Sony's New Home Audio Hardware Gets Weird With Surround Sound, Neckband Speakers

The Sony brand name means a lot of things to a lot of people. If you're on the younger side, you probably associate it most closely with the PlayStation line of video game consoles, plus maybe BRAVIA TVs, Xperia smartphones, and the Blu-ray optical disc formats. For the right person, they might also be familiar with Sony's headphones. If you're older, you probably associate the brand more closely with its consumers and maybe even professional lines of audio hardware, most famously the Walkman and Discman portable cassette and CD players.

Today, Sony is still a big name in the audio world, with products across all sorts of sub-categories and price points. On Wednesday, it announced several new speaker products, all designed for use with a TV, which run the gamut price-wise from a few hundred dollars to the low thousands. If you're looking to upgrade your TV's sound — or, in the case of one item, are looking for a new personal listening solution — then Sony has a few interesting SKUs coming out, though the price may be out of reach for some customers. So, let's take a look at what was announced in Wednesday's press briefing.

Among Sony's new audio offerings are a pair of soundbars: the BRAVIA Theater Bar 8 and BRAVIA Theater Bar 9. Sony's product briefing says that "Bar 8 is similar to Bar 9 in most respects," with the exception being that Bar 8 consists of 11 speakers and Bar 9 is made up of 13. Boasting support for the Dolby Atmos and DTS:X spatial audio formats, the new soundbars can be upgraded to true, non-virtualized surround sound experiences with the addition of optional wireless rear speakers (model number SA-RS5/SA-RS3S) and/or optional wireless subwoofer (model number SASW5/SA-SW3).

The new soundbars also support Sony's AI-tuned sound separation technology, Voice Zoom 3. According to the product briefing, Voice Zoom 3 allows the user to adjust dialogue volume in either direction — the implication is seemingly that it can do this even if the dialogue isn't isolated to a discrete center channel — so you can boost it without making other sounds louder or lower it so you can watch sports without announcer chatter.

The Bar 8 and Bar 9 will retail for $999.99 and $1,399, respectively.

Also joining the BRAVIA Theater line is a new SKU that, in its own weird way, functions as something in between a soundbar and a fully discrete surround sound system. That would be the BRAVIA Theater Quad, a set of four wireless units that each contain four speakers within them. You place them around the viewing/listening area as you would discrete front and surround speakers, but each unit contains additional drivers and virtualization tech that allow for a spatial audio experience. Sony's press briefing doesn't fully explain the connectivity past the TV, which somehow connects to the speakers via HDMI, so some hubs connect to the TV, even if it's not clearly laid out in the description or photos.

Sony claims that its 360 Spatial Sound Mapping (or 360SSM for short) "virtually places the speakers in the correct location and creates 16 phantom channels of audio." Like the soundbars, the Quad set features Voice Zoom 3 sound separation technology and can be upgraded with an optional wireless subwoofer. The Quad can also use your TV as the center channel using Acoustic Center Sync (or ACS for short).

The BRAVIA Theater Quad package will retail for $2,499.99.

We started with the convention in the soundbars, then moved onto the quirkier Quad speaker set, and now we close with something that's outright esoteric: the Sony BRAVIA Theater U neckband speakers. Neckband speakers are nothing new, whether from the likes of LG or Sony specifically. However, branding them as part of the premium BRAVIA line, alongside a batch of new products that effectively start at $1,000? That's new.

Sony's press briefing notes that "BRAVIA Theater U offers an improved design over its predecessor for more comfort and flexibility," but it doesn't specify what that predecessor was. (The SRS-NS7 home theater neckband speaker seems as good a candidate as any.) Sony emphasizes that it's "Ideal for watching without disturbing others or in conjunction with the TV/Soundbar but at different volumes," suggesting that the design makes it so that its sound is not projected at anyone other than the wearer. But Sony also says that connecting the U to a PlayStation 5 controller "offers engaging gameplay without isolating you from others," meaning that it's supposed to be the best of both worlds, taking elements from headphones and regular speakers.

The BRAVIA Theater U will retail for $299.99, making it easily the lowest-priced SKU in this batch of audio hardware that Sony just announced.