Samsung Q-Symphony: The company is merging its 4K TVs and soundbars

news hardware Samsung Q-Symphony: The company is merging its 4K TVs and soundbars

Soundbar: understanding sound space

When it comes to sound, most people understand the difference between lows, mids (where the vocals hit), and highs. The adjectives “plentiful”, “warm” or “metallic” are transparent enough to be picked up by the general public. On the other hand, when it comes to numbers, it’s immediately less meaningful.

Tough luck, the technology we’re talking about today is based on numbers. Do you know what a 2.1, 3.1, 5.1 or even 7.1 sound system is?

You saw it in the title, we’re going to talk about sound spatialization. The first number you see is on the number of channels (understand the number of speakers) through which the sound comes out.

The “.1” simply means there is an additional optional channel, usually dedicated to low frequencies below 120 Hz. Subwoofers. At home, the subwoofer is often a subwoofer that is placed next to the TV stand.

These characters are not there to look pretty. The audio file of your Netflix series is sometimes mixed down in stereo (i.e. 2.0 or 2.1). There, one case on each side of the screen is sufficient. In the best case, the TV 2.0 AI translates into a more spatial sound and adapts it to your personal system.

But these days, plain stereo is less and less hegemonic. Many films and series are mixed in 5.1 or even 7.1 (almost all VOD platforms offer Dolby Atmos content). If you are well equipped, the immersion has absolutely nothing to do with it.

In a war movie, you will feel like you are in the middle of the battlefield, with explosions from all sides. During a chase, you will feel the cars turning left to right, but also front to back. In short, you get the picture.

With a 5.1 source, if you do not have enough channels in your sound system, the overall quality of the content displayed will be limited.

To break this bridle, Q-Symphony was invented.

Q-Symphony: The specialty of Samsung TVs

Normally, when you connect a soundbar, the TV speakers turn off. Logically, it’s absurd to pay for better sound quality so that it ends up being diluted. What if the sound could not be diluted but sublimated? That’s the bet Samsung made with Q-Symphony.

The idea is simple and effective: increase the spaciousness of the sound by using the TV speakers as additional channels. If your audio file supports 3.1, 5.1 or 7.1 format, it needs the maximum number of channels to best express its complexity. Therefore, through the communication of Samsung soundbars with 4K QLED TVs, the file has access to new channels.

Combine this with a good job of the TV’s artificial intelligence to adapt to your surroundings and you get quite impressive spatial reproduction even without speakers placed behind you (the principle is to block the sound reverberation on the walls and ceiling use return channels to simulate this).

Of course, not all TVs from Korean brands are compatible with this technology. In order to successfully mix the sound of a bar and a TV, the two devices must be of relatively similar quality. Therefore, only the best Samsung 4K TV models are compatible with Q-Symphony. Note, however, that the number of compatible TVs has changed over the years.

If you buy very high quality Neo QLED and a good Samsung soundbar, Q-Symphony can get you close to cinematic rendering… from a sofa.

Commercially, it’s smart. Apart from marking a real difference from the competition thanks to a rather innovative feature, Samsung, the world leader in the television market, will keep its customers who have every interest in buying a soundbar from the brand to take advantage of the Q-Symphony to use. .