On the AV Lab in New York Metropolis, I take a look at soundbars face to face with quite a lot of reference tools.
CNET follows a rigorous, unbiased analysis course of for all of its soundbar testing, from easy stereo audio system to Dolby Atmos techniques. Within the CNET AV Lab, I do comparative testing, pitting related soundbars towards one another aspect by aspect.
I consider the efficiency of every soundbar with a number of several types of content material, together with films, music, TV exhibits and video games. I take advantage of a number of take a look at scenes — together with the opening of Mad Max:Fury Highway for playback of the spatial audio normal Dolby Atmos for soundbars that help it. I additionally use the Thanator Assault scene of Avatar (26.53) to check a system’s dynamics and element retrieval.
In terms of music, I take advantage of a number of CNET take a look at tracks which you will discover right here in a Tidal or Spotify playlist. Tracks corresponding to Nick Cave and the Unhealthy Seeds’ Purple Proper Hand, with its deep bass and tenor vocals, assist decide a system’s capacity to trace male voices specifically, with out sounding congested. The music additionally helps with uncovering hidden particulars and the relative dynamics a speaker is able to. Utilizing each kinds of content material — films and music — I then grade the sound high quality of every soundbar. I consider traits corresponding to speech readability, dynamics/quantity, bass response and musical playback.
CNET’s devoted audio lab in downtown New York features a number of current televisions (with HDMI eARC), plus Apple TV 4K streamer and Roku Extremely streamer, a Microsoft Xbox Collection X and an Oppo UDP-205 4K Blu-ray participant. I additionally use Roon music software program to stream to particular person units or the Oppo participant as wanted.
