Sennheiser’s AMBEO breaks the soundbar barrier
Sennheiser’s AMBEO soundbar is a truly remarkable product in several ways. Most notable when you first encounter it is the sheer size — not so much its width, which at 126.5cm is not exceptionally wide in the soundbar world, but add in the height and depth and it’s a large 18.5kg enclosure. So while some companies have tried to minimise soundbar size, using a subwoofer to boost lower frequencies, Sennheiser has gone the other way — no subwoofer here, no separate rears, it’s just the soundbar. But a big ol’ four thousand dollars’ worth of soundbar...
Equipment
As you’ll read, that $4000 nets you not only what we think to be the biggest soundbar on the market, but also the best sonic performance we’ve yet heard from a bar. For this the AMBEO soundbar contains 13 drivers, the most visually obvious being the nine drivers arrayed in three sets along the main forward-facing frontage, each set comprising a one-inch aluminium-dome tweeter and twin 6×4-inch longthrow woofers with cellulose-sandwich cones. As you can see in the grille-off image above, the tweeters sit inside small cones which allow the frontage to present nine matching driver sites.
Two more tweeters sit in the angled ends, ready to use nearby reflective surfaces to create a surround effect. The final two are on the top — two smaller 3.5-inch full-range drivers firing upwards to deliver the height content available from today’s immersive soundtrack mixes.
The bar’s height of 14cm pretty much
