The Yamaha YSP-5600SW is a soundbar/subwoofer duo with serious audio ambitions
Yamaha's YSP-5600 is a significant piece of kit to install. You'll need either wide, solid furniture or a sturdy wall. And there's no fancy aesthetic to this soundbar either. With tapered edges, the YSP is all front-facing mesh, behind which hides a 46-speaker beam array – each mini driver controlled by its own time delay setting and amplifier. Placed at the edge are twelve (2 x 6) 28mm upward-angled height speakers. These drivers utilise the same technique favoured by Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers, bouncing audio off the ceiling to create a height channel. In between are 32 beam drivers used to paint the L/C/R and surround, plus two (sub) woofers. There's a lot of directional acoustics at play here.
The YSP’s total claimed power output is 128W. The bar offers four HDMI inputs (one 4K/HDCP 2.2-capable) and one HDMI out. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are integrated, and there’s support for AirPlay too.
While the YSP-5600 can be bought for £1,600 and partnered with any existing subwoofer, we’re reviewing it in its YSP-5600SW iteration (£1,900) which includes a bundled Yamaha room-shaker, the wired/wireless NS-SW300.
First reactions to the YSP-5600SW are basically shock and awe. This combo plays loud with crisp front-of-house imaging.
The opening of Star Trek (Blu-ray, DTS-HD MA 5.1) sees the Enterprise attacked by the invading warship of nefarious Nero. The Yamaha throws sonic debris wide and high. When Captain soon-to-die flies to meet the giant invader, his shuttle thrums deep and lands with audible solidity; the ambiance of the alien vessel is all too vivid. When evacuation calls, the soundstage is alive with incident; not a single emotional beat is lost as James T. Kirk is delivered in the escape pod.
The real test of the YSP-5600SW is recreating a Dolby Atmos soundfield. Yamaha boasts the system is comparable to a 7.1.2 Atmos system. In truth, it’s not far off. I've never auditioned a soundbar that truly replicates the surround soundstage of physical speakers, and that remains the case here. But the YSP gets tantalisingly close. What it can do with some authority is deliver the height indicative of an Atmos experience.
Gravity has one of the best Atmos mixes heard to date, with inventive channel isolation: the opening scene features comms dialogue top right, panning left across the front soundstage, which the YSP handles well. Then the debris shower hits the Space Shuttle with enormous force, and the impact is jolting. Both the weight thrown by the soundbar and the tightness of its imaging are revelatory.
When we're in Bullock's helmet, her voice is high and reverberant, When the POV shifts outside, the soundstage goes from quasi binaural to near-mono and the subwoofer throbs. This is terrific stuff full of body, attack and detail – the multi-driver array exhibits a forceful midband adept at dialogue. It's hands down the best-sounding two-box cinema solution I’ve heard this year.
Of course, with all this excitement about immersive audio, it’s too easy to forget that the YSP is also MusicCast-enabled, which means you can not only throw it music from your mobile device, but include it as part of a multiroom system. Networked audio playback covers a good range of files and codecs too, including MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV and FLAC.
Specifications
YSP SOUNDBAR DRIVE UNITS: 44 x beam speaker array; 2 x 4.5in subwoofers
POWER OUTPUT (CLAIMED): 128W
CONNECTIONS: 4 x HDMI inputs; 1 x output; 2 x optical; 1 x coaxial; Ethernet; stereo phono
DOLBY ATMOS/DTS-HD MA (DTS:X)
COMPATIBLE: Yes/Yes
SEPARATE SUB: Yes. NS-SW300 with 250W amplifier and 10in driver
REMOTE CONTROL: Yes
DIMENSIONS: 1,100(w) x 93(h) x 212(d)mm
WEIGHT: 11.7kg
FEATURES: MusicCast compatible; wireless subwoofer receiver; integrated Wi-Fi; Bluetooth; AirPlay support; Ethernet; RS-232 and IR control ports; wall-mounting option; IntelliBeam auto calibration set-up; ARC HDMI output; HDCP 2.2 and 4K passthrough; 10 x Cinema DSP modes; Compressed Music Enhancer; app controller