Forget soundbars for your giant TV Sony's new 'LCR' wireless Dolby Atmos system eats Sonos' lunch by delivering big home theater sound from separate speakers, and I heard it in action

Date:
Wed, 27 May 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Description:
The Sony Bravia Theatre Trio is here, and it's made to deliver big sound from separate speakers, but with the convenience of a wireless soundbar system.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Sony has just announced the Bravia Theatre Trio, which is a new Dolby Atmos wireless system that splits the difference between a proper surround system and a soundbar, and is particularly designed with huge TVs in mind, to make sure the soundscape is wider than the TV itself but will be tempting to anyone who wants a physically more separated sound than the best soundbars alone can deliver.

It can also be expanded into a fuller wireless surround setup, and I got to hear this full-force system in action. But first, let's go over the basics.

The Sony Bravia Theatre Trio is, as the name implies, three wireless speakers in a package. It's what home theater fans call an 'LCR' system meaning left, center, and right channels. Latest Videos From You may like Sony's new Dolby Atmos soundbar beats the Sonos Arc Ultra in 3 key areas I tested three Dolby Atmos soundbars side-by-side here's the one I'd buy LG Sound Suite Immersive Suite 7 Pro review: Atmos FlexConnect has landed (Image credit: Future) There's a center speaker that's like a mini soundbar, which connects to your TV over HDMI eARC. And there are left and right speakers that look like
little pillars with a flat section added to the back, so they can be wall-mounted. The center speaker has two woofers and a tweeter, while each of the the side speakers each has a woofer and tweeter facing forward, and then an 8cm upfiring driver for Dolby Atmos height channels.

In the simplest terms, this is a 3.0.2-channel system, though Sony says that the system is built heavily around virtualization of more in-depth speaker setups. This initial three-speaker system can apparently mimic 24 phantom channels.

Sony says that it's done some smart stuff with its virtualization tech in the Bravia Theatre Trio, including rethinking how those phantom channels work: they're now designed not just to mimic the placement of a more elaborate speaker setup, but also to mimic the "indirect sound sources" of a cinema room's acoustic signature, including reflections. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

So yes, for those keeping track of how psychoacoustic virtualization works,
it may be the case that this system is using the reflections of your room to create the sense of an entirely different set of reflections

To help the system do this as well as possible, it comes with a USB-C microphone that you can use for room calibration. Just plug it into your
phone or tablet, fire up Sony's app, and follow the instructions so it can do its best work.

As I mentioned above, this three-speaker core setup can be expanded with add-on rear speakers or a subwoofer as well. What to read next The best Dolby Atmos soundbars: home theater upgrades for all budgets I tested LGs most hardcore Dolby Atmos FlexConnect setup, and it's superb Denons new wireless speakers with Dolby Atmos take aim at Sonos and WiiM rivals The Sony Bravia Sub 8 (left) and Sub 9 (right) (Image credit: Future) You have two choices of subwoofer: the new Sub 8 is a mid-range option, while the Sub 9 is an
absolute massive beast of a sub by lifestyle tech standards. It looks like
two Sub 8 units glued together with a vent in the middle, and while Sony didn't confirm the specs, I wouldn't be surprised if that's not far from the truth.

You also have two choices of rear speaker: there's the existing Bravia Rear 8 or the new Bravia Rear 9, which are more or less the same speakers as the front left and right (woofer, tweeter and upfirer combo in the same design). The Sony Bravia Rear 9 speakers (Image credit: Future) Of course, these add-ons will cost you and the core Bravia Theatre Trio package isn't cheap either. Here's the breakdown of all those options (Sony was only able to provide UK pricing pre-launch, but we'll update with other pricing as we get it): Swipe to scroll horizontally

Product

Price

Bravia Theatre Trio

2,000 (about $2,700 / AU$3,800)

Bravia Rear 9 (pair)

700 (about $950 / AU$1,300)

Bravia Rear 8 (pair)

449 / $499 / AU$699

Bravia Sub 9

900 (about $1,200 / AU$1,700)

Bravia Sub 8

650 (about $875 / $1,200) Sony eats Sonos' lunch Before I get to my
experience of the performance of these speakers, something that immediately struck me is that this kind of setup is what Sonos ' users have been begging to company to do for years.

