Size Matters

Big on music sound as well as its movie soundtrack raison d’être, David Vivian has never seen anything quite like this soundbar

- David Vivian

Up until now, Sennheiser’s business model has been simply divided. On the consumer side it makes headphones and earbuds, while for the prosector it’s microphones. And that’s it. A big and successful player in both markets for many decades, the Danish company has clearly been in no hurry to diversify, despite the numerous options and opportunities that have blossomed over the years.

So it’s surprising to find Sennheiser’s 2019 breakout product is an audio component more commonly associated with lifestyle convenience than outright sonic excellence and one that’s proliferating among competing brands like wildfire.

But there’s never been a soundbar quite like the Ambeo. While its adoption of Dolby Atmos is nothing new – Sony, Samsung, Yamaha and others got there first – what sets the Ambeo apart (aside from its Virtual 3D sound processing) is its size, ambition and price. Physically, it’s the girder-grade Irn-Bru of soundbars, boasting dimensions and weight that have more in common with a mid-sized floorstander. It’s so large and heavy because, unlike most soundbars that use tiny drivers to keep the bar slim and a separate subwoofer to augment bass performance, Sennheiser has gone for a single enclosure housing 13 drivers capable of delivering a wide frequency range, all the way from 20kHz at the top down to a curtainflapping 30Hz at the bottom – all driven by Class D amplification with a claimed total peak power output of 500W. The intention is to take the fight to multi-speaker setups for Atmos-enhanced 3D sound quality and, if that sounds a bit of a stretch, the £2,199 price tag should leave you in no doubt that Sennheiser is being deadly serious. A one-box solution to all your music and home cinema needs? That would be something.