Sony - BRAVIA Theater Quad with 16 total speakers - Gray

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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Great replacement of the HT-A9?

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for less than 1 week

  Let me start started that we purchased this to address frequent sound dropouts from the HT-A9 (which admittedly got better once we deactivated the 160 MHz channel on our WiFi router, but still persisted at over once per hour) - which we otherwise loved for the surreal ‘bubble of sound’ in its Dolby Atmos content rendering, but was just ok for music playback. Below are my thoughts as a home theater/dolby atmos enthusiast/ardent music consumer. Appearance: The new speaker look is highly polarizing, judging from internet AVS forums. Sony tried to come up with a more modern option and veer away from the traditional bland speaker look, and landed with boxy speakers that not everybody is enamored with. I think they look ok and they’re somewhat modern and innovative-looking. But perhaps Sony should consider consulting / hiring hardware designers to work with their engineers, so their products can look a bit more polished and pleasing to the eye. (May I suggest LoveFrom?) But right now, it is what it is, and your only options are to take it or leave it. 7/10 Set-up: Unlike the A9, you now need to download and sign up for the Sony Bravia Connect app, if you want to use your system. Of note (unlike some other reviewers have mentioned), you do not need to agree to all marketing prompts from the app to continue with set up - selecting no will still allow you to proceed to the next step. So setting up the four speakers that came with the box was pretty straightforward, until I tried to hook up the Sony SA-SW5 subwoofer we already owned with our A9. Despite factory resetting it and restarting it several times, the app would just not recognize it was available for about half a dozen restarts and re-set up attempts of the entire Quad. This was a several hours-long exercise in frustration, and the PDF manual (not included in the box) provides only generic information (‘if everything fails, reset to factory settings and restart’). Somehow, it was able to finally recognize the subwoofer on the 7th attempt, and it has remained connected to the system since. I do hope that Sony will get their act together and address these set up issues with a software update, and ensure in the future existing hardware is already updated and able to recognize and work with their new releases. 3/10 App: Probably one of the worse apps you have ever installed on your phone. Even after the initial painstaking set up, for the first 36 hours of usage, it failed to connect to the system every time I turned it on, asking for a re-set up (thankfully it only asked to connect to the phone & the Wifi, instead of setting up and optimizing each speaker from scratch). Sadly, you can’t make any adjustments to the system without the app (the new remote has very limited functionality - you can probably put it in a drawer and forget it exists). And the only way to verify what type of audio content you are getting (Atmos vs Dolby Audio vs LCPM and how many channels) is through the app. Sony, if you are reading this, please consider showing this on the box’s screen. Thankfully, things just magically started working on day two of usage, without changing anything from our end - likely a server-side software update (have the automatic updates to on). 3/10 Center channel sync: Unlike the HT-A9 which was able to do this wirelessly with compatible Sony Bravia TVs, this version now requires a cord (provided). I did connect it to try the sound with and without it, and I would say that it has almost no effect on the sound. Not sure it’s worth bothering with. Although, as stated earlier, it appears that our Sony A80J has not yet been updated with software to make it recognize the Quad. So who knows? Maybe it will sound better after it does. But for now, it neither improves nor worsens the center channel sound. 5/10 Apple AirPlay/Spotify Connect: Just like the connection to the Wifi and the Bravia Connect app that didn’t work for the first day and a half, the Quad wouldn’t appear on the list of available AirPlay speakers on our iPhones. And then, without us having done anything different, it just started working. We haven’t been as lucky with Spotify Connect. The Quad still doesn’t appear in our Spotify accounts, unlike all other compatible speakers from Bose & Sonos we have in the house… 5/10 Overall Sound: Overall, it sounds a little better than the HT-A9. Calibration and the 360 sound mapping worked as described, and ended up creating an even wider, more open, crisper, and more engaging sound bubble. And it should, as each speaker enclosure now comes with one additional tweeter, for a total of 4 (rather than just 3 in the HT-A9). Fidelity is up a notch. The sound feels more robust, with more presence, and the Atmos effects seem to be more precise for a more enjoyable listening experience for movies and atmos-encoded video content. Moving sound objects are more precisely located now in space around you, and their movement feels smoother. (Testing with Top Gun maverick from Apple TV, and Dolby’s testing trailers from Demolandia). The bass is also more powerful now, and music sounds fuller and warmer. Using the same SA-SW5 as with the A9 and at the same setting (8 out of 10), and the neighbors immediately noticed rattling of the shared wall, which naturally made us to immediately lower the bass to 5. I have not tested this without an additional subwoofer, so I cannot comment on whether one will be needed, but the bass output from the Quad speakers alone is definitely higher than of the A9. When it comes to music reproduction, it is still far from being as enjoyable as Bose and Sonos home theater set ups are. Just as with movies, the precise back and slightly above the ears position of the saxophones in Quincy Jones’ atmos-encoded Bossa Nova album could be enjoyed in clarity and detail in a remarkably well recreated soundscape. But the added warmth and fidelity didn’t necessarily translate to a more enjoyable music experience, and Dua Lipa and Taylor Swift sounded a bit muddled on the Atmos versions of their Radial Optimism and Tortured Poets Department albums respectively (tested on Apple Music). As there are no dedicated Modes (Movie, Music, etc) any more, deactivating the ‘Sound Field’ option makes things a bit better for music reproduction. Sadly, an equalizer is sorely missing - hopefully, Sony will provide one via a software update - that could address this major issue. I don’t thing there are many consumers left, at least in the US, who use their home theater set up strictly for TV/movies, and not for music also. The automatic upmixing of stereo content to 360 audio will enhance somewhat your content, with low frequency mostly sounds being conveyed from all 4 speakers and their up-firing twitters, but don’t expect any miracles. A big negative is that the only variables you can adjust is bass and rear speakers, and nothing else really. If you don’t have a compatible Sony TV to use for the center channel sync feature, you will not miss anything. The phantom center speaker works incredibly well. And the new Voice Zoom 3 feature also picks up the voices and raises their volume. While it works very well and does what it’s supposed to do for truly improved voice recognition, the acoustics of the entire soundtrack deteriorate significantly, as if someone took your home theater equalizer and turned up the mid- and high- frequencies all the way up. So whether you use this feature or not, will depend on whether you prioritize voice recognition or overall sound quality. Movies: 9/10 Music: 7/10 (Really hoping Sony will add an 5- or better still a 7-band equalizer to the Bravia Connect app, so the music can at least be fine-tuned) Intra-speaker Connectivity: This is where the Quad is leaps and bounds better than its predecessor (and the main reason for the upgrade in our situation). Over the past week, we haven’t had a single dropout in the sound output, and we live in a densely populated urban area. If you’ve had as many connectivity issues and dropouts with the A9 (I know a lot of people just like us did and still do, based on hundreds of reviews and AVS forum comments), this is a very good reason to upgrade to the Quad. 10/10 System is set up with a Sony subwoofer SA-SW5, a Sony Bravia A80J TV, and an Apple TV 4K. Hope this helps potentially interested buyers!

