On the AV Lab in New York Metropolis, I take a look at soundbars face to face with quite a lot of reference tools.
CNET follows a rigorous, unbiased analysis course of for all of its soundbar testing, from easy stereo audio system to Dolby Atmos programs. Within the CNET AV Lab, I do comparative testing, pitting related soundbars in opposition to one another aspect by aspect.
I consider the efficiency of every soundbar with a number of several types of content material, together with motion pictures, music, TV reveals and video games. I take advantage of a number of take a look at scenes — together with the opening of Mad Max:Fury Street for playback of the spatial audio standard Dolby Atmos for soundbars that support it. I additionally use the Thanator Assault scene of Avatar (26.53) to check a system’s dynamics and element retrieval.
Relating to music, I take advantage of several CNET test tracks which you could find here in a Tidal or Spotify playlist. Tracks resembling Nick Cave and the Unhealthy Seeds’ Purple Proper Hand, with its deep bass and tenor vocals, assist decide a system’s capacity to trace male voices specifically, with out sounding congested. The tune additionally helps with uncovering hidden particulars and the relative dynamics a speaker is able to. Utilizing each forms of content material — motion pictures and music — I then grade the sound high quality of every soundbar. I consider traits resembling speech readability, dynamics/quantity, bass response and musical playback.
CNET’s devoted audio lab in downtown New York features a choice of current televisions (with HDMI eARC), plus Apple TV 4K streamer and Roku Extremely streamer, a Microsoft Xbox Series X and an Oppo UDP-205 4K Blu-ray participant. I additionally use Roon music software to stream to particular person gadgets or the Oppo participant as wanted.
