Yamaha SR-X50A True x Soundbar With External Subwoofer

Great sound out the box. Hear it before you buy.

I purchased the X50A along with two WS-X1A speakers to make the system a surround one and—for context—it is in a 10 by 18 foot room. I have previously been a music teacher and entertainments theatre technician.The sound out of the box is excellent and the unit was very simple to set up, though you will need to follow links to the website—easily done—to set up the surround speakers. The bar and speakers have a feel of quality and pastiche, reminding me of the design Yamaha had in years passed, with their fabric covered units. The sub speaker has its cone on the larger width side of it’s box, covered on the face with fabric. While not vitally necessary to face the cone, the sound is better when you do.The set up is excellently balanced out of the box, though if ... MoreI purchased the X50A along with two WS-X1A speakers to make the system a surround one and—for context—it is in a 10 by 18 foot room. I have previously been a music teacher and entertainments theatre technician.The sound out of the box is excellent and the unit was very simple to set up, though you will need to follow links to the website—easily done—to set up the surround speakers. The bar and speakers have a feel of quality and pastiche, reminding me of the design Yamaha had in years passed, with their fabric covered units. The sub speaker has its cone on the larger width side of it’s box, covered on the face with fabric. While not vitally necessary to face the cone, the sound is better when you do.The set up is excellently balanced out of the box, though if you like to feel the sub, you’ll need to push the level up to at least 4 or 5/10, as this is the units weak point. What I thought was outstanding though was how refined and well tuned the speakers worked together to produce just the right levels for the range of frequencies in films and music, without one dominating—as found in theatres, but perhaps not cinemas! (Not said as a criticism.) I would suggest for that reason listening to the unit in comparison to others in a store, if you’re preference is to be blasted out of your seat by the bass.While the manual states you need to have eARC HDMI, my projector doesn't, but that didn't matter. Lip sync is excellent, though when setting up the WS-X1A as a solo speaker it was terrible and clearly noticeable at a distance of 12 foot from my iPAD and i cant find any way to adjust that. The ALL feature plays the same sound to all speakers via bluetooth, which meant i could place the surround speaker in the kitchen, about twenty feet from the room where we had the soundbar.What I have found frustrating is trying to pair the speakers again if you reset them by accident. You need to hold the power button for some time for them to reset, before pressing set up. That was fine, though for some reason the surround speakers wouldn’t change their RH or LH preset. I expect this is a ‘new unit’ bug that’ll be sorted with future software updates. The remote is also good and allows you to adjust the level of the surround, depending on where you place a human! The bars 10 or so front mounted LED’s give some indication of change to volume, but you really need to use the phone app to remember where you’ve set levels too.The unit also works with Alexa, though if you like to mute her, bear in mind that a red line LED lights up and doesn’t dim or turn off and is quite distracting when watching a movie in the dark—please fix this Yamaha! (To deal with this just sign out of your Amazon account.)