Sony’s BRAVIA Theater Bar 5 eliminates cables by placing a 3.1-channel system, including a wireless subwoofer, beneath your television. The speaker bar includes a dedicated dialogue channel, a feature often missing from soundbars. Sony’s Vertical Surround Engine also creates the illusion of audio coming from above you rather than directly in front of you. It supports both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. Sony’s use of Artificial Intelligence, specifically Voice Zoom 3, allows you to isolate spoken words in an audio mix and increase their volume independently.
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A soundbar that’s perfect for enhancing your home theater
Having a dedicated center speaker isolates dialogue. A 2.1 soundbar splits dialogue between its two speakers, moving voices toward each side of the room. With a real center channel, however, dialogue appears at the mouth of the speaker, giving it a sense of placement. It’s an easy distinction to hear when you’re watching any movie that has music accompanying the conversation.
Most standard dialogue modes simply boost overall voice volume, but Voice Zoom 3 offers more functionality. Beyond isolating the vocal elements of a soundtrack, Voice Zoom 3 uses artificial intelligence to separate those vocals from the rest of the audio mix, letting you increase solely the level of the vocals without affecting the remainder. Whispered lines stay audible while avoiding a loud explosion three minutes later, eliminating the need for constant volume adjustments during quiet moments.
The wireless subwoofer requires a nearby power outlet but nothing else. Since low-frequency sounds lack directionality, positioning matters little, so behind a couch or next to a chair both work without fear of interference. Nothing runs across the floor between the two units for anybody to trip over.
Although the Vertical Surround Engine creates height channels through processing instead of up-firing drivers physically mounted toward your ceiling, Dolby Atmos- and DTS: X-formatted content is still distributed above and around you. Vertically oriented audio can sound larger than the horizontal bar’s size would suggest, and no vertical or angled components require mounting to achieve those results.
One HDMI eARC cable connects these two systems. Once connected, you control volume via your TV remote. You can connect your smartphone via Bluetooth if you want to listen to music instead of what’s on screen. The BRAVIA Connect app manages equalizer settings and firmware updates. If you pair it with a BRAVIA TV, you enable Acoustic Center Sync, which lets the TV’s built-in speakers act as another center channel so you hear dialogue emanate from the screen.