Given that Sonos' whole thing is wireless satellite speakers, its users have asked many, many times (directly and on the r/sonos subreddit) for the
ability to use separate front left and right speakers in an LCR setup with
its soundbars.

There's even a third-party app that enables this called SonoSequencr, which
is quite popular among Sonos home theater enthusiasts.

It seems wild that Sony has offered this before Sonos, and with a better spec list than Sonos can offer, because the Bravia Theatre Trio offers both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X support (Sonos lacks DTS), and has an HDMI passthrough port (supporting 4K 120Hz) so you don't lose an HDMI port by using it.

Of course, if Sonos did end up offering a setup to compete with this, it
could have a major price advantage. You can get a Sonos Beam Gen 2 (as the center channel) and two Sonos Era 300 speakers (as spatial audio side speakers) for 1,077 at the time of writing, compared to 2,000 for the Sony system.

And there's also the small issue that in my demo of the Sony system I found
it to be quite hit and miss Mixing it up I didn't get to hear just the Bravia Theatre Trio core setup on its own at Sony's event; instead I heard the fullest setup, with the original trio, two Rear 9 speakers, and two Sub 9 subwoofers (though, somewhat oddly, these were placed next to each other rather than spaced for even bass distribution).

In terms of pure physical channels, this is a 7.2.4 setup, but Sony was
unable to confirm exactly what the virtualized channel setup it creates using the phantom channels would be though Sony confirmed that you get 24 phantom channels regardless of how many physical speakers are involved. (Image
credit: Future) First up we watched the big music performance in Sinners at the juke joint. What jumped out straight away is that the system provides a really powerful and warm sound, which is really well suited to the pounding
of drums and making the tonality of guitars feel solid and electric.

However, I wasn't that impressed with separation of different elements in the mix, despite all the Dolby Atmos power going on and in particular I felt
that the vocals were more subdued than I'd expect, especially for a system with an actual separate center speaker.

Moving onto the car shoot-out in No Time to Die , the surround and
positioning effects got a particular chance to shine. The rear effects were solid, but the side effects were especially impressive considering there are no real speakers there.

Building on that, I thought the way sound moved from the front, around the sides, and to the back was especially impressive it felt like the sound
moved smoothly the whole way, and didn't jump from the front to the back, which is how it can feel in some simple five-channel systems.

But this demo also showed the same apparent weakness with vocals, with dialogue feeling soft and a little muddy even in the quieter moments and
even some of the mid-frequency effects seemed to not pop quite as strongly as they should (I have seen this scene a lot in demos).

The final demo was the first racing scene in Ready Player One , and the
system produced a lot of sound and fury all around me here but I thought
there was a slight softness to the fine details that held it back the very sudden sounds didn't seem quite as dramatically sudden as they should, which robbed them a little of impact, scale and spectacle.

That last point wasn't helped by the fact that in all three demos I noticed that the sound and visuals weren't quite in sync. This isn't uncommon in HDMI ARC-based systems at all, but I don't normally notice it as strongly as I did here and I think it made a difference when experiencing the crunching
crashes of Ready Player One if you see the impacts before you hear them.

Of course, this is far from a review and I'm really interested to see how just the core Bravia Theatre Trio set performs on its own. But at this early stage, I'm kind of torn: I love the overall concept and the design, but I'm concerned about the high price based on the performance I heard so far. The best soundbars for all budgets Our top picks, based on real-world testing and comparisons

Read our full guide to the best soundbars 1. Best overall: Samsung HW-Q800F 2. Best budget: Sony HT-S2000 3. Best premium all-in-one: Klipsch Flexus Core 300 4. Best Dolby Atmos surround system: Samsung HW-Q990F Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/televisions/home-theater/forget-soundbars-for-your-g iant-tv-sonys-new-lcr-wireless-dolby-atmos-system-eats-sonos-lunch


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