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Sony just revamped a huge chunk of its audio lineup, and its highest-end new offering is the 7.1-channel HT-ST5 sound bar. It blasts 380 watts of sound faceward using nine speakers divided into seven channels and a wirelessly synced subwoofer.
Even though the speakers are all lined up in a row, Sony claims the sound bar’s proprietary audio technology can make it sound like channels are coming from your sides and even behind you. Soundbars, of course, have been doing (or at least attempting) this for years by either bouncing sound off of walls or through fancy digital signal processing (DSP). I'm guessing Sony's going with the latter based on the driver configuration.
The system supports Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD audio sources, and components can be connected to it via its three HDMI-in ports, two optical ports, or RCA inputs. It also supports 4K video passthrough via its HDMI-out port, and you can stream music directly to the system from any mobile app over Bluetooth.
For a high-end 7.1-channel sound system, it’s pretty affordable, but I'm curious to hear how well the simulated surround tech actually works. Come late September, the HT-ST5 will go for $1,000.
If you’d rather have music blasting directly into your ears, you might be more interested in another Sony portable-audio novelty coming later this month. The Walkman NWZ-A17 isn't just an MP3 player, as it supports high-resolution 192KHz/24-bit audio formats like FLAC, AIFF, and WAV.
To accommodate those beefier file sizes, it has 64GB of storage on board and a microSD slot that accepts up to 128GB more. It'll stream to speakers wirelessly via Bluetooth and get up to 50 hours per charge of its battery. It's due by the end of September, priced at $300.
