What Hi-Fi?

JBL Bar 9.1

Imagine a sliding bar between quality and convenience, with a soundbar at one end and a full home cinema speaker package and amplifier at the other. Somewhere in the middle is a space that the JBL Bar 9.1 is aiming to occupy.

It looks like a single soundbar and sub, but this is more akin to a Transformer toy. Remove the two ends of the bar and place them behind and to the side of your seating position and they become the dedicated, true wireless, battery-powered rear speakers in a surround-sound set-up. It’s the sort of thing Optimus Prime might have at home.

Complete with upward-firing speakers on both the main bar and the satellites, it represents a real effort to fill your room with AV audio. So are we looking at the new normal for modern TV sound?

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