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Sony Bravia Theatre Quad: A home theatre system that makes all the right noise
Summary
The Bravia Theatre Quad has big audio shoes to fill. Can it make a dent in the premium, mid-range home theatre segment?Not all living rooms and entertainment spaces are created equal. Often, modern living spaces can just about accommodate furniture pointed at the TV. Things get trickier when you try to fit in a home theatre setup into the same space to make up for the TV’s anaemic audio.
Sony solved this problem a couple of years ago with its flagship HT-A9 wireless home theatre system, which factored in the room height and size along with the speaker distance and relative location to create an Atmos-like audio bubble.
Its successor—the Sony Bravia Theatre Quad ( ₹1,99,999)—has not one, but two massive shoes to fill: to live up to the high standards set by the HT-A9, and to truly earn the Bravia branding under which Sony has unified its TV and soundbar/home theatre lineup.
Design and setup
Don’t let the name confuse you—this is still very much a four wireless speaker setup that connects to a control box and pairs up with Sony’s optional SW3 or SW5 wireless subwoofers.
Gone are the huge cylindrical speakers, giving way to a sleeker, flatter square-shaped design that’s just 55mm in depth on each of the four satellite speakers, which can be wall mounted or placed around the room wherever there’s space.
Inside each of the four speakers are four drivers—a dedicated tweeter, mid and bass, all of which face forward, along with a full-range upward-firing driver to handle the simulated Dolby Atmos surround sound. While the full complement of drivers does mean that the Theatre Quad is a full-range system, the difference the optional subwoofer makes to the low end is appreciable enough for you to consider picking up either of the two subwoofers as part of the initial purchase ( ₹2,25,980/ ₹2,52,980 with the SW3/SW5).
Tying all of them together is the Apple TV-shaped-and-sized control hub, which connects to a single source over HDMI and to your TV over HDMI with ARC/eARC support. While the hub supports passing through signals up to 8K HDR and 4K 120 fps, including variable refresh rate content from gaming consoles, the number of HDMI ports are limited, and there are no analogue or optical inputs whatsoever. You do get Ethernet and WiFi connectivity, along with Bluetooth 5.2 and AirPlay 2 support.
And while the speakers connect to the hub wirelessly, they do still need a power connection, so all you need to do is place two of the speakers on either side of your TV and the other two behind your listening position, with the subwoofer tucked away out of sight. Just ensure that each of the speakers point in your direction.
Setup is handled via the Bravia Connect app, which simplifies Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound mapping feature into a series of steps, some of which use your phone microphone to listen to and calibrate the speaker output to the listening position of your choice.
Depending on your room, Sony’s spatial mapping tech creates up to 12 ‘phantom’ speakers notionally placed around the space by bouncing sound off your ceiling and walls, to immerse you in an acoustic bubble that’s far more enveloping than what four standard speakers ever could.
Once set up, you can use the bundled but rather basic remote or your TV remote to control the Theatre Quad, although the app offers more options.
Performance
Putting the system through a bunch of cinematic movie scenes, like the flight sequences in Top Gun: Maverick, the Theatre Quad almost immediately pulled ahead of the Atmos soundbars I’ve tested due to the significantly wider soundstage and stereo separation the quad of speakers can deliver.
Even though the Theatre Quad lacks a centre channel (unless you have a compatible Sony TV), it more than makes up with a terrific phantom centre created by the front two speakers, one which has excellent clarity and presence. For these sorts of big scenes, the quad speakers by themselves lack the bass one would expect, which is where the subwoofer steps in and pushes the Theatre Quad right up there with the best home theatre systems in the premium mid-range budget.
Dialogs get a much-needed boost with the dialog mode. Switching to music and a few of my favorite Hans Zimmer tracks, the neutral sonic signature of the quads peppered with the low-end of the SW5 subwoofer and the rounding out from the rear channels meant that the Theatre Quad can do justice to easy listening music and large, orchestral tracks as well.
What I did miss was the ability to have more granular adjustments to the subwoofer volume.
Verdict
For most people, the Bravia Theatre Quad represents -- budget willing -- peak home theatre, without the hassle of running extra wires or moving your furniture around for optimal surround sound. The Quad truly raises expectations from what we can expect from a home theatre in a box.
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