Orbitsound T9 review

As soundbars get more popular, the general trend for improving stereo separation and creating room-filling audio has been to make them bigger and bigger. While this technique works, to a degree, it can make positioning a new soundbar rather difficult, partly defeating the reason for buying one in the first place.

With its T9 soundbar and iPod dock, Orbitsound has taken a completely different tack, making its budget soundbar as small as possible, but promising not to compromise on audio quality. This is all possible thanks to the company’s spatial stereo technology.

Spatial stereo is about creating high-quality audio, but removing the directionality of it. In short, it means that wherever you stand in a room, you should get the stereo effect, eliminating the sweet spot of normal stereo sytems.

Although the system uses some rather clever processing to achieve this, the concept is pretty easy to understand. As well as providing speakers (two mid-high drivers and one tweeter) at the front of the soundbar, there are two midrange spatial generator speakers on the side. It’s the way that the spatial generators interact with the traditional speakers that creates the spatial stereo.

Forward-firing speakers mix their audio with speakers mounted on the side to create the spatial stereo effect

We’ve seen this technology in action on the Orbitsound T12, which is a traditionally-sized soundbar capable of producing some of the highest quality sound we’ve ever heard.

As it’s the clever spatial stereo technology that fills a room with audio, Orbitsound has been able to use its engineering to make the T9 smaller than traditional soundbars. What’s impressive is how small it actually is: the T9 soundbar is around the same size as a centre speaker on a high-end home cinema system, and there’s a slimline subwoofer you can tuck out of the way.

Although the soundbar is incredibly small, it produces stunning, rich audio

To look at the product, you certainly wouldn’t think that it’s capable of producing such amazing sound. In fact, we’d go so far as saying that something this small simply shouldn’t be able to produce sound that big.

We had our first brush with the T9 in a crowded bar showing a Euro 2012 match, with the audio from the TV pumped through the soundbar. Even in a loud space filled with shouting football fans, the T9 cut through everything, producing loud, detailed sound that completely filled the room. Impressive doesn’t even begin to cut it.

Getting the product into our labs let us test it in anger. In short, it sounds brilliant and maintains the high acoustic quality we’ve come to expect from the company. The smaller size of the T9 means that the sound is different to the T12’s, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If the Orbitsound T12 was capable of large, booming cinematic moments, the T9 is a poised, tighter unit that’s arguably better suited to music.

The balance between the soundbar and the subwoofer is absolutely perfect, with the sub adding that extra bit of bass into the mix, without being boomy and overbearing.

Vocals were clear and distinguished from the backing track, but that’s not to say that everything else disappears, as the full detail in a song is brought out. From the individual plucks of a bass guitar to a subtle high-hat or triangle, the full range is brilliantly reproduced.

Orbitsound’s spatial stereo is simply brilliant. No matter where you stand in a room, you feel as though the audio is surrounding you and you don’t have to try and find that sweet spot. Standing in front of the soundbar still gives the best stereo separation to our minds, but moving out of this area doesn’t cause a dramatic loss of sound quality, as with a traditional stereo system, and the audio still seems to envelop you.

Sound quality is certainly helped by Orbitsound’s decision to go with a lacquered wooden case for the T9. Orbitsound claims that wood, as well as making the T9 look like a high-end product, also produces the best sound and is far ahead of plastics and other man-made materials.

The neat, responsive remote control gives you everything you need to adjust the sound to your preference and control an iPod or iPhone

You have minimum control over the audio and the simple, responsive remote control simply has controls for bass, treble and volume, in addition to full navigation controls for an iPod or iPhone. In truth, you don’t need any more than these three controls and we say use the bass and treble with care: push either one two far and you throw out the balance of the system, making it either a little too tinny or too bass heavy. A click or two on either control’s plus or minus button is all you’ll likely need.

While the iPod dock on the top of the soundbar may suggest that the T9 is just designed for use with Apple products, there are plenty of other inputs. The rear of the soundbar contains 3.5mm and stereo phono inputs, and there’s an optical S/PDIF input, too. There’s even an optical cable in the box.

A decent range on inputs means you can hook up pretty much any bit of AV kit.

What these inputs mean is that you can hook the T9 up to pretty much any other audio device. Where it really appeals is to boost your TV’s audio quality, by hooking up your television’s digital output to the T9.

For general watching it’s a vast improvement over any TV’s built-in speakers, providing clearer audio and a much wider range. If you want to watch movies, it’s even better.

Although there’s no HDMI input, so Blu-ray audio has to be downsampled to DVD quality, audio quality is still fantastic. The stereo effect helps fill the room and put you in the middle of the action. Explosions sound thunderous, while the ping of bullets in action films reverberates around the room. For quieter films and scenes, the T9’s crystal clear dialogue reproduction makes sure that you never miss an important bit of speech. Where you don’t have room for or don’t want the hassle of 5.1 or 7.1 speakers, the T9 can make all the difference.

Nominally Orbitsound has positioned the T9 for use in smaller rooms placed near smaller, secondary TVs, with the slightly-louder T12 for larger rooms and that more cinematic experience. However, the T9 is more than capable of filling the largest of living rooms with high-quality audio that you simply wouldn’t expect from something so small. With the ability to produce high-quality audio from every input source, it’s a clear Best Buy winner.