Speakers generally have a lot of inherent directionality, meaning there's generally a distinct conal area where audio quality is best, typically right in front as you might expect. Orbitsound, the British audio brand, already knows quite a bit about trying to make sound take up as much of the room as possible. It produced the Spaced360, which we at Expert Reviews loved.
I've had an Orbitsound A70 airSOUND to test the past few weeks, which is the company's latest soundbar. Just like the Spaced360 it looks to banish the directionality of sound as well as improving what is more than likely lackluster sound quality from your television's built-in speakers. It uses Orbitsound's AirSOUND technology and packs in five speakers in total into the A70 soundbar. There's two 2in front-facing drivers and a high-definition tweeter and these are supported by a pair of side-firing speakers that widen the soundstage. All of these deliver 300W of power output. The A70 comes with a wireless 6.25in subwoofer, too, which means you're able to hide the subwoofer out of sight provided it's still close to a power outlet.
Walking around the dimutive A70 there certainly was less of a drop-off in sound quality as you reached the periphery, which means that viewers sat to the sides of the television will no longer have the worst seats in the house (well, unless your television has terrible viewing angles, the A70 can't help with that). The A70 measures 750x740x650mm, so isn't the largest soundbar out there. It looked good paired with a 40in television but might look a whole less impressive next to anything larger. There's also the option to wall mount. In terms of connections, these are a little limited with just optical and a 3.5mm input. There's no HDMI ARC. You do at least have Bluetooth with support fort the less-lossy aptX codec, so you won't be sacrificing sound quality when connecting a wireless device. There's NFC quick pairing as well if your device supports it.
One of my favourite aspects was the status LEDs on the right of the soundbar that dim as not to be distracting but easily let you know which input source you're using or the volume, bass and treble levels. Other soundbars I've seen in the past have lacked an easy way to identify different settings, so it was good to see them here. Annoyingly, adjustments you make to mids and trebles transfer between sources, whereas I would have preferred if these were seprate. On the left of the soundbar are subtle touch sensitive controls as well. You're also provided a simple remote with all of the controls you'll need that also has media buttons that I found handy for controlling the music playing from my Bluetooth connected smartphone. The A70 supports IR learning as well, so you can have it learn the IR commands from your television's remote so you can use that to control volume instead.
Sound quality from music has been decent so far, with punchy bass from the subwoofer and well-represented mids and trebles. I've been a little more disappointed with movie-watching, with the audio often sounding a little tinny and lacking impact. This was evident when watching Interstellar, which admittedly has difficult sound mixing. I'll be putting the Orbitsound A70 AirSOUND through more thorogh testing with more movies and music to get a better impression.
The Orbitsound A70 AirSOUND is now available for £500. Expect a full review very soon.
