List Price: $449.95
Sale Price: $399.95
Today's Bonus: 11% Off
Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program WOW. I had to admit that I was somewhat skeptical when I read that the built-in "subwoofers" were rated at 30W. However, after having plugged this in, I'm pretty impressed!
One special thing to note. With my TV/PS3/DirecTV setup, my TV does NOT support a fiber optic output despite the instructions telling you that you should hook it up this way to get the sound to work. I can gladly report that you DON'T need to do this for it to work and I have the following setup:
PS3 fiber optic to Yamaha (TV input)
DirecTV HR24 coaxial output to Yamaha (BD/DVD input)
I did run this sound bar through the ropes and here was my testing lineup:
Star Wars Episode V (Blu-Ray) Falcon/asteroid scene (chosen for good mix of mid/high frequencies with orchestral soundtrack, TIE fighter engines, and good lows with initial asteroid impacts on Falcon)
Star Wars Episode III (Blu-Ray) Battle Over Coruscant (chosen for VERY deep bass leading into the first flyover the precursor to the Victory class Star Destroyer, the battle exhibiting a good mix of low/mids/and some highs, and to test surround functionality)
Matrix Reloaded (DVD) Chateau fight scene / Highway fight scene (fantastic orchestral and electronica score)
Regular news channel (testing just regular TV broadcast)
After all that, I have some very good news and one disappointing piece of news.
Good news:
1. This sound bar touts being able to project a surround-like atmosphere. This is done by the usual direct/reflecting sound projection trickery utilizing the 8 smaller speakers along the front portion of the sound bar. It's not going to fool you, but of all the reflecting tricks that I've seen thus far, this one is by far the best that I've ever heard, hands down. It fills the bedroom quite nicely.
2. Mid and high sound reproduction...simply amazing. Dialog is very well-balanced against orchestrals and did not get drowned out. High frequency sounds from blades whirring even in the older, more compressed Dolby Digital track in the Matrix Reloaded were extremely well produced. Top marks.
Bad news:
1. Not so bad, really, but one can't expect miracles from a 30W subwoofer. The bass exhibited in the beginning of Revenge of the Sith rippled...badly. However, everything after that was quite well reproduced. With a little further experimentation, I found that reducing the subwoofer volume (yes, thankfully, it IS fully adjustable) was able to rectify the issue but the remaining punch was not quite as heavy as a result. That said, this sound bar is EXTREMELY impressive in what it CAN deliver and the other movies did NOT exhibit the same kind of bass rippling that was found in Revenge of the Sith. I'd still recommend it as a result.
Bluetooth connectivity is another plus for me. I can stream my music library from my Amazon cloud service and it actually sounds quite good paired with the sound bar. It won't beat a hard wired system to be sure, but for casual listening, it works without disappointment.
Another big plus for me there are mounting brackets already located on the sound bar itself. Install 2 screws into your wall and you're good to go!! Having that as a built-in feature for me was definitely a nice feature as our dresser couldn't easily accommodate the real estate since the PS3 and the DVR take up the bulk of the space as it is.
Overall, for $399, Yamaha's YSP1400 is certainly worth the expense. I wish that I could give it 4.5 stars simply because I think that some sort of dynamic algorithm could have been added to automatically prevent rippling that I experienced, but a manual adjustment was all that was needed to make the problem go away. It's also worth noting that the sound bar can hold both Dolby Digital Pro II Logic and DTS signals.
Please let me know if you have any questions I'm good with responding to comments when they occur.
0 comments:
Post a Comment