We once did a small questionnaire at an offline audio-visual new product experience event:
Asked "Why are audio-visual enthusiasts reluctant to buy or upgrade professional home theater products after replacing them with larger and higher resolution TVs and projectors?"
There is no speaker cable reserved for surround and sky channels, and you don't want to take the bright line to destroy the home environment (5 votes)
Installation, debugging, and wiring are troublesome and time-consuming, and it is not easy to operate after installing the family (3 votes)
Installation of 7.1.4 panoramic sound surround sound occupies a lot of living room space, and the family disagrees (1 vote)
Other reasons: rarely watch TV, watch dramas on mobile phones and iPads every day (1 vote)
I very much agree with the above reasons,I used to be a strong supporter of traditional home theater,Now there are two sets of 5.1 speakers and three BD and UHD AV power amplifiers of different eras,Everyone who likes to toss home theater systems may have experienced choosing a surround speaker system that is large enough to get a better sound experience,And in order to open up the sound field range, I also use a longer speaker signal source as much as possible to adjust the position of the speaker,But with the evolution of flat-screen TVs from 32 inches in the morning to 42 inches,55 inches and even the current mainstream 65 inches,Even more people began to choose the 75 inches of the large screen、85Inch and 100Inch TV,More people find that the space of the ordinary family living room is getting bigger and biggerThe placement of the surrounding speakers is becoming more and more crowded,And the panoramic sound system that wants to increase the sky channel may have to go to the ceiling to achieve,And the dislocation of the sound of the ordinary sound bar from under the TV picture also makes very serious audio-visual enthusiasts really can't love it,Then for the dream, you can "easy to install,Simple commissioning、It does not take up space、Immersive experience" The panoramic sound surround audio and video system is also still a choice,What we want to introduce today is to solve the above pain points,From Sony's new wireless home theater systemHT-A9M2,With Sony TV, you can achieve"Bring the theater home"Immersive experience。 Sony's unique 360 intelligent dome sound field 2.0 technology realizes the surround effect of twelve phantom speakers, forming a surround sound field beyond the spatial range of physical speakers, allowing more people to experience the cinema-like surround sound effect at the same time. As a user of the previous generation HT-A9, I am still very satisfied with Sony's product, whether it is watching movies or playing games, it is very immersive and expressive, and after using HT-A9M2 for a week, I can feel that Sony's second-generation products can reflect Sony's full sincerity, and the overall improvement of the product is quite large.
Next, let's open the box and feel the HT-A9M2:
The outer packaging box is the same size as the previous generation A9, but the weight is much heavier, the gross weight of the A9M2 is measured to be 18.50 kg, and the previous generation A9 is 14 kg
After unboxing, you can see that there are four speakers and a control box,Its full name is BRAVIA Theatre Quad,No wonder the product nickname is Quad,4 meaning,It's very interesting to make users very intuitive and easy to remember that Sony's powerful home theater system is realized by these four cabinets。
The first generation of HT-A9 and the second generation of HT-A9M2 are highly similar
If you look at it from the side, you can feel the slimness of the HT-A9M2, which is comparable to the thickness of the slim and tall Sprite can
After removing the metal grille of HT-A9 (left) and the cloth grille of HT-A9M2 (right), we can see that the speaker unit of HT-A9M2 has been comprehensively improved, and the newly added speaker unit greatly improves the bass performance
HT-A9（左）和HT-A9M2（右）的穹顶扬声器喇叭单元
The hole in which the dome at the top of the speaker produces sound
There is no product logo on the speaker grille,Sony low-key left the brand on the speaker cover
The bottom bracket is a hollow design, and there is a floating effect when viewed from the front
There is also a limit buckle design for the power cord at the bottom, which can be better concealed when placed on the desktop or hung on the wall.
