audiovisual soundbar + subwoofer
Over the last few years Yamaha has completely rebuilt its soundbar offerings. Gone are the likes of the YSP-5600B which won our Sound+Image Awards in 2018 with its final reinvention of Yamaha's unusual ‘Intellibeam’ concept where literally dozens of small drivers (46 of them in that final model) were used to create a wide soundbar soundfield, even beaming sound to particular places in the room. Those YSP bars worked well — but weren't particularly affordable.
Since then Yamaha has gone the other way, producing mini-miracle soundbars with relatively minimalist driver counts, achieving prices as low as $279 for a bar alone, or even more remarkably including a wireless subwoofer for as little as $399.
Last issue we reviewed Yamaha's new soundbar range-topper, the ‘True X’ system with little wireless rears, or without the rears as the True X Bar 50A. That True X system is $1599, still a grand below the asking price of those former Intellibeam giants.
There's also a yawning gap between the True X kit and the lower smaller bars far below.
That gap is now filled with this new model, the Yamaha SR-B40A, at a recommended retail price of $649. So could this be a sweet-spot of performance for Yamaha's soundbar range, with relatively affordability, yet including the best abilities of True X?
Build & features
This package arrives in the usual ‘chair’-shaped box containing the long soundbar andat 165mm (6¼-inch), and it has double the output power available, quoted at 100W with no envelopes on measurement provided. It is, in fact, very close to the subwoofer which comes with the True X system. And it claims a frequency response down to 33Hz, though again no envelopes stated, so those lowest frequencies are likely -6dB down (one-quarter full volume) on the main bandwidth.
