If you are after a soundbar solution, the Polk Surroundbar 9500BT is worth a look, writes Stephen Dawson.

It’s cool the way technology is getting cheaper all the time. Take the Polk Surroundbar 9500BT for example. Just a few months ago I reviewed the 9000 model, which was a fine unit. This new one adds a significant boost in capability, yet is a hundred dollars lower in cost.

What is it?
The 9500BT is a soundbar and subwoofer combination. They connect wirelessly and the soundbar passes off all the bass to the sub.

The latter packs a 203mm downwards firing driver, with 150W available to make it do its work, in a nicely compact enclosure.

The 1,134mm wide soundbar is otherwise fairly compact. It can be wall mounted or placed on an entertainment unit in front of a TV. This comes with three tweeters and five midrange drivers, each scoring 45W of power.

The soundbar has two analogue audio inputs – with 3.5mm sockets – and two optical digital audio inputs. One optical and one analogue cable are provided (a 3.5mm to stereo RCA analogue cable also comes with the system).

New to the 9500BT is Bluetooth. This supports the regular stereo audio codecs and adds the more advanced aptX codec for those source devices which support it (i.e. not iOS devices).

Setting Up
Setting up was generally very easy, but you will certainly have to make some adjustments. As is my practice, I put the subwoofer in a corner at the same end of the room as the speakers, a position which I have long since established helps subs perform to their best potential. The soundbar went on a bench just in front of a panel TV. The way the optical inputs are set means that there is little room for the cable to bend between the input and the bench. Cables with bulky plugs won’t work well, but the included optical cable was fine.

Plugging in power and switching on had the soundbar and subwoofer establishing their connections with no need for intervention. Sync buttons are provided just in case the connection is lost for some reason.

One really useful feature is the provision of two optical digital audio inputs, rather than just one. If you have one then typically you will plug your DVD/Blu-ray player into your TV via HDMI and the TV’s optical output into the soundbar. But quite a few TVs fold 5.1 channel sound down to 2.0 for output over their optical output. That probably wouldn’t matter too much, except that as part of the process they just abandon the LFE channel. As we shall see, the subwoofer with this system can make good use of the LFE channel.

So I’d suggest you plug the output of your TV into one of the optical inputs, and the optical output of your Blu-ray/DVD into the other one. When watching movies from disc, just select the appropriate input.

That’s made easy by the small remote control supplied with the unit. This has the usual power/standby, mute and volume controls. There’s also a subwoofer level adjustment (this is relative to the main volume, so once you’ve set it the subwoofer level adjusts along with the soundbar under the influence of the main volume control). There are also five dedicated input keys, including one for Bluetooth. This is a great deal more convenient than the usual single key which cycles through all the inputs. Blue LEDs on the top front of the soundbar indicate which input you’ve selected. There are also a bunch of touch sensitive controls on the body of the soundbar.

You can also program the surround bar to recognise basic IR commands from your TV’s remote control.

Sound
For the most part the Polk Surroundbar 9500BT system sounded wonderful. Why wonderful? Because it handled the important signals and sounded a lot like a high quality sound system ought to. With a few differences, though. And after one very important adjustment.

The adjustment was necessitated by the extremely high level of the subwoofer – enhanced a little no doubt by the corner location I employed. It has to be brought down a very long way; 10dB or more – using the subwoofer level keys provided on the remote. Otherwise, aside from being overpowering, the bass seemed strangely disconnected to the rest of the sound. What you want of course is for the bass to kind of attach itself to the higher frequencies coming from the soundbar.

I had to make this adjustment twice: first with the LFE signal from a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal and then with stereo signals. That done, the quality of the sound was apparent, especially with stereo music. The tonal balance was really very good, the merging of the output from the soundbar and subwoofer worked well, so that the bass appeared to be coming entirely from the bar.

Drums on rock music fired out through the mix with little dynamic compression, even at quite advanced volume levels. Bill Bruford’s inventive patterns on Yes’ Heart of Sunrise came through in full, with all their complexity revealed.

It seemed to apply a little attempted virtual surround processing even to stereo music. This had two quite different effects, depending largely on the music. With some jazz from Weather Report it tended to create a sense of actual surround sound with depth and a feeling of envelopment. With some rock from the B-52s there was almost no depth, but some interesting height in the percussion, with the tambourines seeming to hover up near the ceiling, while most of the normal stereo width collapsed towards the centre. Yet with test signals the unit seemed to broaden the front sound stage, so that sound came significantly to the right of the right end of the soundbar, and likewise on the other side.

The unit supports more than just plain stereo supplied to its optical inputs. It also works with both DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1. In both cases it preserves the LFE channel, passing it appropriately to the subwoofer. The excellent signal handling didn’t extend to 24-bit, 96kHz stereo though. With these signals some of the sound came through occasionally, accompanied by a lot of crackles. You will have to stick to 44.1kHz/48kHz content.

With 5.1 channel surround signals there was a problem: the left and right channels were five to six decibels quieter than the other channels. That didn’t seem to matter much with most movies, but made quite a difference with 5.1 channel music, which of course relies heavily on the front left and right channels. Best to stick with stereo for music. Must surround music discs provide a stereo alternative.

The surround effect when fed with a test signal that rotates the sound around the room was, well, totally unimpressive. Yet with regular surround content there was some sense of immersion in a deep sound field, although without accurate directional cues as to where sounds were supposed to be emanating from.

But, hey, if you want precise surround sound you’re going to have to go for a system with physical loudspeakers situated physically behind you. This Polk system does at least as well in creating surround sound as most other soundbar systems.

The subwoofer was remarkably good. It was easily capable of keeping up, level-wise, with the soundbar. But it was also rather more extended in bass reach than Polk suggests in its specifications. In my room it delivered a healthy 30Hz, dropping off rapidly below that point. That’s enough to cover just about all musically important signal and quite a bit of the low frequency effects in movies, without quite reaching into the room-shaking, infrasonic regions.

Conclusion
Polk’s new 9500BT Surroundbar/Subwoofer preserves the best of its predecessor, adds useful Bluetooth connectivity and costs a little less. If you are after a soundbar solution, this is one to try out for yourself.