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Review: Your Sony TV as a center speaker – Gimmick or really usable?

Sony TV as center speaker
Review: Sony TV as center speaker- once everything is arranged? Then the Sony TV turns out to be an amazingly good center speaker.
4.6/5 - (413 votes)

Sony offers a unique center channel function on new televisions. This means that you can build a surround setup in which the TV replaces the center speaker. Interesting, because that’s how dialogues really come out of the screen. But what about Sony TV as center speaker? Time to investigate.

Your television as a center speaker

In many setups, the center speaker is the trickiest speaker to place. The purpose of this speaker is to make sure that the sound is seemingly rolled out of the screen – while the thing is often just below or above the screen. The reason this is important is simple: this channel contains most of the spoken dialogues and sound effects that take place right in front of you. For example, a character who lights a cigarette with a lighter, that sound of an igniting flame and the first breath in which the smoke is drawn into the lungs should really come out of your screen. If there is a disconnect between what you see and where the sound comes from, then you will be drawn from the film experience.

For this reason, high-end home theaters with projectors and cinemas often work with projection screens made of an acoustically permeable fabric behind which the center speaker placed. This is more difficult to realize with a television and the center speaker usually has to be placed directly under the screen. Unless your name is Sony. Because thanks to their Acoustic Surface technology certain TV sets from the Japanese brand can output sound directly from the screen. The logical step to take? Ensure that those TVs only play the center channel and send the other channels through surround speakers in the room. This is how television becomes the center speaker. There is a price tag attached to it. This Center Speaker Mode or (as Sony calls it in Dutch: Modus TV center speaker) can only be found on certain high-end models from 2018, 2019 and 2020. For our test we are going to work with a KD-65AF9 – so an OLED model from 2018. The other Sony TVs with this mode are the AG9, ZH8, ZG9 and Z9H models. With each there are different screen sizes available, but at least it is always the highest and most expensive TVs from Sony. In this article we will not go into the image quality or other properties of these devices.

Vibrating screen

The Sony connoisseur who goes through the above list will notice that the Center Speaker mode with both OLED and LCD televisions. And that is actually quite strange. After all, Acoustic Surface is only possible with thin OLED screens, not with thicker LCD panels with their inflexible backlight.

Reminder: Acoustic Surface – and its successor Acoustic Surface + – uses actuators (actually a small motor) around the glass on your TV screen so that it functions as a cone of a speaker. It may sound unlikely that such a thing can exist, but in the past there have also been speakers that vibrated a piece of glass and thus passed on sound. Those old devices never sounded fantastic, but the Sony system is very advanced and performs much better. The fact that a very thin glass is now moved and that it concerns a very large surface area makes Acoustic Surface extra effective. In addition, no attempt is made to display all frequencies, a smart move from Sony. An extra woofer at the back of the television provides the necessary support so that the screen glass only produces higher frequencies (so very fast and smaller movements). The low frequencies or basses come from the back of the TV. But that is not a problem, because the lower the frequency, the less directional tones are for our hearing. After all, with our physiology we can perfectly determine the direction of a high tone, but it is difficult to locate very low sounds. That is why a separate active subwoofer in a surround setup should not necessarily be near your screen. We also suspect that producing very low tones through the glass medium would lead to visible image distortion and a greater chance of fractures and cracks. The Acoustic Surface + technology found on the latest Sony models goes a step further by increasing the number of actuators from two to three (left-center-right behind the screen) and doubling the rear woofer. Acoustic Surface thus seems to be the perfect technology for Center Speaker mode. After all, it ensures that the screen itself produces sound. And that’s exactly what you want when watching movies.

However, the Modus TV center speaker is also available on LCD models, such as the ZG9 devices. An LCD panel cannot vibrate like an OLED panel because it consists of multiple layers. Especially the bottom layer with the LED backlight makes these panels too stiff to make them vibrate. That is why these TVs come with what Sony calls Acoustic Multi-Audio, essentially several speakers placed around the screen. The ZG9 is about four pieces: two at the bottom of the screen, two at the top. In addition, two tweeters are placed at the back and the frame around the screen vibrates with it. Smart software that adjusts the timing of sound waves produced can create the illusion that the sound is coming from the screen. The technical explanation of Surface Multi-Audio makes sense, but we would like to emphasize that our test was done with an OLED display with Acoustic Surface +. Judging by a brief demonstration of a Surface Multi-Audio TV, this system also seems capable of fooling you into thinking that the sound is coming to the screen itself. But is it as effective as the OLED center channel system? We couldn’t compare that.

