Sony has just unveiled its new flagship home theatre system, and it’s a bit of an odd one.
Neither a soundbar nor a four-speaker surround system in the vein of the Bravia Theatre Quad, the Bravia Theatre Trio is, as the name suggests, a system comprising three speakers: a centre, a left, and a right.
The centre looks like a particularly stumpy soundbar and is designed to sit in front of or below your TV, while the other two speakers are tall, spherical towers intended to go to the left and right of your TV.
The Trio’s raison d’être is the growing popularity of super-sized TVs. Sony has itself just announced the Bravia 9 II and Bravia 7 II TVs, both of which are available in sizes larger than 85 inches.
Sony says that most soundbars can’t create a wide enough soundstage to match the scale of the imagery, and that while a system such as the Bravia Theatre Quad can supply the width, the lack of a dedicated centre speaker can compromise focus and dialogue solidity.
Now that the company is (thankfully) doing away with Acoustic Centre Sync, in which the TV serves as the centre speaker, another solution was required – hence the Bravia Theatre Trio.
As you would expect of a modern home cinema system, the Bravia Theatre Trio supports Dolby Atmos (and DTS:X), with the left and right speakers each featuring an up-firing driver for genuine height effects.
A new version of Sony’s Spatial Sound Mapping is also on hand to create an aural bubble featuring phantom speakers for an authentic 3D audio experience.
On top of that, Sony Electronics says it has worked with its colleagues at Sony Pictures on the tuning of the Bravia Theatre Trio, with the intention of delivering a sound that’s as true to the cinema experience as possible.
And, in order to ensure consistency in living rooms of all shapes and sizes, Sony has even developed a bespoke USB-C microphone that you plug into your phone for use during the calibration process.
In other words, this feels like a real belt-and-braces approach to home cinema and, when I heard the Bravia Theatre Trio in Tokyo in March, it absolutely knocked my socks off.
There is, though, a massive caveat that explains why I was so impressed.
You see, the Bravia Theatre Trio’s three speakers can be enhanced through the addition of surround speakers and up to two subwoofers, and that’s how I heard it.
In fact, I heard it with a pair of Rear 8 speakers as surrounds and two of the awesomely monolithic new Sub 9 subwoofers on bass duties.
Seeing how the Bravia Theatre Trio is £2000, a pair of Surround 8s is £449, and a single Sub 9 is £900, that means what I listened to was a £4249 home theatre system, so you’d flipping well hope it sounded good.
Honestly, though, even within that pricey context, the expanded Theatre Trio system really rocked me.
Sony started by playing the spice harvester scene from Dune, and the first thing that struck me was the bass. The quantity and depth of it was close to breathtaking, but it was also brilliantly integrated with the rest of the tonal range.
Dialogue clarity was deeply impressive, too, especially during the heavy action and compared with the Bravia Theatre Bar 9 system that was used as a comparison.
There’s a fair amount of sparkly treble in the Dune soundtrack, and the Trio system delivered this without drifting into brightness or sibilance in a way that’s rare for a ‘lifestyle’ product. Detail levels across all frequencies were sky high, too.
Sony then played me the opening of Top Gun: Maverick, which brilliantly illustrated the dynamic range of the system. The shifts from quiet, subtle dialogue to bombastic, thumping effects – the launch of the hypersonic jet, for example – were handled with the sort of energy and flexibility I would usually associate with a traditional AVR and speaker package.
The weight provided by those subs was striking, too, underpinning the whole presentation with deep, tight and tuneful bass that integrated seamlessly with the midrange delivery of the main speakers.
Despite the very different form factors of the centre and left/right speakers, I found the sound to be seamless across the front of the soundfield, and the connection between the fronts and the surrounds was perfectly natural, too – though that’s less surprising given the hardware similarities between the Trio’s left and right speakers and the Surround 8s.
In short, the Dolby Atmos presentation was exemplary, with the 24 phantom speakers of the extended package assisting in passing effects around the room in a brilliantly natural, immersive way.
I hope you can understand, though, that while the system I heard sounded utterly brilliant, I can’t even begin to deliver a verdict on the Bravia Theatre Trio.
A couple of clips is never enough for firm conclusions to be drawn, and I heard the Trio with accessories that, combined, cost more than the core system itself.
My instinct is that the Bravia Theatre Trio will be very good on its own, but I worry slightly that it could sound a little feeble without at least one sub thrown into the mix.
We’ll be testing that theory just as soon as we can get the core system – and its accessories – into our dedicated test rooms for a comprehensive review.
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Read our Sony Bravia 9 II hands-on and Sony Bravia 7 II hands-on
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