Sony Bravia Theater Bar 9 review: a bare-bones soundbar with brilliant sound

With its 2024 soundbar lineup, Sony hasn’t just changed its naming convention — it’s also changed its approach.

Gone are the from the cumbersome model numbers, replaced (in this case) with the Bravia Theater Bar 9. And instead of creating expandable, feature-rich systems that can complement any TV as it has done in the past, Sony has chosen to produce simplified and streamlined speakers that perform at their best when linked to a modern Sony Bravia TV. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised — the brand Bravia is right in the name, after all. And Sony isn’t alone in this approach. LG and Samsung also have tweaked their soundbars to be better companions within their brands.

If you’ve never purchased a Sony soundbar before (or any high-end soundbar for that matter), this change of approach may be almost irrelevant. In that case, I will only say one thing about the Bravia Theater Bar 9: If it’s purely for TV sound, go for it. I think you’ll be thrilled with the performance. It has the power, punch, and clarity needed to wow you, whether you’re watching a full Dolby Atmos blockbuster, or just binge watching episodes of Emily in Paris. Plus, the availability of Sony wireless subs and surround speakers will give you room to grow.

But if you’re an owner of one of Sony’s previous soundbar models like the HT-A5000 — or especially the HT-A7000 flagship that the Bar 9 replaces — and you’re considering an upgrade, you need to join me for a deeper dive.

Sony has stripped away far too many features from the HT-A7000 for me to see the Bar 9 as an upgrade from that model. If anything, it’s a downgrade. And given that Sony is asking $1,400 for the Bar 9 ($100 more than the HT-A7000), you’re paying more for less. A lot less.

Sleek and simple

If I were to describe Sony’s approach to the Bravia Theater Bar 9 in one word, it would be “simplify.” Everything about it — from its design to its features — is a simplification of the HT-A7000. Aesthetically, this is a good thing. The Bar 9 is completely free of adornments. There are no textured plastic panels, no glass, and no metal. The entire speaker is effectively a single, fabric-wrapped black bar. It calls no attention to itself at all.

It maintains the A7000’s 51-inch width (important for channel separation), but it’s shorter and shallower than its predecessor, and much lighter (12 pounds versus 19 pounds). Sony still includes wall-mounting hardware and a template, but it also includes two small risers to help the speaker straddle the legs on some Sony TVs. With its shallow depth, it should look great when wall-mounted.

But that’s where the benefits of simplicity end.

Less is … less

Normally, most soundbars have a few controls for adjusting the volume and maybe changing the input without reaching for the remote. The Bar 9 has none, other than a lone power button hidden on the speaker’s right side.

Sony also has ditched the large alphanumeric display that sat behind the grille of the A7000 — a handy readout that showed input, volume level, and confirmed formats like Dolby Atmos. In its place you get a tiny LED that uses different colors to communicate input and Bluetooth pairing.

The remote control also has been drastically simplified, which you should read as foreshadowing the lack of settings and features I’m getting to.

Around the back you’ll find the ports. It’s a spartan selection: two HDMI ports and an analog output that only works with compatible Sony TVs for center channel audio. Gone is the second HDMI input, the optical port, the analog input, and the USB port for local music playback.

One HDMI port is for the ARC/eARC TV connection, and the other is a dedicated input. Both are HDMI 2.1 compliant and the input can pass through 8K/60 or 4K/120 with Dolby Vision, VRR, ALLM, and SBTM all preserved — key requirements for gamers even if most non-gamers won’t care that much.

Out of the box, Sony covers the input with a sticker, presumably to avoid folks accidentally using it instead of the eARC port for their TVs.

Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking “dude, this all sounds amazing — I never liked all of that extra stuff to begin with!” Well, it gets better. Sony has ditched a lot of other features, too.

From on-screen to app-based

One of my favorite parts of the HT-A7000 (and its smaller HT-A5000 sibling) was its on-screen setup display. As long as the soundbar was connected to a TV when you first turned it on, you could lean back and take care of everything with the remote. The Bar 9 has ditched this ability. In fact, unless you own a compatible Bravia TV, you’ll get no on-screen controls of any kind.

Instead, you need to use Sony’s Bravia Connect app. It’s very easy to complete the setup, including the mandatory room calibration steps that use Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Mapping along with your phone’s microphone. But I’m not crazy about the app’s other mandatory step: You need to sign in before you can begin.

I’ve used a lot of Sony apps over the years, but I’m pretty sure this is the first time I couldn’t skip a sign-in. Mandatory account creation makes sense in some scenarios — especially when a paid subscription is involved or there’s a need to access the same setting from multiple devices. There’s nothing in the Bravia Connect app that suggests either of these things are a consideration with the Bar 9.