The HT-A9M2 can be mounted on a desktop (left) or wall-mounted (right) according to your preference
Wall mount
What surprised me was that this base bracket is not only designed to be shockproof, but it can also be easily mounted on the wall in addition to being placed on the table. It is also worth noting that when the traditional home theater audio wall is hung, it is easy to cause the resonance of the speaker and the wall, wallpaper and other contact surfaces to cause abnormal noise interference, and Sony through the special bracket design, different from the traditional home theater speaker single-point fixing method, the use of five-point fixed bracket on the wall, reduce the mechanical grounding length, leave part of the gap space above the bracket to avoid the wall from being vibrated during large dynamics, reduce the shaking amplitude of the speaker to further improve the sound clarity. To put it more popularly, other brands of speakers are"hanging&leaning"on the wall,And HT-A9M2"Sitting"On the multi-point fixed base bracket designed by itself,"Stable" is one word。
If your living room has a large deep space, it is also recommended to use an appropriate bracket, which is both beautiful and convenient to hide the power cord.
The control box of HT-A9M2 will have a blue breathing light flashing at the bottom when it is operating and connecting wirelessly.
HT-A9M2The control box (bottom) is the same as the HT-A9 generation (top) interface, but the volume has become a little larger (more conducive to heat dissipation), and the box shell material has been changed to a frosted reflective material, for users who put the control box in front of the TV, the low-reflective box will further reduce the visual interference, which is an improvement that pays attention to details.
HT-A9 generation remote control (left) and HT-A9M2 remote control (right), the number of buttons has been greatly reduced, leaving only the most commonly used function buttons, the original full-function buttons are all integrated into the TV main control menu and mobile phone APP, only the commonly used channel switching, volume, bass adjustment and other basic common function buttons are retained, for the elderly at home, children are also very easy to operate.
Sony's new HT-A9M2 has changed from the previous generation of columnar cabinet structure to a thin biscuit-style cabinet, which can save more space whether it is placed on a TV stand or hung on a wall. At present, there is no other brand with a similar design in the entire home theater category,And at present, more and more users choose to hang the TV on the wall,And the slim and fashionable appearance of the HT-A9M2Wall-mounted speaker will also make it easier for the speaker to integrate into the atmosphere of home decoration style。
Traditional cylindrical HT-A9 and cuboid speakers will stand out in the home.
The slim and fashionable HT-A9M2 cabinet is wall-mounted and integrated into the background wall, so that there is no sense of misalignment between the sound and the picture, and after being integrated into the background wall, it also allows users to pay more immersive attention to the TV picture.
For the positioning angle of the rear surround speakers, our recommendation is as follows:
If you are a wide hall similar to a bungalow or a large flat floor, then it is recommended that your rear surround speakers can be hung on the wall or placed on the cabinet behind the sofa, and the front two speakers are placed "face to face" in parallel, which can obtain a wider sound field effect.
If the width of your AV living room environment is a little limited, it is recommended that you tilt the two rear surrounds to the left and right to the center of the seat to get a wider sound field and accurate high-frequency positioning and pointing effect.
Next, let's turn on the camera and listen:
The left is the HT-A9M2 wireless speaker, and the right is the traditional home theater 5.1 speaker + power amplifier + audio cable
Connect the Sony HT-A9M2 power cable,HDMI cable and the recording audio cable required by the center sound field mode is completed on the basic work,Compared with the traditional home theater system,If you want to complete the most basic connection work,You need to connect seven speakers、 Fourteen audio lines and fourteen connectors on the corresponding power amplifier, and then sweat and stuff the power amplifier into the TV cabinet, this step to see Sony's system may be done in 2-3 minutes, and the traditional home theater takes about 30 minutes, I am really happy to enter the era of wireless home theater, and I feel the convenience brought by scientific and technological progress.
After turning on, I found that I can't see the settings page on the TV like the previous generationHT-A9,All operations will be on the mobile phoneBRAVIA Connect APP,Make the menu screen of the TV more concise,In addition, you can not only control the TV but also control the home theater system,It can be said that it is very convenient。 This app was previously an upgraded version of the HT-S2000 sound bar and biscuit building block audio HT-AX7, and now in addition to the HT-A9M2, the subsequent Bar8 and Bar9 sound bars will also use this app to set up and use.
