Why a subwoofer? Because the Ambeo Plus does not offer the performance of the Ambeo Max at the bottom of the sound spectrum, which is perfectly logical in view of its equipment, two 10 cm boomers against ten. The help of an external box is therefore welcome to reinforce the impact in the low frequencies. The latter, wireless, is built around a 20.32 cm woofer and the Sennheiser Ambeo Plus is capable of managing up to four of them simultaneously, if, for example, you want to add sound to a huge room (see more below for details).
Sennheiser Ambeo Plus, partnership with the German Fraunhofer Institute
For the rest, the Ambeo Plus is definitely in the same vein as its predecessor. As its name suggests, it embeds the audio system developed in partnership with the German audio institute Fraunhofer, a specialist in 3D sound.
As a reminder, technically, the Sennheiser Ambeo Plus has nine speakers and provides Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Mpeg-H Audio compatibility (audio codec intended to replace all the others, according to its creator, the Iso/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group at the origin of HEVC) to recreate a 3D sound environment via a virtual 7.1.4 configuration. And the result, with a football match, a concert and a film, is absolutely amazing.
Sennheiser Ambeo Plus, acoustic package…
The audio reproduction is therefore implemented via two 10 cm woofers and seven 5 cm tweeters, one of which is at each end of the soundbar to widen the sound stage and two broadband Up-Firing facing upwards (see .picture above). If the soundbar is far from being the thinnest and most discreet on the market, it is on the other hand much less voluminous than its big sister, the Ambeo Max (see photo below) all its competitors in terms of sound performance .
Sennheiser Ambeo Plus, main features
As with the Ambeo MAx, with the Ambeo Plus only the surround back channels are not at the level of a true 7.1 or 7.1.2/7.1.4 configuration. The most demanding, or the owners of a dedicated room, will therefore keep their advanced multichannel configuration. But for a living room, the question seriously arises of storing the speakers and the subwoofer to replace them with a Sennheiser Ambeo Plus soundbar.
Especially since with the addition of an Ambeo Sub, the bass performance is excellent with a reproduction of low frequencies up to 27 hertz. Namely, if the Ambeo Plus is still equipped with automatic calibration (via a microphone located on the upper part of the sound bar), the subwoofer also benefits from it for an overall result that is simply perfect. We were treated to a demonstration in Berlin featuring an Ambeo Plus and three Ambeo Sub boxes and it was truly stunning. Likewise, it also works very well in pure Hi-Fi…
Sennheiser Ambeo Plus, connectors and connectivity
On the equipment side, there are two HDMI 2.0a inputs, an HDMI 2.1 output with the eARC function, an optical input, an RCA stereo and an Ethernet port. In terms of connectivity, we note the UPnP (DLNA) function, Bluetooth compatibility, AirPlay 2, Chromecast (integrated), Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect. Finally, Amazon Alexa is also in the game.
Release date announced for September 22. Indicative price: €1,499 for the Ambeo Plus bar, €699 for the Ambeo Sub subwoofer.