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  Posted 1 year ago by GeorgeDC

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Theater-Quality Sound Right at Home!

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for 1 month

  The Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad with 16 speakers is amazing. The sound is rich and powerful, with clear dialogue and deep bass that makes movies and music so much more enjoyable. It’s easy to set up, and the gray design fits nicely with my living room decor. It’s a bit of a splurge, but the quality you get is totally worth it. If you love great sound, this system won’t disappoint!

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  Posted 7 months ago by RahulA

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  The Sony Quad Home Theater is a giant “WOW”

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for less than 1 week

  No need for a sound bar for voices coming from the screen. I have my Quad front speakers 8’ apart and it set up its own phantom center speaker. Voices from actors voices are natural and action on screen was accurate while maintaining its left and right off screen sounds. It’s just Sony’s wizardry is all I can say. I did some research and found out that the Quad does not cut off/ or deactivate its bass when adding a Subwoofer. The previous A9 system did cutoff its bass in each of its speakers when adding the subwoofer. I added the Sony smaller subwoofer the 200w AW3 and it had plenty of bass with the setting on minus 4 with the Sony Connect App. It gives me plenty of thumping power along with the bass in each speaker left engaged. The 360 sound field was totally awesome when watching movies and regular content. Sony has added a mid tweeter in each of the Quads 4 speakers making it a total of 16 speakers. The A9 had only 12 speakers and with each bass speaker deactivated when adding a subwoofer it would go to down to 8 total. Please don’t try this system in a store it would be injustice to it. It’s not be as accurate like it would be in your home. “Buy it and you’ll love it like I do.”❤️

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  Posted 1 year ago by Cobbway