it's been a number of years since sony
has released a new flagship sound bar
but that's exactly what we've got today
in this video sponsored by sony taking a
look at the
a7000 now one thing you guys might
notice immediately is that unlike the
5000 which was their previous top of the
line
there's no subwoofer included
well apparently this was based on
customer feedback where people were
telling sony like look i want your top
of the line sound bar but i live in an
apartment whoops realistically i'm never
gonna be able to turn the thing on
anyway so what they've done is they've
essentially unbundled the two things so
it comes in at a whopping 700 lower
price so it's 1 300 instead of 2 000 u.s
and then
you can just add your own subwoofer to
it if you want based on your needs so
we've actually got the higher end one
that's 700 which would put this combo
right up at the same price as the old
one or you can go for the more basic one
which is 400. so this is the sws5 and
even though they don't come together
they're supposed to just instantly pair
now one of the biggest reasons that sony
is replacing their old flagship because
already if you guys remember i've talked
about it a fair bit in the past both in
sponsored videos and outside of them it
already sounded great it had support for
dtsx dolby atmos it was a 7.1
setup so it already had upward firing
speakers so you have those virtual like
top channels but
technology has moved on and hdmi 2.0 has
been replaced ah here we go
man this thing is a beast with hdmi 2.1
so the new a7000 has support for 8k 30
hertz or 4k
120 hertz and all the latest devices
oh there's a little label here for which
one is the hdmi input oh these are both
hdmi and ah okay i can see why they did
it this way because everyone's going to
need to plug this into their tv via the
hdmi out port right here and then you
can use it to not only replace that
input from your tv but actually switch
so it's got two hdmi inputs in terms of
the rest of the i o we've got an optical
input just in case your tv doesn't
support arc or e-arc this does support
e-arc though it's part of the hdmi 2.1
specification it's got an analog in if
you have an analog source you want to
hook up to it it's got a usb port and
this s center out if you've never heard
of that before i don't blame you but
sony has a feature on their bravia tvs
that allows you to use the built-in
speaker of the tv and they've actually
got ones that have that speaker built
right into the display it vibrates the
display so you can actually use your tv
as a center channel with this sound bar
not that you would necessarily need to
because this thing is absolutely
bristling with sony's x-balance speakers
oh that's interesting
i had expected the grille to be
removable like on their old one but it
looks like either it doesn't come off or
it's something you have to unscrew how
many of these are there
uh-oh yeah it might not be intended to
come off interesting that's quite
unexpected well that's fine we can still
get a look at this so one of the things
sony's done really well with their
previous sound bars is creating a really
wide sound stage so you can see we've
got our sensor drivers right here and
then we've got our
right
and left and then this right here this
is what sony apparently calls
their
beam tweeters that's really interesting
they've got these small to large
perforations here and apparently what
this is about is creating a more
accurate and wider sound stage so that's
that's pretty cool and then ah yes this
is another thing
so we can't ah yes no we can see them
built into this are also two subwoofers
so the idea is that if they're shipping
it without a dedicated subwoofer it
should have pretty good base performance
out of the box
confirmed though they've got these
little uh these little kind of spacers
here to make sure this doesn't get
punched in this is intended to be run
with the grill not naked but i'm still
glad we pried it up so we could have a
better look at that
ran into a small problem when we went to
set up the sound bar our bravia tv has a
stand that kind of um
we would need a deeper media console so
we're we're in deepening our media
console like this
there we go don't try yeah don't try
this at home
noice
now seems like as good a time as any to
have a look at our accessory package
we've got a remote
so you can use this to control the
built-in oled screen in the front or if
you have a sony tv there will be an
on-screen display that will come up so
we should see that on this one
power cable
hdmi cable the three and a half
millimeter cable for hooking up your tv
as a center channel batteries and a wall
mount that's right my friends it's wall
mount ready
ah yes so the downside of using optical
well the upside of using optical is
compatibility if you have a device that
doesn't support arc or e-arc then you're
going to want to use optical but the
downside is that it doesn't support the
same high definition formats that eric
does so you're not going to be running
dolby atmos over optical it just doesn't
work that way um yeah it's it's funny
because you think of like
optical you know as like a high-speed
connection but
that particular optical standard hasn't
been touched in like
15 20 years yeah so it's really really
slow this sound bar has support for
every surround format that you could
want today dolby atmos dtsx um i mean
those are really the main ones when
you're plugging in your soundbar sony
helpfully stickered over the ports not
to use on the soundbar itself but you
need to make sure you're plugging into
the correct port on your tv so i'm going
to hit the one
right here that is labeled arc
then for my playstation 5 i'm gonna plug