Connecting as a speaker

What should you do now if you want to use a compatible Sony TV as a center speaker? It may surprise you, but you just connect the device in the same way as a real speaker: with speaker cable. At the back of the AF9 we find two solid terminals that are also suitable for banana plugs. The connections are easily accessible, at the bottom of the base that contains the two woofers. A good placement, because this is also a handy location if you want to neatly hide cables.

Although we are not really going to discuss the AF9 in other areas, we should still talk about the design. After all, the Sony TVs with one or two woofers at the back handle it differently than average TV sets that come with a classic base. The woofers are in a triangular appendix on the back of the television. When placed, it is clicked out so that you get a kind of position and the screen is slightly inclined. Note: it is a heavy construction, which becomes even more severe when you mount the supplied stabilizing weight. You should place a 65-inch television with two people anyway, but that is certainly the case with this device and (presumably) the other compatible models. And hang up? Then you can, but not on a standard bracket. You do not open the woofer when wall mounted, but it hangs flat against the back of the TV. This makes the total thickness of the screen slightly larger than you would expect from an OLED TV. The LCD models with Surface Multi-Audio do not have this problem.

The speaker cable leading to the TV, of course, starts with an AV receiver. For this test we first used a Denon AVR-X6300H (our current fixed test device), then we received a state-of-the-art NAD T778 in the test room. It seems logical that you connect this receiver to the HDMI-ARC input of the Sony TV, although that only becomes an obligation if you want to watch sources that are directly on your television. Or be built-in, like the Netflix app or another app that runs on the Android TV interface of the Sony device.

Diving in the TV interface

The Android TV software offers many pluses, such as baked-in Chromecast and many useful apps. The interface may seem familiar to Android users right away. Not so much because it is a copy of the smartphone menus – it is not – but because the underlying philosophy remains the same. Just like with mobile devices, every manufacturer can adjust Android TV a bit and expand it with their own menus. Sony does that to a limited extent. In itself, the operation is very clear on the KD-65AF9, but it is true that the audio settings at the brand are sometimes unclear. An old pain. One of the problems is that Sony uses its own terminology instead of terms that are commonly known. For example, the word ‘bitstream’ or ‘PCM’ is nowhere to be found, although these are terms that are universally used to indicate that the audio stream is output unchanged or in stereo format via the ARC connection.

Even if you want to use the Sony TV as a center speaker, you will encounter slightly illogical things. To use the center speaker mode, you must not only activate the center speaker setting. You also have to change the sound device from “TV speakers” to “audio system”, otherwise no sound will come out. That may not make sense to everyone. In theory, that change to “audio system” should happen automatically when you switch on the receiver (provided HDMI-CEC is activated on the audio device). But was it the Sony TV or our longer HDMI cable, the fact is that the TV did not always make the switch by itself.

Measuring is an obligation

Are you a purist who does not like the calibration function on your receiver? Bad luck, you’re really going to have to use it now – or manually do a bit more work than is usually necessary. The center speaker via the TV speaker simply has a much more extensive signal path than the other surround speakers in your setup. The sound for this channel is therefore longer on the road, which you really notice when you start without calibration. Even a small echo is noticeable, including with dialogs that are spread across a side channel and the center (for example, when a character is speaking at the edge of the screen).

The length of the signal path is so great that a calibration function on your receiver will throw crazy results. For example, Audyssey on the Denon receiver reported that the center speaker was eight meters away. In reality, the TV was located about 3 meters from our seat. We thought it was a bug, similar to the erroneous measurement results you can get with a bipole speaker setup (see our test of the Definitive Technology BP9000 speakers). But the phenomenon is known to Sony and their advice is to keep the high reading to keep the different channels in sync. If you want to work manually, you cannot simply enter the value you measure. Incidentally, aiming at a TV screen with a laser meter is not exactly convenient or accurate.

The NAD receiver includes the excellent Dirac system, perhaps the best room correction software available. Measuring takes a relatively long time at Dirac because you have to place the measuring microphone at 13 positions, with a long series of test tones being played at each position. The more channels, the longer. The setup we used is 5.1.2, with in addition to the Sony TV as center channel, Alteco and Rubicon speakers from Dali and a Silver W12 subwoofer from Monitor Audio.

The fascinating thing about Dirac is that you also get insight into the performance of your speakers in your room. This way we can also see how the Sony TV functions as a speaker. In our measurement we also see that delay through the signal path recur, and also a dip in the display around 220 Hz that we usually do not register with our fixed center speaker (a Dali Rubicon Vokal). We suspect that here may be the crossover point between the TV woofer and Acoustic Surface speaker in the screen. Dirac naturally wants to compensate for that, but that is not entirely possible. The rest of the measured curve looks very normal, without noticeable peaks and with a very gradual roll-off from 10 kHz.

