If you connect the soundbar to a modern TV via HDMI (with eARC), you can quickly adjust the volume with your TV’s remote, but you’ll need to use the soundbar’s own remote to change settings (unless you’ve got an LG TV). It also supports things like Tidal Connect Dolby Vision pass-through, making it the perfect bar for streaming music or connecting a disc player to play full bitrate video (and audio).
Press the play button
I had the opportunity to review this system alongside LG’s new C4 OLED, which can add even more channels and boost the centre channel with its own TV speaker, making the audio sound like it’s coming directly from the picture.
The huge array of speakers and the volume they produce means that you can really get a sense of scale as scenes change and move from one type of thing to another. Sand Dunes and Mad Max: Fury RoadThe audio profile coming from the , bar, subwoofer, and satellite speakers gives you a sense of the grandeur of the scene. As my wife turns to RuPaul’s Drag Race, I’m immediately drawn to what’s happening on screen. Traditional three-channel TV audio is immersive and dynamic, but it feels much smaller in my space.
Photo: Parker Hall
You can adjust the sound mode on the bar, but I tend to leave it on the standard setting unless I’m watching a movie, in which case I’ve experimented with Cinema mode (and sometimes settled on it) and found that it passes a bit more sound to the surround and height channels.
Standard mode basically listens to what the TV tells it to do, so it works extremely well with LG’s AI processing in later model TVs. This, combined with the C4, is basically “turn it on and forget it’s there,” which is how I like it in a home theater system. There’s nothing more annoying than opening a cabinet, pressing a button, powering up, and waiting for the two to recognize each other. I can’t stress enough how well this mode worked (and, oddly enough, how rare an experience it is in the A/V world).
This model’s direct competitor is the Samsung Q990D ($1,700), but honestly, I prefer it in some ways. The LG’s audio profile is a bit thinner and brighter than the Samsung’s, and I feel the Samsung model bounces sound off walls a bit better and has a wider soundstage. That said, given that the S95TR integrates so well with the latest LG TV models, I would choose it over the Samsung bar if I were buying an LG TV, and similarly, I would buy the Samsung bar if I were buying a Samsung TV.
As far as a simple (and, let’s be honest, not terribly expensive) way of outfitting your room with something that’s pretty approximating what you’d experience in an audio/video geek cave, I think LG’s done a really good job here, and if I were to buy the C4 and didn’t have a proper sound system to pair it with, I’d really consider this.
