least, not yet. That’s not a huge deal, since DTS:X is mainly found on Blu-ray discs, and only a smattering at that (although Apollo 13, an essential 4K and DTS:X demo disc, is one of them). While the Sonos Beam supports Dolby Atmos, it does not support DTS:X, another object-based audio format from Dolby competitor DTS. I’ll delve into the Beam’s Atmos performance in a bit. ![]() Then again, virtual Dolby Atmos effects can sometimes sound distractingly hissy or artificial, depending on the implementation. Virtualized Dolby Atmos sound isn’t as accurate as it would be with upfiring drivers (or, best of all, in-ceiling speakers), but it can be quite effective, and if your ceiling is too high, too short, or vaulted, virtualized height effects will work better than up-fired height cues. Indeed, the Beam joins a growing number of mid-range soundbars that use virtualization to achieve its height effects, and in this case, it’s Dolby’s own Atmos height virtualizer that’s doing the work. Each of the Beam’s five drivers gets its own discrete class D amplifier.Ībsent from the Beam’s driver array are any upfiring drivers, which many Dolby Atmos-enabled soundbars employ to bounce height cues off the ceiling (a cheaper and easier alternative to installing height speakers in your ceiling). But while it’s good to know that you can upgrade the Beam with additional hardware, all those Sonos speakers will cost you, with the total package (a Beam, two Sonos Ones, and the Sub) going for a steep $1,636.Īs far as its internals go, the second-gen Beam is (with the exception of the new CPU) identical to the first, including four elliptical midwoofers (with the two midwoofers on the ends angled for surround and virtual height cues), a center tweeter for dialogue, and three passive radiators, which deliver (as I’ll describe later) a surprising amount of bass. You can also add the Sonos Sub ($749) to bolster the Beam’s low-frequency effects. If you do ultimately decide you want physical surround speakers, you can always add a couple of Sonos Ones ($219 each), which can act as surrounds once paired with the Beam. ![]()
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