Gadgetory

hey I'm Matthew Muscovy ak from CNN and today we're taking a look at the sony HT st 7 this is a premium price sound bar system that's selling for thirteen hundred dollars that's a lot of money for a sound bar but you feel like you're getting your money's worth with the design it looks and feels like a serious piece of equipment with a brushed metal cabinet and a hefty 17 pound weight it's also a sizable unit at over 42 inches long and over five inches high and that height means it might end up blocking your TV's remote sensor if you place it on a tabletop luckily Sony has included the ability to add IR blasters to the back which is a nice workaround to the problem although you do end up with more wire clutter hidden behind the speaker grille is a front panel display that gives you useful feedback when adjusting the volume and selecting inputs the speaker grille itself is also removable letting you expose the drivers for a more in-your-face style there are nine total drivers driven by seven discreet amplifiers and the low end is handled by a 100 watt wireless subwoofer which sports a 7-inch driver and a passive radiator the included remote is a little unusual it has a stick like shape with angled triangular buttons that are pretty easy to navigate by feel slide the bottom down and you get even more controls including the ability to tweak the subwoofer level right on the remote around the back of the bar are the ports most importantly three HDMI inputs while most sound bars rely on your TV to switch between devices Sony gives you the option to connect your devices directly to the sound bar which means it can receive full high-resolution soundtracks like Dolby true HD and DTS HD master audio the HDS d7 also has built-in bluetooth with the ability to pair with NFC up in the convenience factor even further is the Sony's Bluetooth standby functionality letting you wake up the sound bar simply by connecting via bluetooth all together it makes the HD st7 great for casual instant gratification listening although some audio fidelity is lost with Bluetooth compression it is surprising that Sony doesn't include airplay on this system which doesn't suffer the same loss of audio fidelity for this much money it feels like you should get both the big question with the sound bar this expensive is how it performs well the HDS d7 does some things remarkably well the sound quality wasn't as impressive as you'd want on a $1,300 system we had resident audiophile Steve Guttenberg give the system a listen and he was most impressed with the sense of space the Sony could create especially with movies it can sound much bigger than the sound bar itself with soundstage accuracy that isn't common on sound bars on the other hand the Sony doesn't have quite the same powerful impact as some other systems with both the less expensive harman kardon SB 16 and the JBL SB 400 more visceral experience and on music it sounded thinner than you'd expect especially given the price it's not that the Sony sounds bad but overall it doesn't sound dramatically better than less expensive solutions so altogether there's no denying that Sony has set a new standard with the HTS d7 style so it's worth considering if you've been searching for a great-looking sound bar with good sound quality and are willing to pay for it but if you're more concerned with sound quality or value the HDS d7 just doesn't offer enough performance to justify its sky-high price I'm Matthew Muscovy ak and this is the sony HT st 7 you