that into whatever hdmi one okay there
now any content running on the smart tv
itself and any content playing off of
the playstation 5 will all be routed
through the soundbar that's kind of the
whole point of audio return channel is
that the audio can go out to the sound
bar either through the tv or directly
through the soundbar to the tv it just
doesn't matter hey check this out this
is the sw5
and it's got this kind of like
i can't tell exactly what this is made
of it has kind of like a leather wrapped
look to what i think is just a plastic
mold but
i don't know it looks kind of cool they
call it ketchup
they call it textured surface apparently
thanks jonah
i mean it is a real creative name look i
can tell it's a textured surface okay
let's see just how painless this setup
process is i'm gonna power up the sound
bar is there like a pairing button
somewhere that's what i get for pulling
the stickers off i misread the label and
i plugged into the wrong thing that's
why there's no setup wizard
okay where'd that notification go
uh yeah bravia notifications
set up there we go
reconnect the device to hdmi four oh all
right
and we've got sound now that's
an improvement before we do anything
else i want to run their sound field
optimization setup thing so it uses
microphones built into the sound bar to
optimize based on the shape and size of
your room i don't really want to add the
surround speakers yet so i want to do
that after because i want to experience
it without them but i do want to
optimize the phone okay a loud sound may
come from the speakers do not stand in
front of the speaker during optimization
alright i'm going
[Music]
okay
i am
really impressed though
did that sound like it was coming from
above us or what it totally sound
okay so normally i would be like okay
well the product is working as it's
supposed to that shouldn't blow my mind
but brandon look up
that is a 26
i believe 26 foot ceiling
with acoustic treatment on it i didn't
think it was really going to be able to
meaningfully bounce anything off of it
um
but here we are in the next part of
setup it's prompting me to set up alexa
so it has support for google assistant
alexa and this is new it supports
airplay 2 so we're going to try that
before we're done here as well
uh i don't know if i'm going to bother
with alexa for the time being though yes
spotify and chromecast um
but that's not new airplay 2 is new with
this model oh that's this is good to
know both of the inputs on it are full
hdmi 2.1 standard so you can do 4k 120
or 8k that's not a given
oh that's another thing it has dse this
isn't a new sony feature they do have
other products but i believe it's their
first sound bar with dse so what it does
is it takes low bitrate music
so from services like youtube music for
example and it will on the fly
ai upscale it or upsample it i've tried
it before and it's not you know the same
as just having lossless files in the
first place but it is a noticeable
effect for sure now i want to hear the
demo there are two demos it has a dolby
atmos demo and then a 3d reality audio
demo
that's definitely better than when we
tried it before we optimized it
i think part of it is just that a
subwoofer does add more hutzpah to it
like to be clear it already had decent
bass for a sound bar like
considering that it was a sound bar was
good but i would probably recommend if
your living space accommodates it
add the subwoofer let's try their 3d
reality audio demo
this is really showing off how wide the
sound stage is one of the tests for that
is if you're listening to music you
should be able to make out
exactly where each instrument was on the
on a virtual stage
and
yeah it's pretty clear
of course the best way to get surround
is to add surround speakers so we're
going to do that next these are sony's
rs3s surround speakers and if you find
you don't get enough of a surround
effect from the soundbar on its own you
can add a couple of these on speaker
stands they do need to be powered but
other than that they connect wirelessly
to the sound bar and they should enhance
the surround experience the rear
speakers are m5 threaded in case you
were wondering
so we're going to go ahead and mount
them to our stance
something i should have mentioned by the
way if you want to experience sony's 360
degree immersive music you do have to
subscribe to a supported music service
like tidal the light's green on that one
i think these might have just
picked up either way i want to
recalibrate it for the room with these
accounted for though
okay let's do it again i think it
oh yeah okay
time to enjoy linus's terrible driving
the challenge here is i want to hear
what it's like to have a car coming up
behind me
and i have to pass one for that to
happen
you can definitely feel like the the
gravel kind of being kicked all around
coming from all around you though that
is a pretty fantastic surround
experience i think it's fair to say at
this point that if you have another
person living in your house that doesn't
want to deal with the whole fussing
about with inputs on a receiver or
whatever a good quality sound bar it is
really hard to go wrong this is a pretty
freaking sweet setup oh and we didn't
even try airplay 2 yet
let's go ahead and do that step 1 is
have an iphone step 2 try to cast step 3
airplay and bluetooth devices
step 4 enter this code that's pretty big
sound
i'm at like 70 percent
[Music]
i mean that's louder than you would
reasonably want to listen to in your
living room i would think
and i think that's about the end of the
video here today thank you sony for
sponsoring this video and sending over
your a7000 looks like a worthy successor
to the st5000
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