There will be a Bluetooth pairing when connected, which is used to transmit configuration information such as the network to the control box, but note that if you want to use Bluetooth to play, you need to connect to Bluetooth music with another name, and the user will also be prompted in the app.
It is important to link the HDMI cable to the TV's eARC interface, and then if your TV supports center sound field synchronization 2.0 mode, you can directly enable it to get the best sound field effect. The central sound field synchronization 2.0 mode makes the picture and sound more natural and coordinated, you can accurately hear the sound content of the dialogue of the characters in the scene, and the action and the picture are accurately aligned to better realize the integration of sound and picture, making the Guanyin experience more immersive.
Sony TV models that support center sound field synchronization 2.0 mode are:
2024 model number: BRAVIA 9/8/7
2023 年型号：A95L/A80L/X95EL/X90L/X91L
2022 年型号：A95K/A90K/A80K/X95EK/X90K/X91K/Z9K
2021 年型号：A90J/A80J/X95J/Z9J
You really don't need to read the manual,As long as you follow the mobile phone APP step by step prompt operation, you can install the speaker
It should be noted that for the expressiveness of the sky channel, there should be no obstruction on the top of the speaker, and if you have higher requirements for bass dynamics, you can choose Sony SA-SW5 or SA-SW3 wireless subwoofers to use a combination.
After all are successfully set, they will begin to enter the sound field optimization link,Compared with the first generationHT-A9The sound field optimization only for the speaker position,The second generation HT-A9M2 provides intelligent sound field optimization2.0Version as many as three steps of sound field optimization,In addition to the steps of speaker position calibration,It also adds two links of room sound calibration and watch the emperor's position calibration。
When pointing the mobile phone microphone at the front surround speaker according to the prompts, the APP interface will be reversed and turned upside down for the user to watch
Once set up, you can see the audio encoding format being transmitted in the eARC or HDMI channel in real time on the mobile app, and provide a variety of options to adjust the sound field effect to your liking.
A wide range of audio signal formats are available, and 4K120 and 8K HDR high-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 signals can be used stress-free, with support for Dolby Vision and Hi-Res small gold standard. It is worth mentioning that in the sound field settings, you can choose to use 360SSM Sony sound field effect or Dolby virtual speaker sound field or DTS Neural:X to upmix stereo music into a surround sound field according to your listening preferences, enhance the sense of presence, and the actual experience is still a very powerful function, and the sense of envelopment is very good.
Another amazing feature is that you can move the height of the sound field, and when you actually listen to it, there is indeed a noticeable change in height. This is an exclusive function that can be adjusted to the integration of sound and picture for users who have a relatively large height difference between TV and audio.
For some users of the first generation of products HT-A9,You may be worried about the situation of audio skipping and interrupting the current,According to the official data shows, the wireless signal of the second generation product has been enhanced2.5 times,And in order to ensure signal stability, it also provides a wireless channel switching function,And to deal with the interference that may be brought about by the complex network environment,In HT-A9M2Two new antennas are added on each speaker (one antenna for one generation),And the new software algorithm will automatically switch to an idle and unobstructed channel to ensure the stability of signal transmission when the network is congested and busy in the frequency band。
In addition, for those old HT-A9 generation users who have a complex network environment at home or will encounter interrupted current jumping, a solution is provided, which is to disassemble the control box and then use the IPEX to RPSMA inner pin adapter external antenna can basically be completely solved, and some people have tried to no longer encounter the situation of disconnection, and the accessories may be able to be done for dozens of dollars in Taobao. I myself live in a tower of seven households, WiFi signal density is relatively high, HT-A9 occasionally encountered 2 times of sound jumping, the second generation of HT-A9M2 audition for dozens of hours without a jump sound break, for the second generation of the technical improvement of the product is still sure and trusted.
The way for foreigners to test the external antenna is easy to use
Next is the actual viewing and listening test:
The player chose the doopoo 8K player with the Sony Z9J TV in center soundfield mode.