Another annoyance: The app talks to the soundbar via Bluetooth LE. That’s a necessary step before a soundbar is connected to your network. But once you’ve got Wi-Fi enabled, using Bluetooth is sluggish. You notice it most when switching from another app back to Bravia Connect — it always needs a moment to establish that BT connection and collect any changes that have happened to the state of the speaker since it was last used.

Most of the time a mediocre app for a soundbar isn’t a deal-breaker. Remotes provide a more direct and tactile interface. However, Sony has made it an essential ingredient by stripping the Bar 9’s remote control of all but the barest essentials. It’s been reduced to a glorified volume control. You can turn dedicated sound modes (night, voice, and sound field) on and off, mute, adjust bass, and switch inputs. Bafflingly, that input button is only for switching between the two HDMI ports. If you want to use Bluetooth, you have to use the app. This is where a dedicated button on the bar itself would really come in handy.

Goodbye Wi-Fi choices

Since we’re on the topic of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, let’s cover some related areas. On the bright side, the Bar 9 is one of the few soundbars that lets Android users stream hi-res audio over Bluetooth using the LDAC codec. Normally, the advice for iPhone users (who can’t use LDAC) is to use Apple’s AirPlay 2, which the Bar 9 supports. However, I’ve recently learned most iPhone apps can only stream lossy AAC audio over AirPlay 2, which means that from a sound quality standpoint, it’s typically no better than using Bluetooth.

This scenario was also true on the HT-A7000, but that soundbar had several great streaming alternatives: Alexa Cast, Google Cast, and Tidal Connect. All of these protocols let iPhone and Android users stream losslessly, in up to 24-bit/96kHz resolution. Only Spotify Connect is still available on the Bar 9.

This isn’t the first soundbar I’ve come across where streaming options aren’t as robust as I’d like. Klipsch’s excellent Flexus 200, for instance, doesn’t do Wi-Fi at all. In those circumstances, the easy fix is to connect a network music streamer like the $100 Wiim Mini, which not only has a great app for managing music, it also works with Google Cast, UPnP, Tidal Connect, AirPlay, and Bluetooth. But without any compatible digital or analog inputs, the Bar 9 won’t work with any streamers that I know of.

Another riddle I’m trying to wrap my head around: The Bravia Theater Bar 9 works with Sony’s version of Dolby Atmos Music, known as Sony 360 Reality Audio (360RA). Tidal, one of the only streaming services that historically supported it, has now abandoned it, so maybe the absence of Tidal Connect isn’t such a big deal as far as Sony is concerned. Amazon Music, however, continues to maintain a 360RA catalog. And yet, the only way to send 360RA from the Amazon Music app is via Chromecast. Oh wait, the Bar 9 doesn’t do Chromecast. Whoops.

Here’s one I definitely didn’t see coming given that Sony makes some of the best wireless headphones you can buy: You can’t connect wireless headphones to the Bar 9. Once again, the A7000 had it. But now it’s gone. Perhaps Sony assumes you’ll do that through your Sony Bravia TV. (You do have one of those, right?)

Sony’s now the same

When I asked Sony about its decision to abandon so many of the features that I felt made the A7000 so terrific, its response could be summed up as “this is all standard for the soundbar market today.” (Those are my words, not Sony’s.) It’s true: very few products have on-screen controls. Very few still offer alphanumeric displays — Bose, Sonos, and Vizio come immediately to mind. Remotes have become very simple affairs in favor of app-based controls.

All I can say to this is just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you should too. I’m disappointed that a company like Sony, which once created soundbars that stood apart, is now seemingly focused on making ones that offer so little differentiation.

At this point I’m forced to think of the Bravia Theater Bar 9 as a kind of Swiss Army Knife that has had all of its extra tools removed, leaving just the main cutting blade.

Thankfully, that blade (if you’ll forgive the now awkward metaphor) remains very good at what it does: delivering excellent sound quality.

Strong cinema sound

For all of its missing features, the Bar 9 is still a kick-ass soundbar. With 13 drivers, it’s very powerful — I lost my nerve at about 65% on its volume setting — and despite not having a dedicated built-in subwoofer like its predecessor, there’s excellent low-frequency response. Push the bass setting to its maximum level and the Bar 9 delivers a truly satisfying home theater experience. It’s compatible with Sony’s family of wireless surround speakers and subwoofers (I’ll discuss these in a moment) but it doesn’t need them.

In fact, if you live in a condo, or your TV room is on the small side, you really don’t need them.

Clarity has always been a Sony strength, and the Bar 9 is no exception. Center channel delivery of dialogue is precise and well separated from background sounds. You’ll get a slight improvement in dialog intelligibility when you turn on voice mode, but this also has the effect of removing some of the ambient sounds in complex scenes, so I mostly left it off. There were still moments I wished for Sony’s remarkable Voice Zoom 3 (House of the Dragon, I’m looking at you). But that AI-based enhancement requires a compatible Sony TV. (Are you sensing a trend here?)