How good does it sound?

Listening to music in surround is not really something that much people do. Still, we find surround recordings, such as those from the Norwegian 2L label, quite interesting if they are well produced. This means, among other things, that the extra channels are used to display the natural ambience and reflections of a room, not to fire at you all kinds of sound tricks that are ultimately primarily distracting. A good example of such a subtle recording is 2L’s Edvard Grieg Blu-ray (DTS HD MA 5.1 or 7.1), which we would like to include if we want to judge a center speaker on its musical ability and naturalness. After all, you don’t immediately hear that a voice is not quite right, but you quickly notice it when a string instrument such as a piano is not quite right. In terms of naturalness, we cannot catch the AF9 too much. The integration with the left and right speakers is good

We go through the official Dolby demos with Atmos content, via the NAD receiver and with a corrected Dirac curve. Integration with the rest of the surround setup is quite good, although we think that the Sony TV is slightly brighter and louder than the other speakers. Fortunately, you can adjust the center volume on the T778 at the touch of a button. The sound of the rain in the “Amaze” demo sounds relatively realistic, for example, not sharp or artificial like with a small speaker. A little bit more depth would make it all natural; it is audible that Acoustic Surface is not hundred percent well supplemented by the woofers. What do we find very strong? In the Horizon demo, the voice really comes out of the screen, the two spaceships fly over us and straight to the planet, and the waterfall is also precisely located – in the center of the screen – where it belongs.

Sony TV as center speaker

As a test film we include ‘Gemini Man’ (Ultra HD Blu-ray, Dolby Atmos). It’s more than just a bit of a miscalculation, this vehicle with Will Smith, despite the direction of the once highly regarded Ang Lee. You don’t have to look long to realize that the excellent placement of sound effects is the great asset of Acoustic Surface. The absurd scene where Will Smith throws a hand grenade at his younger clone – sorry, spoiler! – and bounce the grenade back by firing at it: the ricocheting sound and explosion are coming straight at you. The subsequent pursuit with the motorcycles is also full of perfectly placed SFX. But, if we’re to be honest, the male voices in particular are a bit lacking in the fullness that we are used to. We don’t think further Dirac corrections can straighten out the slightly thinner character.

If we can give you a viewing tip: Babylon Berlin “(streaming, Dolby Digital 5.1). The German top series directed by Tom Twyker is visually really strong, also in terms of sound design. The crowded nightclub scene from the second episode, with the song “Zu Asche, Zu Staub”, perfectly conveys the atmosphere of the crazy but also dark twenties and thirties in Berlin, for example. We note that the extensive drum solo in the middle of this song is very rhythmic and tight from the Sony and the many small sound effects that reflect the atmosphere in the club well. Our fixed center speaker does a lot better in terms of bass reproduction, and we notice this because the musicians are also right on stage in front of you in different shots.

But overall the conclusion remains: the positioning and timing are right , and for an unconventional speaker that uses a glass medium, the frequency response is actually quite impressive. A larger center speaker from a higher price range undoubtedly does better, but the Modus TV center speaker is not as big a compromise solution as you might think.

Conclusion

There are some things Center Speaker Mode just a little less interesting. It is only present on quite expensive TV sets, for example. Although you can counter that again by stating that you equip a home cinema with a screen that offers very good image quality. Placing on a piece of furniture or on the wall is also slightly more challenging in the models with the rear woofer. The installation also requires a little more effort.

But once everything is arranged? Then the Sony TV turns out to be an amazingly good center speaker. Although the TV center speaker mode lacks the depth and subtlety of our fixed (pricey and hefty) center speaker, Acoustic Surface + certainly does not deliver bland or thin TV sound. The experience value is especially high because the central placement is perfect for accurately reproducing spoken dialogues and centrally placed sound effects. Here Sony really has an edge for loose center speakers that are forced to be a little lower. The center channel seems to really come out of the screen – because that’s exactly what it does. In summary: if you want to transform a living room into a home cinema with a minimum of speakers, the Sony approach is an interesting avenue to investigate. You delete one large speaker and get a lot more experience. A nice exchange, we think.

Negatives of Sony TV as center speaker

  • Only available on most expensive Sony TVs
  • Calibration and interpretation is necessary
  • Interface TV not clear for audio
  • Center speaker only available when TV is switched on

Pros of Sony TV as center speaker

  • Surprisingly wide frequency response
  • High sense of realism
  • Provides convenient solution for center speaker placement
  • Installation is not exactly difficult