Sony Bravia Theatre Trio + Rear 9 and Sub 9 review

Back when we reviewed the Bravia Theatre Trio, Sony’s soundbar-in-three-parts, we also tested it with the optional Rear 9 surround speakers and Rear 8 subwoofer.

We found the system to be excellent in both guises, but we theorised that an upgrade from the Sub 8 to the Sub 9 might solve the one remaining niggle (very occasional buzzing from the subwoofer) and elevate the system from excellent to truly exemplary.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been testing that theory, and at the risk of tooting our own horn in an undignified fashion, we were absolutely right. Although we think there’s a way it could be made better still…

Price

The Bravia Theatre Trio alone is a premium product with a £1999 / $2000 / AU$2999 price tag, and the Rear 9 speakers and Sub 9 will set you back £699 / $750 / AU$1299 and £899 / $900 / AU$1299 respectively when bought separately.

However, in the UK, you can get the extra components for half price when they’re bought with the core system, taking the total price to £2798. In the US, meanwhile, we’ve found everything bundled together for a not-quite-as-discounted price of $3250.

No such discounting currently exists in Australia, so Aussies will currently have to pay AU$5597 to put this complete system together.

Alternatives at this level aren’t terribly common, but the Sonos Ultimate Immersive Set with Arc Ultra (£2516 / $2446 / AU$4366) is a strong option, while the LG Sound Suite Immersive Suite 7 Pro (£2300 / $2150 / AU$3996) is a much less appealing one.

Another alternative, particularly for those who don’t want the soundbar component, regardless of how compact it is, is Sony’s own Bravia Theatre Quad, which is also compatible with the new Sub 9. That pairing will set you back £2949 / $2496 / AU$4998.

Design

As we said in our original review, the Bravia Theatre Trio is an unusual proposition from a design perspective, replacing the traditional soundbar with three separate speakers.

The centre speaker is essentially a very narrow soundbar, while the left and right speakers are substantially larger cylindrical units with fabric coverings, metallic top rings and up-firing drivers. They're attractive and reassuringly solid, if a little imposing.

The centre speaker's low-profile design means it’s unlikely to obstruct your screen, and Sony supplies spacer feet if you need it to straddle your TV's pedestal stand. The left and right speakers have flat backs and can be wall-mounted using suitably positioned screws.

The two Rear 9s have a strong resemblance to the Trio's front left and right speakers, but they're a little shorter and lack the extended, flat back.

They can still be wall-mounted directly using a suitable screw, though, or attached to the supplied brackets if you want to angle them towards the listening position, which, thanks to Sony's calibration system (which we'll get to shortly), isn't really necessary unless your placement is particularly unusual.

Then there's arguably this system's centrepiece, the Sub 9, which is quite a different proposition. This is a huge, almost cube-shaped subwoofer that looks rather like two Sub 8s that have been fused together.

At 23.3kg, it's also almost twice the weight of a Sub 8, so you'll want plenty of space for it and a bit of muscle to get it into position. Measuring 39 x 40 x 35cm, it's not something you can casually tuck behind a sofa, either.

All five speakers are wireless, of course, so there are no cables to run between them, but each obviously needs a mains connection.

One omission is the lack of a display. The Trio relies on status lights and the Bravia Connect app to tell you what it's doing, which is fine for changing volume but less convenient if you simply want to check that you're correctly receiving, say, Dolby Atmos.

If you don't have a recent Sony TV that can display this information for you, you'll need to pick up your phone, unlock it and open the app to find out. That's more faff than there really should be for such a simple task.

Features

The Bravia Theatre Trio is a 3.0.2-channel system on its own, with a claimed 405W of amplification.

Add the two Rear 9 speakers and Sub 9, as we have here, and it becomes a full 5.1.4-channel system, with a further 180W claimed for the rear speakers and a substantial 600W claimed for the Sub 9. That’s a hefty 1185W of claimed total system power.

The system supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, and the addition of the rear speakers and subwoofer means it’s also fully IMAX Enhanced certified.

Sony's 360 Spatial Sound Mapping technology remains at the heart of the system, using the physical speakers as the foundations for up to 24 phantom speakers around the room. With the Rear 9s adding physical speakers behind the listening position, the surround field should be considerably more convincing, with Sony's processing continuing to fill in any remaining gaps.

The Rear 9s also broadly mirror the driver arrangement of the Trio's front left and right speakers, with a woofer, tweeter and up-firing driver, and while the rears use slightly smaller woofers and tweeters to the front speakers, the up-firing drivers are the same, potentially boosting consistency and cohesion, particularly of height effects.

Set-up is handled through the Bravia Connect app, which walks you through the process and asks for the positions and heights of the individual speakers. You can use approximate, relative positioning to get through the process quickly, and this produces excellent results in typical layouts, but it’s also possible to add specific distances, which results in even greater cohesion and accuracy of effect placement, particularly in unusually shaped rooms and/or when the speakers are positioned asymmetrically.

The calibration system is particularly neat. The speakers have their own microphones, but Sony also supplies a dedicated USB-C calibration microphone that plugs into your phone. You then hold the phone in the listening position and let the system measure the room.

It's a much more reassuring solution than relying on the microphone built into whatever phone happens to be running the app, and it makes the calibration process both consistent and thorough.

The system then adjusts itself to account for the room and the actual positions of the speakers, including compensating for speakers that aren't perfectly positioned. The whole process is surprisingly quick, too.

There's plenty of scope for tweaking afterwards, including bass level, voice enhancement and different sound modes, but the default settings are accurate and sensible enough that most people will never need to venture into the advanced settings.

