Hey, I'm JR, training manager here at Crutchfield, and in this video we'll be talking about the Sony
HT-A9 home theater bundles. There's two bundles; both come with these same four surround speakers. The
only difference is the subwoofer; more on that in a minute. This system comes with a hub that connects
to your TV and four surround speakers. Each speaker features a front-firing tweeter and woofer and
an up-firing speaker to add height effects for things like Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. Each speaker
also has built-in microphones that can measure the sound in your room. This is critical for
making an imperfect home theater room sound great. Maybe your speakers are mounted at different
heights or in different places, maybe they're not in that perfect home theater alignment. That's okay.
The built-in microphones will detect that in your room and make them sound like they're supposed to
for accurate, immersive surround sound. You may have noticed there's no dedicated
center channel speaker. That's okay, once this system knows how your room sounds it can add a
phantom center channel. There's also a connection on the hub that you can use to take advantage of
something called "Center Sync" with compatible Sony Bravia TVs. If you have one of those TVs, you can
run a cable from the hub up to your Sony TV and take advantage of the Sony's built-in speakers
as your center channel. This system is completely wireless when it comes to audio transmission. The
hub sends sound wirelessly to these four speakers and wirelessly to the sub. The hub connects to your
television using HDMI; technically, it has two HDMI connections. One is an in, one is an out, so if you
want to plug a source device such as a gaming console directly into the hub, you can. I think
most people are going to connect their source components directly to their TV, though, and take
advantage of enhanced Audio Return Channel to get the sound from whatever you're watching on
TV piped into the surround sound system. No matter what you're watching or listening to, you're going
to get great surround sound, especially thanks to Sony's built-in processing and surround
sound decoding. It can do surround sound formats from Dolby and DTS including all the way up to
Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. In addition, you can take advantage of 360 Reality Audio. This is a Sony
technology built into some streaming services like TIDAL, Deezer, Amazon Music and nugs.net, which will
really give you an immersive music listening experience. You'll feel like you are surrounded
by a studio full of musicians. It's pretty great. If you're watching a movie that does not have
that full-blown height surround sound stuff built in, like Dolby Atmos or DTS:X, that's okay.
Sony's Immersive AE or audio enhancement will take conventional surround sound and add those
height effects, so you can get the full effect of your surround sound system even on an older movie.
Your high-res music will of course sound fantastic. Sony's DSEE or Digital Sound Enhancement Engine
Extreme will take even your compressed music and open it up and make it sound wonderful, too.
There's of course many ways to get music into this system, including over your Wi-Fi network
using Spotify Connect; you can AirPlay or Chromecast music from your Apple or your
Android device; you can of course control the system with your Google or your Alexa device,
and you can also control the system using its remote control or the graphical user interface
that appears on your compatible Sony TV when you plug this in using HDMI. The Quick Settings menu
on your TV will allow you to control the sound of your surround sound system. This system also
has Bluetooth, so you can Bluetooth music into it and out of it. It has a Bluetooth transmitter built
in, so maybe you're watching a movie late at night, you can't have the system turned up loud, you could
throw on a pair of Bluetooth headphones, pair them up with the hub for the HT-A9 system, and listen to
your movie on your headphones. And the Bluetooth range is more than typical. It's normally about
30 feet for most Bluetooth systems; with this one you can get out to about 98 feet of range on the
Bluetooth. Let's talk about the subs. The system is available either with the SA-SW3 or the SA-SW5.
The '3 has a 200-watt amplifier powering a six-inch woofer in a ported enclosure. That's good. If you're
looking for something a little bit bigger, beefier, a little bit more 'oomph' to your sub, The SA-SW5 is
the way to go. It has a 300-watt amplifier powering a seven-inch woofer and a downward-firing passive
radiator. The sub and the four speakers all connect wirelessly to the hub, so you don't have to run
wires all over your room. However, each component here does need to be plugged into the wall for
power. The HDMI connections on the hub are HDMI 2.1 with high-definition copyright 2.3 built in,
so they're ready to go for whatever source you want to throw at them, including an up-to-date
gaming console, so that you can get 4K at 120 hertz or even 8K. So if you have any questions
about either of these Sony HT-A9 home theater bundles, let us help. Go to crutchfield.com/contact
where you can talk to one of our advisors over the phone, you can chat with them online, or you
can just post your questions or comments here on this YouTube video. We do look at those, and
we will respond accordingly. And since you're on YouTube, go ahead and like and subscribe, and turn
on those notifications so you'll know the next time we put out another video. Thanks for watching.