Sony presents its new range of home audio systems: BRAVIA Theatre

18 April 2024

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Sony renews BRAVIA, its brand for watching movies and enjoying the ultimate home cinema experience. With the expansion of streaming services, watching movies in the comfort of your own home is becoming more and more enjoyable. A wide range of Sony products such as digital cinema cameras, monitors and professional headphones are used by many in film production, giving the company a deep understanding of the industry and the intentions of filmmakers and content creators. The new BRAVIA products further enhance the lifelike feel of cinematic content, delivering outstanding visual and sound quality to the home, so you can enjoy your movies with the magic of the big screen. By bringing together TVs, soundbars and other home audio technologies under the same brand, Sony offers users a single destination to enjoy the ultimate cinematic experience, with stunning picture quality and evocative sound in line with the filmmaker’s intentions. The functions and design of BRAVIA TVs and BRAVIA Theatre home audio products fit together more simply, making it easier for the user to choose and create a complete home entertainment package for a remarkable cinematic experience.

BRAVIA Theatre: immersive cinematic sound for watching movies at home

Sony benefits from a unique and comprehensive experience of the film industry, from professional cameras and monitors to film production and distribution. Drawing on this expertise, the company announces a new range of BRAVIA Theatre home audio products, on which it has worked on various aspects to deliver immersive sound to the user, studying the differences between cinema and home viewing environments. The acoustics are precisely designed, with sound emitted by a large number of speakers placed on the ceiling and walls which precisely produce a sound field, giving the audience an overwhelming sense of immersion. This is the kind of cinematic acoustic experience that BRAVIA Theatre brings home.

Key technologies and features of BRAVIA Theatre 2024 home audio products

360 Spatial Sound Mapping

Using Sony’s exclusive 360 Spatial Sound Mapping technology, multiple phantom speakers are created in places where there is no physical speaker – for example, above or to the sides. This recreates a 360-degree spatial sound experience, optimized for a specific home environment, with a unique audio field that immerses the viewer: he or she perceives sounds coming from several directions, as in a cinema, without the need to install physical speakers on walls or ceilings. Previously, a minimum of a sound bar and rear speakers were needed to generate phantom speakers, but with the new BRAVIA Theatre Bar 9 and BRAVIA Theatre Bar 8, it’s now possible to enjoy 360 Spatial Sound Mapping using just a sound bar. What’s more, the BRAVIA Theatre Quad allows you to produce wider surround sound with four additional speakers.

Sound Field Optimization

BRAVIA Theatre products are compatible with Sound Field Optimization, which automatically adjusts and sets each speaker according to the layout of the room, helping to find the ideal location for the system, so you can enjoy the impact of cinema sound in your own home.

Acoustic Center Sync

Acoustic Center Sync brings together an audio system, such as a sound bar, and a TV so that the sound corresponds precisely to the action on the screen, bringing a cinema installation into the home. In cinemas, speakers are placed directly behind the screen, which has numerous tiny perforations so that the sound they emit propagates perfectly. In this way, dialogue and sound are superimposed on the image projected on the screen, so they can be heard in the right place. By combining BRAVIA TVs with BRAVIA Theatre products, the Acoustic Center Sync function merges the TV’s speakers with the sound bar to create a cinema-like experience, where sound seems to emanate directly from the TV screen.

Voice zoom 3™

Combining BRAVIA Theatre home audio products and compatible BRAVIA TVs, Sony’s new Voice Zoom 3 recognizes human voices thanks to an AI algorithm that can amplify or reduce their volume, so that even discreet dialogue sounds loud and clear.

Settings for Voice Zoom 3 and BRAVIA Theatre products connected to BRAVIA can be changed using the new BRAVIA Connect application (formerly Home Entertainment Connect), without displaying the on-screen menu bar while a film is playing.

Optional accessories

Add a subwoofer or wireless rear speakers, and you’ve got powerful bass and enhanced surround sound. Featuring a powerful 180 mm driver and a passive radiator to deliver 300 W of deep bass, the SA-SW5 and SA-SW3 subwoofers can be placed anywhere thanks to their wireless connection. The SA-RS5 is a pair of rear-mounted speakers with an integrated battery and an upward-firing driver, so they require no power supply and can be placed in a wide variety of locations. The 360 Spatial Sound Mapping offers a much clearer, more enveloping sound experience through rear speakers.

BRAVIA Theater U

Sony’s new neckband speakers offer immersive, ear-enveloping sound for unparalleled personal listening. Immersive cinema comes to the home with enveloping Dolby Atmos sound, combined with a BRAVIA TV compatible with 360 Spatial Sound. Two BRAVIA Theatre U speakers can be connected to the same TV or to other equipment using the “Add Speaker” function. Each viewer can enjoy clear, immersive surround sound and freely adjust the volume to the level of their choice.

Compatible with IMAX Enhanced and Dolby Atmos®

BRAVIA Theatre Bar 9, Bar 8 and Quad not only support industry-standard audio technologies such as Dolby Atmos® and DTS:X®, but are also IMAX® ^Enhanced10certified

IMAX :

” We’re excited to bring audiences an incomparable cinematic experience at home with the new IMAX Enhanced-certified BRAVIA TVs and BRAVIA Theatre home audio products,” says Vikram Arumilli, SVP and GM, Streaming and Consumer Technology at IMAX. ” IMAX Enhanced is designed to preserve and enhance the filmmaker’s vision and intent, and Sony’s wide range of products gives fans new ways to enjoy the power of IMAX in some of the greatest films hosted on the platform.”

Dolby:

” Storytelling is at the heart of what we do at Dolby,” explains Mahesh Balakrishnan, Vice President of Consumer Entertainment, Dolby Laboratories. “With Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, creatives have an expanded set of tools at their disposal so that audiences can experience their stories exactly as they imagined. By combining Sony’s unparalleled engineering with Dolby’s industry-leading innovations, consumers can enjoy a true Dolby cinematic experience on their favorite Sony BRAVIA and BRAVIA Theatre devices.”

Environmental impact

Sony has put in place an environmental plan, called Road to Zero, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of its activities and the life cycle of its products to zero by 2050. To contribute to this vision, BRAVIA and BRAVIA Theatre continue their quest for innovations that offer the best viewing experience with high audio and video quality and premium design, while helping to reduce environmental impact in a variety of ways:

Reducing the use of virgin plastic:

The choice of materials particularly affects sound quality. Sony has spent years developing a unique recycled plastic that is both environmentally responsible and conductive enough to create superior audio products. BRAVIA Theatre audio products use unique recycled plastics, enabling Sony to reproduce excellent acoustic performance while reducing the use of new plastics. The fabric used in BRAVIA Theatre home audio products is recycled from PET bottles. The material has been carefully selected to optimize sound quality, design, texture and color.

Commitment to accessibility

Sony wants its business to contribute to an inclusive society and improve accessibility to enable people with diverse needs to use its products. BRAVIA and BRAVIA Theatre develop products with accessibility in mind, so that all customers can enjoy a cinematic experience, whatever their disability or age.

To help visually impaired people install BRAVIA Theatre audio products, a raised square on the packaging shows the QR code for the BRAVIA Connect application. Tactile dots on the back of the BRAVIA Theatre Bar 9 and 8 indicate the eARC HDMI port for connecting them to a TV.