First of all, a Dolby-Atmos-DD+ 7.1.4 test clip was played, and the surround sound and sky 4 channels were restored clearly and accurately.
THE NEXT AIX RECORDS HD MUSIC TEST DISC WITH DTS TRACKS ALSO HAS GOOD DYNAMICS AND ACCURATE SOUND LOCALIZATION.
Next is to play the BD Blu-ray of Kazumasa Oda live, "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" is a Japanese singer-songwriter Kazumasa Oda for the TV series "Tokyo Love Story" (1991) The theme song became one of the best-selling singles in Japan, selling 2.7 million copies (eighth in Japanese history), this BD is a 2-channel audio track LPCM format, which was originally a stereo sound effect, but in Sony's HT-A9M2's SoundField one-click 3D surround sound field function, so that the sound immediately enters the surround sound field from the flat stereo sound, like listening to the live effect of a concert with panoramic sound effects, thanks to Sony's newly developed mixing algorithm, which analyzes the audio track in real time through Sony's upscaling engine to identify a single sound objectUpmixes the audio tracks that output rich positional information to the immersive surround sound scene.
Freely adjust the size of the vocals in the program
Sony also has a new "AI sound separation technology" It is also applied to HT-A9M2, this professional technology from Sony Pictures is devolved to civilian products for the first time, through real-time analysis and extraction of human voices and dialogues, to adjust the volume of human voices and dialogues individually, so that you can freely choose whether to hear human voices clearly (such as TV shows want to listen to the dialogue of characters in a noisy environment) or suppress human voices (such as watching your favorite football game but there is a host who you don't like to say a lot), Sony's AI voice separation technology uses AI deep network neural learning a large number of sound sources to accurately and accurately extract human voices and environmental sounds for independent adjustment。 But this is not simply the vocal frequency band enhancement to obtain vocal enhancement, Sony through the neural network AI algorithm to completely separate different types of sound, this technology has not only been applied to the classic old movie remastered surround soundtrack, smartphone noise cancellation in the wind and other environmental noise, music streaming services real-time karaoke to vocals and other applications. In the early classic old movies, there was originally only mono audio track mastering, but through Sony's AI sound separation, it was analyzed into different sound sources, such as character dialogue, shouting, horse galloping and other sounds. Then remix the sound to create a new immersive Atmos surround experience. This would not have been possible without AI voice separation. Nowadays, Sony has decentralized the functions of professional technology to civilian equipment, so that ordinary consumers can also feel the unique charm of this magical AI technology.
When watching the Neptune2UHD Blu-ray, I chose the Dolby TUREHD Atmos audio track, and the sound effect of fighting with the octopus can be described as explosive, especially when the mechanical octopus just came out of the water, the sound positioning of the water droplets falling from all directions is clearly distinguishable.
The tentacles of the octopus can be clearly felt every time they lift and fall to the ground, and there seems to be an air sensation in the ears where the octopus passes by and smashes on the ground, and the built-in subwoofer is also very perfect to show the sound effect of the ground stones breaking and exploding, and the overall performance of the new three-way speaker unit is significantly improved compared with the previous generation HT-A9, especially the low-frequency performance is fuller and more energetic.
Audition summary:
After listening to different program sources, I can give this HT-A9M2 a high score, which can reach the point where I spend about 20,000 yuan with a set of panoramic sound speakers + one support8K HDRAV power amplifier professional home theater effect,But the operation is more convenient and simple,And HT-A9M2It has the sound field optimization function of traditional professional home theater power amplifier,There is also Sony's unique function of quick calibration of viewing position,The speaker is slim and the choice of wall mounting or desktop is very space-saving,There is no longer any trouble with traditional home theater speakers taking up space,Especially with Sony BRAVIA TV with the center sound field 2.0 mode,Use Sony screen sound field technology,Let the character dialogue directly from the middle of the picture to better achieve the sound and picture integration of IMAX theater feeling,For people who like home theaterFor users who like to play PS5 games and like to watch sports games, Sony HT-A9M2 is a magic weapon that can increase your sense of presence.