At the AV Lab in New York City, I test soundbars head-to-head with a variety of reference equipment.
CNET follows a rigorous, unbiased evaluation process for all of its sound bar tests, from simple stereo speakers to Dolby Atmos systems. In the CNET AV Lab, I conduct comparison tests, putting comparable sound bars side by side.
I evaluate each soundbar’s performance with a variety of content, including movies, music, TV shows, and games. I use a variety of test scenes, including the opening of Mad Max: Fury Road for playback of the Dolby Atmos spatial audio standard for soundbars that support it. I also use Avatar’s Thanator Attack scene (26:53) to test a system’s dynamics and detail retrieval.
When it comes to music, I use several CNET test tracks that you can find here in a tidal area or Spotify playlist. Tracks like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Red Right Hand, with its deep bass and tenor vocals, help determine whether a system can keep up with male voices in particular without sounding overloaded. The song also helps reveal hidden details and the relative dynamics a speaker is capable of. Using both types of content—movies and music—I then evaluate the sound quality of each soundbar. I evaluate characteristics such as speech clarity, dynamics/volume, bass response, and music reproduction.
CNET’s dedicated audio lab in downtown New York features a selection of recent televisions (including HDMI eARC), plus Apple TV 4K streamer and Roku Ultra streamer, a Microsoft Xbox Series X and an Oppo UDP-205 4K Blu-ray player. I also use Roon music software to stream to individual devices or the Oppo player if needed.
