Orbitsound T12 Soundbar V2 review

Orbitsound’s T12 Soundbar V2 is a soundbar with a built-in iPod dock that’s designed to produce clear audio no matter where you’re standing, whether you’re watching movies or listening to music.

To do this, there are two distinct parts to the system. First, there’s a separate tall sub-woofer (460x230x230mm), which sits on the floor and produces non-directional bass from your audio. Secondly, this budget soundbar has two 2in speakers at either end, pushing sound out to the sides, rather than just forwards.

The overall effect is incredible. Standing to the side of the speakers produces clear audio and eliminates the need to stand in the ‘sweet spot’ in front of the speakers. In fact, you can see this in action, but turning off the side speakers using the switch on the rear and listening to the more muffled tone music takes when you’re not straight-on to the speakers. The side speakers are particularly good for parties, as you can easily fill a room with clear audio.

Standing to the side of the speakers the only thing you lose is a bit of stereo separation. This is to be expected, but move back in front of the soundbar and the left and right speakers inside are placed far enough apart that you get excellent stereo.

All of this is very clever, but it’s sound quality that really counts on a product like this. Fortunately, the T12 doesn’t disappoint and we were incredibly impressed with the audio we heard. A lot of systems with a large subwoofer rely too heavily on thumping bass to drown out any inadequacies with the stereo speakers. That is not the case here and the subwoofer is well balanced to the soundbar.

For a passive subwoofer, which are usually fairly terrible, it does a great job. Bass is loud and thumping the way it should be, adding that extra dimension to music and soundtracks. The soundbar takes care of the rest of the audio with its two 2.5in and two 1in forward-facing speakers, plus the two 2in side speakers.
These have a great frequency range, producing clear focussed audio in all of the music genres we listened to. A key thing here is the detail that they produce, bringing out parts of a music track that you may miss on cheaper systems.

You don’t have much control over the sound, and you can only adjust bass, treble and volume using the remote control. There’s no information display to show you the current settings, so making the right adjustment is by ear alone. You’ll need to listen carefully, as adjusting the bass and treble is key to get the best out of this system and bring out all of the detail you want to hear.

As it’s a passive subwoofer there’s no frequency crossover control (the frequency at which the subwoofer decides to play a sound), but that’s not important here as the sub has been carefully matched to the speakers to produce the balanced sound you can hear. A great job has been done, as there’s never a point where the audio sounds flat, tinny or has too much bass in it.

The bundled remote control lets you navigate through an iPod’s menus. We tested it with the new iPod touch, previous generation and iPhone 4 and all worked seamlessly with the remote. The only device that wouldn’t work was the new iPod nano, but this uses a completely different interface to previous models. Fortunately, every iPod we connected was also charged.

As the large subwoofer implies, these speakers are designed for more than just iPod use and can be connected to your TV, DVD or Blu-ray player using the stereo phono, optical or coaxial S/PDIF inputs. It’s important to note a couple of things about these, though. First, the T12 doesn’t have a decoder built in, so it can’t take a surround-sound soundtrack and do anything clever with it; it takes the stereo channels only. Secondly, S/PDIF can’t transmit HD quality soundtracks, such as Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio, so a Blu-ray player has to downsample the audio to DVD quality.

With these limitations in place, the sound that you get from the T12 is pretty incredible. The mix of speakers managed to produce clear speech without a dedicated centre speaker. Other effects, such as the rumble of explosions or short sharp bullet fire kept their clarity and detail. With the side speakers turned on you don’t get a pseudo-surround effect, but your room is filled with high-clarity audio and defined stereo separation.

As to whether or not the system is worth buying, it really depends on your requirements. If it’s just an iPod dock you’re after, comparisons with the B&W Zeppelin are inevitable. It’s fair to say that the Zeppelin is the more attractive product, but it’s audio quality is very similar, it doesn’t have the wide-stereo mode and it’s £100 more expensive. However, without the subwoofer it’s easier to place in your home.

That said, if you only want an iPod dock for music, we’d carefully consider not buying an iPod dock at all. Apple is notorious for changing the dock connector, potentially making anything you buy now incompatible with future products. For high-quality audio around your home, we recommend buying the Sonos ZonePlayer S5. This wirelessly streams music from a shared folder, plus you can now stream music on it using Spotify for Sonos. Given that the S5 is part of the world’s best multi-room audio system, you can add to your set-up and introduce music in every room as you go.

Still, if it’s home entertainment you’re after the T12 certainly has its place. Its high-quality audio and fantastic wide-stereo mode are incredibly impressive and can add extra depth and quality to your TV, films and music easily. If you want this kind of flexibility and don’t want a room full of speakers, the OrbitSound T12 Soundbar V2 is a great bit of kit.