This week Yamaha dropped a big announcement. Specifically, that it has a new Dolby Atmos soundbar system, the True X Surround 90A.
The unit joins the growing queue outside of our test rooms hoping to dethrone the current recommendations in our best Dolby Atmos soundbars guide.
And to be clear, I am very excited about the shiny new Yamaha True X Surround 90A for two reasons.
First, because Yamaha has a serious pedigree in the soundbar space. You may not realise it given the rise of Sonos and co in recent years, but Yamaha was the first company to make a commercially available Dolby Atmos soundbar, when it launched the YSP-5600 all the way back in 2015.
This was off the back of it launching the first ever soundbar 10 years prior, in the shape of the YSP-1.
The second reason I’m excited is that Yamaha has focussed on an area many of the Dolby Atmos soundbars and soundbar systems I’ve heard struggle with: height.
Dolby Atmos is an audio technology that is meant to deliver a dome of sound experience; It’s meant to make it so you can hear the jets hurtling overhead in Top Gun: Maverick and monsters lurking on the floor above the protagonist in Annihilation.
Editor’s note: check our best Dolby Atmos scenes guide if you’re curious why I mention these two films in particular.
And while we’ve seen progress in this area with each new generation of Atmos soundbar – which do things like bounce audio off the ceiling with proprietary up-firing divers to replicate the effect – we’re yet to find one that can match a decent 5.2.2 set-up, with actual overhead speakers.
This was a key weakness we experienced when we tested the 2024 True X Soundbar System, which earned a four-star rating from our reviewers.
Thankfully, from what our senior staff writer Lewis Empson saw and heard after getting an opening listen to the True X Surround 90A at the company’s offices in Japan, Yamaha has gone to painstaking efforts to improve the system’s performance here.
The system features a clever, bespoke set-up that adds two arrays of upward-firing beam speakers to each end of the soundbar.
Inside, the arrays feature a cluster of six proprietary drivers inspired by those used in the YSP-1. On top of the new hardware, the drivers feature clever new processing designed to let them more accurately reflect sound of the ceiling to deliver a more immersive sense of height.
Though this isn’t a “new” approach and it’s too early to make any final judgments, Lewis, who has heard every new premium Atmos soundbar we’ve tested recently, walked away impressed, reporting:
“After a quick demonstration of Top Gun: Maverick, we deduce that Yamaha's claims could well be substantiated. There seems to be a genuinely impressive scale to the sound, as sound effects reached high towards the ceiling in Yamaha's demonstration room.”
Add to this the robust work it’s done redesigning the included wireless satellite surrounds and subwoofer and I can’t help but get a little excited about the Yamaha True X Surround 90A and its potential to offer a more immersive 'dome of sound' experience.
After you’ve experienced such a proper Atmos effect, it’s hard to go back to the half-hearted version offered by many of the soundbars we test.
But I do have one concern: how much it costs. Final prices in the US and Australia are being confirmed, but Yamaha told us it will be around the £2500 mark in the UK.
To put that in context, the five-star Samsung Q990F, which is our current benchmark for soundbar systems, costs £1699 / $1999 / AU$1999. Yamaha’s 2024 flagship True X Soundbar System system set you back even less, at £1099 / $949 / AU$1599 at launch.
That puts it firmly in the same ballpark as a full fat 5.2.2 speaker package with an AVR. Sure there are reasons people would still want a soundbar system, even at this price – two of the biggest being how much less space they take up and how much easier they are to set up – but that’s still a lot of money and a big jump, year-on-year.
We have seen examples of new Dolby Atmos soundbars with the audio chops to justify premium price tags, including the recently reviewed, five-star, £2000 KEF XIO – whose superbly immersive audio let it dethrone the Sennheiser Ambeo Max as our recommended premium Dolby Atmos soundbar mere months ago.
But that price tag means the Yamaha will have to sound utterly sublime and offer clear improvements over the S990F and XIO for me, or any other What Hi-Fi? reviewer, to recommend it.
Trust me when I say, that is a very tall order… Here’s hoping it’s up to the task.
MORE:
These are the best surround sound systems we’ve tested
We rate the best soundbars
Our picks of the best AV receivers
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