The Bravia Theater Trio 9 is designed to deliver king-sized sound for king-sized screens from surprisingly compact speakers.

Photo: Sony

Sony’s combination of decades of speaker expertise and innovations in the field of virtual speaker creation and surround sound mapping have given birth to a startling new three-piece home entertainment speaker system designed to turn king-sized TVs into proper home theaters.

The left, right and centre speaker components in Sony’s cunningly named new Bravia Theater Trio sound system have been designed to both create a much bigger soundstage than any integrated TV speakers ever could, while also filling in the large audio gap that king-sized TV speaker systems usually leave right at the heart of their massive pictures.

At first glance, it’s hard to believe that three speakers as compact and unassuming looking as those in the Trio package could really deliver the scale of sound home cinema fans who’ve invested in really big home entertainment TVs or screen sizes crave. Having now heard the Trio in action on two separate occasions, though, you really shouldn’t be fooled by their living room friendly design; this is a remarkably powerful premium sound solution that belongs worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Sony’s previous four-piece HT-A9 and Quad surround sound speaker systems.

Despite only comprising three speakers in its default package, the Trio package really is a true surround sound package. Once you’ve placed the Trio speakers where you want them, Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Mapping technology can figure out your room layout in relation to your seating position and calculate how to create the location and weight of as many as 24 phantom speakers all around the room, including height/overhead, rear and side channels to go with the front channels you would expect to get from the three physical speakers.

The system even ships with a new high-performance USB Type-C microphone, capable of handling a frequency range from 30Hz to 16kHz, to help the 360 soundstage mapping work as effectively as possible, and its 360SSM technology is able to work with Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and IMAX Enhanced sources.

It’s well worth adding, too, that as with the HT-A9 and Quad systems, the way Sony’s 360SSM processing works means the system is very forgiving when it comes to placement of the Trio’s left and right speakers.

The three Trio speakers manage to fit some serious speaker engineering into their small but pleasingly muscular looking forms. The left and right speakers both carry newly enlarged up-firing drivers in their top edges, along with powerful 2-way speakers combining separate woofers and tweeters in their fronts designed to deliver a wide dynamic range with deep bass and crisp trebles.

The center speaker unit carries a new 2-way speaker with two woofers and a tweeter, using large Sony X-Balanced drivers engineered to optimize clarity and presence so that dialogue is always clear – even though the speaker is also capable of projecting sound with enough force and soundstage size to match the scale of even the biggest TV or projector screens.

The main drivers are made using an aluminium ring and copper cap coupled with a lightweight driver cone to suppress harmonic distortion.

If you want to add more physical speakers to the Trio’s core configuration, there are multiple add-on wireless options available to you in the shape of Sony’s previously revealed Sub 9 and Sub 8 external bass speakers, and Theater Rear 9 rears. You can even add two optional subs if you really love your low frequencies.

I’ve had two chances now to hear the Trio working both in its core three-part configuration and with extra rear and dual subwoofer options attached. Both setups deliver an astonishingly powerful, detailed and huge sound stage hat instantly defines the Trio as a truly premium solution that outperforms any soundbar – especially when it comes to the size and dynamic range of the soundstage it creates. Though while it’s the volume and scale it can deliver that hits you first, this is a system that’s also breathtakingly good at both bringing out but also correctly balancing small details in a mix, as well as adapting its staging to create an uncanny sense of small spaces and intimacy if that’s what a scene requires.

It was actually the Trio demo using just the three core speakers that most impressed me. Why? Because as well as the three speakers producing levels of raw power, detail and dynamic range that seem impossible from such compact designs, the system really showcases how remarkably good the 360SSM system is at using virtual speakers to build an epic and immersive sound stage that includes effects that really seem to be coming from behind and above you.

The core Trio speakers and 360SSM processing also manage to shift almost as effortlessly between huge and intimate sound stage sizes as the system does with Sony’s add-on speakers in tow. Obviously the extra speakers – especially the mighty Sub 9s – give you slightly more directness, pin-point effect accuracy and heavier bass. But the core Trio’s efforts really are remarkable for such a compact system. And yes, when run with a 115-inch screen the system delivers a sound more than big enough to do such massive images justice while leaving no sound ‘hole’ between the left and right channels like built-in king-sized TV speaker systems usually do.

It did seem during the Trio demos I had that it requires you to be sat in a fairly specific sweet spot to get the optimum surround sound results, but that’s hardly unusual with home theater systems of course. Whereas the clarity, detail and potency of the Trio’s sound is anything but usual.

The Trio is available now for $2,199.99/£1,999/€1,999, plus in the U.K. and Europe you can also buy a Trio Kit with two Rear 9 speakers and a Sub 9 included for £2,800/€2,999.

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