In terms of physical connections, there’s an HDMI eARC port for connection to your TV, plus a dedicated HDMI input that supports 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM. There's also Bluetooth, wi-fi, Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect on the wireless side.

If the TV to which the Trio is connected is a recent Sony model, various controls and settings are integrated into the on-screen menus, which is genuinely handy, but the dinky bundled remote is fine as an alternative, and the aforementioned Bravia Connect app is excellent if you can be bothered to pick up and wake up your phone.

Sound quality

The Bravia Theatre Trio was already an impressive performer on its own, but adding the Rear 9s and Sub 9 transforms what is already a big, cohesive presentation into a genuinely immersive home cinema system.

Arrival in Dolby Atmos is an excellent demonstration of what the complete system can do. Dialogue is clean and precisely anchored to the screen, while the more subtle elements of the soundtrack are reproduced with impressive delicacy and insight.

When the soundtrack suddenly opens up, such as when a squadron of jets buzzes Louise's school or the transport chopper lands on her lawn, the system fills the room with sound.

The cohesion and precision are deeply impressive. You don't hear the speakers, you hear the sound they make. The jets fill the ceiling and streak from one side of the room to the other in a completely natural fashion, with no obvious gaps as they move around the soundstage. There's enormous scale here, but also excellent tonal consistency and enough refinement to prevent the presentation becoming hard or harsh.

The Rear 9s add considerably more than simply sound from behind you. Effects move seamlessly from front to rear, while the system maintains the same sense of cohesion that impressed us with the Trio on its own. The result is a convincing bubble of sound around the listening position, rather than a front-heavy presentation with occasional effects coming from the rear.

The first trip into the alien vessel is particularly effective, with the system creating a cavernous, echoey environment and giving the aliens' deep ‘voices’ a wonderfully convincing presence. There's a strong sense of space, but also plenty of detail within it, allowing individual sounds to remain clearly defined rather than becoming lost in the overall effect.

The system's precision is just as impressive in Blade Runner 2049. The adverts outside K's apartment are positioned perfectly, high above the listening position, while individual raindrops in the balcony scene are placed with remarkable accuracy. This is the sort of three-dimensional positioning that makes Dolby Atmos feel genuinely worthwhile, rather than simply adding a vague sense of height to the presentation.

Bass is another major strength of the complete system. Arrival contains plenty of low-frequency information, but it isn't simply a succession of brutal bass drops. The Sub 9 handles the soundtrack's varied low end with impressive subtlety, sounding tuneful and controlled when required, before delivering enormous weight when the soundtrack demands it.

Its integration with the rest of the system is excellent, too; it never feels like a separate speaker doing its own thing.

The improvement over the Sub 8 we tested with the Trio previously is particularly obvious with chapter two of Blade Runner 2049. The minor buzzing we heard from the smaller subwoofer has disappeared, replaced by an almost sub-sonic thump that is both exceptionally deep and tightly controlled.

The Sub 9 also resolves the rhythm within those deepest notes much more cleanly, where lesser speakers can turn them into an indistinct rumble. The result is greater impact, but also greater definition and composure.

The system has plenty of dynamic firepower elsewhere, too. Civil War's chaotic battle sequences and the aerial action of Top Gun: Maverick show how effectively it can transition from quiet dialogue and subtle background detail to huge, room-filling effects.

Despite its wireless and relatively lifestyle-friendly design, this is capable of the sort of scale, dynamics and precision we'd expect from a much more conventional home cinema system.

For music, the system gives you a useful choice of presentation. Leave Sound Field switched off and stereo material is played through the front left and right speakers and Sub 9, giving you the most direct and authentic stereo presentation. Switch Sound Field on and you can either have the system upmix stereo material into a surround presentation or select Multi Stereo to send it through all of the speakers.

Being the purists that we are, our preference is to turn Sound Field off, which gives you the kind of authentic stereo experience that a soundbar can’t match. That said, we would like the option to play stereo music without the involvement of the subwoofer: while it’s impressively integrated and tuneful for a speaker of its type, the two front speakers are capable of producing a cohesive, balanced delivery without it.

The Bravia Theatre Trio was already an unusually accomplished home cinema system, but adding the Rear 9s and, crucially, the Sub 9 turns it into something genuinely exceptional.

The scale, cohesion, precision and bass performance are all outstanding, while the wireless design and clever calibration make it considerably easier to accommodate than a conventional 5.1.4-channel speaker package.

Most importantly, our theory about the Sub 9 has proved correct. The occasional buzzing we heard from the Sub 8 has disappeared, while the larger subwoofer delivers deeper, cleaner and more controlled bass.

Combined with the Rear 9s, it gives the Trio the kind of immersive, room-filling performance that makes this feel much more like a proper home cinema system than a collection of wireless lifestyle speakers.

There are a couple of minor niggles: we'd like the option to remove the Sub 9 from the stereo music configuration, and the lack of a display makes checking the incoming audio format more fiddly than it should be. But these are tiny blemishes on what is otherwise an outstanding package.

A properly configured AVR and Dolby Atmos speaker system will still have the ultimate performance advantage, but it will be considerably more complicated to accommodate and set up.

Verdict

If you want serious, genuinely cinematic surround sound without turning your living room into a speaker installation, the Bravia Theatre Trio with Rear 9s and Sub 9 is the best alternative to a traditional AVR and Dolby Atmos speaker system that we've tested – and we'd be very tempted to add a second subwoofer…

SCORES

• Sound 5
• Design 4
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the Sony Bravia Theatre Trio

Also consider the LG Sound Suite System

Read our Sony Bravia Theatre Quad review

Best surround sound systems: home cinema speakers and soundbars put to the test