It might surprise you to learn that, expensive though they can be, there’s not a lot of profit in TVs. That’s why manufacturers have increasingly been trying to sell add-ons alongside them – most notably soundbars.
Of course, any soundbar will work with any TV via the universal HDMI eARC connection, so brands have had to find ways to incentivise buyers to stay loyal to a single ecosystem.
Partly, that’s been through bundle deals – “buy one of our TVs and get money off one of our soundbars”, that sort of thing – but manufacturers have also introduced synergistic features such as integrated controls, wireless TV-to-soundbar audio connections and, most controversially, systems that synchronise the speakers in both devices.
Why is that controversial? Because, broadly speaking, these features are usually worse than simply using the soundbar on its own – yet buyers are often led to believe they are missing out if they don’t enable them.
Thankfully, Sony is discontinuing its version of the feature, Acoustic Centre Sync, in future TVs and home cinema products. Now I’d like Samsung and LG to do the same with Q-Symphony and WOW Orchestra.
To be fair, the concept behind these features does make a certain amount of sense. Why buy a soundbar only to completely disable the speakers built into your TV? Isn’t that just wasting audio hardware you have already paid for?
There are also genuine theoretical benefits. The TV’s speakers can be used to anchor effects and dialogue more directly to the screen, particularly when the soundbar sits low beneath the display.
That’s especially true of Sony’s OLED TVs, which use actuators to vibrate the panel itself in order to create sound. The audio quite literally comes from the screen. If any company was going to make this concept work convincingly, it was probably Sony.
The problem, though, is that even very good TV speakers are generally nowhere near as capable as the speakers in a decent soundbar. In fact, most TV speakers are deeply compromised by the physical limitations of modern ultra-thin TVs.
So when a manufacturer asks the TV and soundbar to work together, you’re often shifting part of the audio workload from the better speaker system to the worse one.
Brands use clever digital signal processing and calibration to create spatial and tonal cohesion between the two systems, and the technical achievement can actually be pretty impressive. But TV speakers and soundbar drivers are so fundamentally different that the result rarely sounds entirely natural or convincing.
To be absolutely clear, there are exceptions. Some specific TV and soundbar combinations can sound pretty good with these features enabled, usually because the manufacturer has spent time properly tuning that exact pairing.
The problem is that most combinations won’t have received that level of optimisation – yet the feature is still there, still heavily marketed and usually switched on by default.
Most people will naturally assume that a feature promoted so heavily by the manufacturer must improve performance, so will leave it enabled without a second thought. Even enthusiasts who are sceptical enough to question it often need to spend a frustrating amount of time A/B testing lots of different content before deciding whether it actually sounds better or worse.
The result is that plenty of people who buy a TV and soundbar from the same brand are unknowingly getting a diluted audio experience rather than an upgraded one.
Whether Sony would phrase it this way or not, discontinuing Acoustic Centre Sync feels like an acknowledgement that the compromises often outweigh the benefits. The company doesn’t want you buying one of its broadly excellent soundbars only to undermine its performance by involving the often inferior speakers in your TV.
I think that’s the right decision.
In most cases, people who spend good money on a soundbar deserve to hear that soundbar operating at its full potential. Sony appears to have recognised that, and I hope Samsung and LG eventually do the same.
MORE:
Here are the best TVs and best soundbars you can buy right now
Read our Sony Bravia 9 II hands-on review
And our Sony Bravia 7 II hands-on review
