Hey, I'm JR, training manager here at Crutchfield, and this is the Sennheiser AMBEO.
It is a 5.1.4 powered sound bar, and it is not like most other sound bars.
It's got more power, more speakers, and sounds better than just about any other sound bar
I've ever heard. In fact, I would compare it more to a home theater receiver with speakers
all over your room.
That's how good it is at giving you surround sound.
So let's get into what's inside the Sennheiser AMBEO.
There are 13 speakers in this sound bar.
Six of those are woofers,
five of those are tweeters, so you have 6 woofers on the front, three tweeters on the front,
two tweeters facing out to the sides.
And then you have two more speakers that are up-firing 3-1/2 inch speakers, and those are
responsible for the overhead sound effects that you're going to get with Dolby Atmos
and DTS:X.
So with that many speakers, it's no doubt that they can actually give you accurate surround
sound by bouncing sounds all around your room. Those speakers are powered by 500 watts of
amplifier power inside the box, so it's no slouch.
It will go nice and loud, kind of like a movie theater volume that you would want in your
home theater.
So it's got the power and the speakers to give you home theater performance.
It will of course give you discreet, accurate, overhead surround effects with Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.
However, you're gonna watch a lot of stuff that does not have Dolby Atmos built into the surround
sound, and that's OK.
The Sennheiser AMBEO has AMBEO 3D.
It will take non-Atmos surround sound and two-channel music and stuff like that and
turn it into an immersive surround sound experience. The processor inside is excellent at doing that.
In addition to AMBEO 3D mode, there's also night mode, which is great if your kids are sleeping
and you still want to watch a movie, and you don't want the loud sound effects like things
blowing up to wake the kids up. Night mode is perfect for that.
You can also use the EQ to dial in exactly how you want it to sound. You can do custom
EQ, or you can just take advantage of the presets like music, movie, news, sports, things like that.
So how does it do all of this?
The way it's able to bounce sound around your room is because it has auto room calibration.
The AMBEO comes with a microphone,
you plug that into the sound bar.
You'll put the microphone in your listening position and turn the system on, and it will
start playing sounds out of all of the speakers; that microphone will listen to those sounds as they bounce
around your room, and after a few minutes it's done and it knows your room.
It will not work in every single room. In most rooms,
you're good to go, but if your room has maybe tall, vaulted ceilings, or walls that
are at angles like that,
or maybe you have a great room where you don't have a wall on one side of your room.
This may struggle to give you the accurate surround sound because it does require those
walls to bounce sound off of.
If your room fits the criteria, the Sennheiser AMBEO is going to perform flawlessly.
If your room is not quite like that, you might want to consider a separate, discrete
speaker system with a home theater receiver to get accurate surround sound. To control the sound bar,
you basically got three options.
The coolest is the smart control app from Sennheiser so that you can go in and dial
in exactly how you want it set up using the app on your phone.
It also comes with a remote control, and you can tell it what to do by using your Google Home Assistant.
It's not built in; you'll have to have a separate device for that, but you can speak your commands to the
sound bar. On the back and on the bottom of the sound bar are all the connections.
There are three HDMI inputs, which are more than enough for most systems.
The video goes to the TV on the 4th HDMI connection, and that cable is also responsible for getting
sound from your TV back into the sound bar.
Maybe you're watching something coming in over your antenna, or from a streaming app
like Netflix or YouTube,
you want the sound from the TV to go back into the sound bar.
It does that using something called Audio Return Channel, so that's one HDMI connection
to facilitate that.
And this is compatible with Enhanced Audio Return Channel, so if you're watching something from
Netflix with Dolby Atmos in the soundtrack, that will get piped back into the sound bar
using that HDMI cable so you can take full advantage of all 13 speakers.
Those HDMI connections are also capable of passing along all the 4K stuff you're going
to want, from a 4K video source like your Blu-ray player, including HDR and things like
that. And they work with HDMI CEC, which is consumer electronics control, which is a nice
way to streamline your system as far as control goes.
For example, you might hit the button on your remote for your cable box, it turns the cable
box on and through the HDMI cable it tells the Sennheiser AMBEO to turn on and go to
that input, and then sends a signal over to your TV,
so it turns on and you're ready to watch TV.
In addition to the HDMI inputs, there is also an optical digital input, so if you have a
high-end music source using an optical digital cable, or maybe your TV doesn't have HDMI
with enhanced ARC, you could use an optical cable for that.
There's also a set of analog RCA inputs, so if you just want to plug in a straight-up
analog audio device like, say, a turntable with built in phono preamp, we could do that
here as well.
And there's also a subwoofer output on the back.
Now if you are not looking for thunderous, crazy movie theater bass, you probably won't
need a subwoofer.
The AMBEO has a lot of bass. It's deep, it's rich., it's full-bodied.
However, if you want that really low-end rumble, if you want your windows shaking in your
house, it doesn't have enough bass to do that.
You're going to want to add a subwoofer, and the subwoofer output on the back is compatible
with pretty much any powered sub you might want to add.
The AMBEO is not just great for surround sound in movies, it's also great for playing
music, and it's easy to get your music playing on the Sennheiser AMBEO.
Of course, you've got those inputs on the back,
you can also stream music to it using Wi-Fi and Chromecast.
It also has Bluetooth, so you can play music to it from just about any phone.
A couple last details.
You'll notice there is an OLED display on the front to show you what's going on. The
sound bar; you can turn that off if you want it to just be dark. And, the Sennheiser AMBEO is
wall-mountable out of the box.
It doesn't come with the wall mount,
that is an optional accessory, but you have the option to place it on a table in front
of or below your TV or hang it on the wall if you're wall-hanging your TV as well.
So this is the Sennheiser AMBEO sound bar. It has Dolby Atmos, it has surround effects,
it sounds great. It is a beast of a sound bar.
Let me tell you, if you are looking for a sound bar, you should definitely get in touch with us here at Crutchfield.
Go to crutchfield.com/contact,
you'll see how to talk with one of our advisors either over the phone or using chat.
They can help you work out if this is the right sound bar for you.
You can also post your questions here in the comments section on this YouTube video, we
do look at those and we will respond accordingly, and please hit that like button and subscribe
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And thanks for watching.