The slim, not shady soundbar

Shaking up the category and its nomenclature, Sony is pulling no punches with the BRAVIA Theatre Bar 9.

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FOR Slim profile easy to integrate, 360 SSM works well on music, battery-powered rears

AGAINST No display or even OSD, vocal intelligibility, expensive with optional sub and rear speakers

It's their top-of-the-range model and looks the part with a chassis as wide as a 65in TV. Designed to hide all that mass in a sleek form factor helps and is quite the engineering feat, especially when you consider that it packs 13 active drivers inside its slim profile.

Of course, there is enough tech to keep you and us busy for days, but we'll try and simplify it for you. Compared to the outgoing A7000 soundbar, Sony has added dedicated side-firing drivers for increased immersion in addition to the up-firing units. Even the main LCR speaker complement gets a two-way configuration with quad racetrackshaped mid-woofers throupled to three tweeters aimed directly at the listener.

Lastly, a couple of internally mounted beam tweeters assist in sound field optimisation and creating the aura of a much larger listening space than the actual room size. That makes for a total count of 13 active drivers, besides the dual passive radiators. While the Bar 9 could create a reasonable amount of envelopment on its own, without the optional subwoofer and rear speakers, it's almost as effective as Daenerys without her Dragons.

Everything is tied in with the allnew BRAVIA Connect app as it acts as a hub for all modern-day Sony AV products and while it is comprehensive in its functionality, connecting to the soundbar takes a moment. Not too long, but long enough for us to miss a proper display on the soundbar itself and a full-function remote.