It’s also a solid speaker for music listening. I’m still bummed about its lack of streaming options, but Bar 9 had no problem delivering punchy, energetic sound via Bluetooth and AirPlay. The best results, not surprisingly, were achieved via HDMI: Using an Apple TV 4K to stream Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon was a lot of fun, as well as being a somewhat depressing reminder of how good this speaker could be if Sony hadn’t cut so many streaming options.

So yes, overall, the Bravia Theater Bar 9 sounds great. However, if you don’t love its out-of-box sound signature, there’s little you can do. There are no EQ options. This isn’t new — Sony had already ditched these on the A7000 — but now there’s even less you can do.

The cinema and music presets have vanished, and you can’t exert control over channel levels. The app offers the ability to adjust the “height” of its Sound Field effect (lower, default, or higher) but this isn’t the same as being able to independently increase the level of the height channels. Instead, it sounds like Sony is boosting several parameters simultaneously, including some of the higher frequencies.

On some systems you can accomplish a workaround by manually changing the distances between your listening position and the speakers. Not so with the Bar 9 — these measurements are performed automatically during calibration and can’t be adjusted.

There are only two settings for exerting control over the sound. A three-level bass adjustment (min, mid, max) and the ability to turn Sony’s Sound Field on and off.

Which brings us to Sony’s next bizarre choice. Normally when a sound system receives a Dolby Atmos signal, it automatically processes it as Dolby Atmos. Because getting a connected TV or media player to send Atmos isn’t always straightforward, there’s usually a visual indicator to confirm Atmos is being processed. But you don’t have to do anything on the sound system itself.

The Bar 9 is different. You must have Sound Field mode on to get Dolby Atmos. This threw me for a loop until I figured it out. I started running through all of my usual Dolby Atmos test clips, and yet the Bravia Connect app kept reporting that it was receiving “Dolby Audio 7.1” and thus no height channels and no Atmos object-based sound effects. When I turned Sound Field on, suddenly, Dolby Atmos was being processed.

In fairness, Sound Field mode delivers the Atmos goods. Among those test clips, my favorites are the Aston Martin chase scene from No Time To Die, the intro to Mad Max: Fury Road, and the bombing sequence from Unbroken. The Bar 9 effortlessly ricocheted bullets all around me, provided roaring engines in all of their glory and gave an eerie quality to disembodied whispering voices.

Dolby Atmos Music proved equally immersive, though this is where the Bar 9’s lack of EQ starts to get in the way. Sony’s tuning strongly favors boosted highs. For movies and TV shows, this makes sense, especially for dialogue. For music, it can be too much, creating a sharpness that makes you want to turn down the volume instead of cranking it up.

Thankfully, two-channel music sounds way better. Just make sure you disable Sound Field mode, otherwise you’ll get Sony’s version of spatialized stereo. You may like it, but I thought it sounded wildly over-processed.

Sony was kind enough to provide its SA-RS5 wireless surround speakers and SA-SW5 wireless subwoofer so I could get the full experience. These are the same speakers that Sony introduced with the HT-A7000, and I’m happy to report that the effect is the same: mind-blowing sound.

It also gives you some much-needed control: adding the sub lets you adjust bass strength from 1-10 (instead of the three levels on the Bar 9 itself), and adding the surrounds gives you a similar level of control for those speakers. You still can’t adjust individual channels, but it’s better than nothing.

It’s a package that easily competes with a Sonos Arc/Era 300 surrounds/Sub combo or a Samsung HW-Q990D. Just keep in mind that when you add these two accessories, the package price can climb as high as $2,700.

So where do I stand on the Sony Bravia Theater Bar 9? As I mentioned in the intro, I’m conflicted. If this were Sony’s first premium soundbar, I’d be impressed. From a sound point of view, it really delivers, which is why those who are looking for a quick and easy TV add-on should seriously consider it.

However, this isn’t Sony’s first premium soundbar, and I can’t overlook the many ways in which the Bar 9 is a shadow of its predecessor, the A7000, even if today’s landscape of soundbar options typically omits many of the A7000’s features. I don’t believe that as consumers, we should ever get less when we spend the same (or more) money.

As I see it, if you agree with my take on the Bar 9, there are two ways you can go. Spend $500 less and get Sonos Arc or the Bose Ultra Soundbar. You’ll get similarly powerful sound and expansion options, for a smaller investment. Or, spend $100 more on the Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Plus. It’s a true AV receiver replacement with tons of inputs, superb Dolby Atmos sounds, and and plenty of wireless streaming options.