The use of a soundbar is the easiest, most affordable way to get a cinematic sound experience at home, and the excellent sound and simple makeup of Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9 make it among our best all-purpose choices.

It is a 13-speaker Dolby Atmos and DTS-capable soundbar with drivers that face forward to the side and upwards. It uses Sony’s 360 Reality Audio or spatial mapping tech to deliver a surround experience and like most soundbars this has built-in amplification so there’s no need to buy additional components like say an AV receiver or separate amplifier, making the soundbar an all-in-one solution.

Good set of ports

You can connect the soundbar to any modern smart TV with a compatible HDMI connection using its HDMI with eArc/Arc input. This lets you enjoy Dolby Atmos, Dolby vision and HDR10 content. Gamers and Blu-ray collectors can use the soundbar’s additional HDMI 2.1 compatible input which supports signals up to 8K@60 and 4K@120. Speaking of gaming, there are features like Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) and PS5 owners also benefit from enhanced features such as Auto HDR and genre picture modes.

The remote has all important controls like bass level, sound field, night, voice, input, mute and, of course, volume control

While the extra HDMI input on the bar is nice, additional digital or analogue audio inputs are sadly missing, meaning you can’t connect sources like a CD player or a turntable. Sony makes up for it by adding wireless functionality, like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and AirPlay 2.

More than a soundbar?

When reviewing soundbars, it’s best to setup only the bar, so that you get a feel for how it performs on its own. After all, whether it’s to save space or money, the average user often buys just the bar. After that, I add the compatible sub and I listen to the sub-bar combo before finalising my thoughts by adding surround for the full-system experience.

The soundbar is easy to set up. It can be placed on a console below your TV or on the wall using the mounting hardware Sony includes in the box.

With the bar connected and powered on you must launch the Bravia Connect mobile app to complete the initial setup and get the soundbar on your home network. I used my iPhone and for the most part, the process was trouble-free. During the initial setup, you will be prompted to carry out Sony’s auto-calibration process which allows the device to tune itself to your room acoustics.

Most of the sound adjustments help to clean up poor signals, enhance dialogue or shrink the dynamic range of the incoming signal to make volume shifts less jarring or to improve low-volume listening. I recommend that you experiment using them individually as their effects range from non-existent to dramatic.

If you add any of Sony’s subwoofers or surround speakers later, you have to repeat the setup and auto-calibration procedure each time you add a new product to the device.

For those of you with compatible Sony TVs, the soundbar has Sony Center sync that can use the TV’s built-in speakers in conjunction with the speakers in the bar for a more immersive experience.

Sound department

The engineers at Sony designed the soundbar to be a standalone solution and on its own, it has a bold sound that packs a decent amount of scale and punch. I was impressed by the bar’s lower mid-range and upper bass response. When watching Dolby Atmos-encoded films like The Flash or multi-channel films like Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the bar on its own does a good job, enhancing the viewing experience and easily trounces the built-in speakers of the TV. The speaker manages to trick the brain into thinking there are more speakers than what actually is there.

The soundbar’s default 360 setting is punchy, it has several peaks and valleys throughout its response that enhance bass and some treble frequencies. This gives the bar a more dynamic sound when watching blockbuster films. For the most part, the soundbar delivers dialogue pretty well.

If you add SW5 subwoofer, you will get a welcome sense of weight to the bar’s mid-range, specifically dialogue while increasing the bar’s overall scale. The subwoofer kicks the bar’s overall performance up a notch and it extends the bass into the mids. To create a complete surround experience, you must add Sony’s surround and subs to the device. We used the larger RS5 and this allows aspects of the mix to travel front to back, side to side, top to bottom, with fewer gaps. It changes the overall tone of the sound.

Make the call

Theatre Bar 9 allows the most Atmos-y delivery we’ve heard from a solo soundbar. We suggest you use a subwoofer and wireless surrounds to stretch the sound behind the listening position, but the soundbar alone pushes sound far out to the left and right. For punchy precision, BRAVIA Theatre Bar 9 is hard to fault.

At a glance

Device: Sony BRAVIA Theatre Bar 9

Price: ₹1,29,990

High notes

Excellent clarity and detail

Top-of-the-line 3D audio processing

Fantastic design

Easy to install

Muffled notes

Physical space for the HDMI ports is cramped

The indicators on the bar could have been brighter