When recently reviewing the TCL X925 Mini LED TV, I was impressed by the quality of sound coming from the built-in Onkyo surround sound bar and subwoofer. At the time I was also sent a TCL Ray-Danz TS9030 Sound Bar and Wireless Subwoofer, and I was convinced that I wouldn’t need to install it. I’ve never used a sound bar before as I’ve got a huge built-in surround sound system in my home theatre room. However, nearing the end of the review period, I plugged the sound bar in anyway just to see how it would go. There was a very noticeable increase in audio quality using the sound bar and while it did have some faults, I can certainly see their appeal now. If you’re looking for an affordable 3.1 channel Dolby Atmos surround system, at $499 from JB Hi-Fi (retails at $799), this is a great option depending on your room configuration.
It was very easy to set up the sound bar using Google Home on my phone and I pressed play on a random song Google told me to test out. This was right as my wife was walking past the loungeroom and the booming music made both of us jump. I laughed, she yelled at me, and I got back to testing. I didn’t know the song that was playing, but the bass was great and quality at the admittedly too high volume was excellent. It’s clear you don’t need to use too much volume, but it does depend on your room configuration. I hadn’t put batteries into the remote yet so I used the volume down button on top of the sound bar to set a more wife-friendly level and sat back down on the couch.
Other buttons on the top of the unit are power on/off, input select, Bluetooth enable/pair and volume up and down. Putting batteries into the remote, I cycled through the various inputs and sound modes, such as movie, music, tv and boost, all of which had text displayed on the front of the unit very clear to see from the distance I was away, and in natural light too from the nearby window. The remote was easy to use and all functions clearly laid out for ease-of-use. I put on the movie Gravity but the sound was still coming out of the TV. I had the sound bar plugged in via the HDMI ARC and the subwoofer was already paired. I thought with both the TV and sound bar being TCL, they’d connect automatically. Some quick googling and I had to enable HDMI ARC in the ‘Control other devices (CEC)’ section of the TV settings. Once that was done, the devices paired. It was cool to see that when I pressed volume up/down, this was shown on both the sound bar’s front display and the TV display too. However, the sound was just slightly out of sync with the video when characters were talking. Turns out that was just a buffering issue as I was streaming the movie through Google TV and it settled down after several minutes.
After that bumpy start, I continued watching the movie and straight away, the sound quality was noticeably much better than the TCL X925’s built-in sound bar. Explosions were booming with bass, bullets whizzing past were slightly directional, and all out of this thin TCL Ray-Danz TS9030 sound bar. In saying that, where without the sound bar, the sound was coming from behind the TV, this sound was noticeable as coming from the sound bar itself below the TV. After about 10 minutes of watching the episode, this effect gradually wore off, unless I got up to get a drink and sat back down where the direction of the sound was evident to me again for a short time.
The sound bar can be wall mounted if that suits your home entertainment set up and perhaps at a higher level on the wall, I may not have noticed the direction of sound as much. I had the sound bar below the tv and on the same desk which is only 750mm from the floor, versus the height of my ceiling which is 2400mm. If the TV and sound bar were mounted to the wall, they would be much higher than that and perhaps then the vertical sound wouldn’t be as noticeable. This directional sound effect is a result of how the TCL Ray-Danz TS9030 Sound Bar has been designed. Measuring a total length of 1050mm, the actual 3.1 surround sound speaker in the centre is only 490mm. On either side of the speaker are two hollowed areas with a curved interior wall.
These smooth curves allow the sound to curve around the speaker and push outwards in all directions and bounce off walls to where you’re seated, to simulate the surround sound effect. Where other sound bars digitally emulate surround sound, this aims to do the surround sound itself by pushing it around the room. Although the actual speaker is small, the combined 240W from the speaker and 300W from the subwoofer can pack a punch as you increase the volume. The 6.5” drivers in the subwoofer help give it that great bass sound. The design of my lounge room is quite open with a large empty space to my right as I look at the TV. I believe if this was set up in a smaller more enclosed room, the surround sound effect would be much better as the sound could bounce off the walls and back to where you are sitting. That’s the aim of its design.
Games performance-wise, I played Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order on the Xbox Series X and the sounds were fantastic. The surround sound performed best when Cal was underground and inside a cave. The water sloshing around and his voice echoing in the chamber, and you could tell the direction of the ricochet of a laser as a pesky stormtrooper shoots at you.
Overall, the TCL Ray-Danz TS9030 Sound Bar and Wireless Subwoofer produced great quality sound for both music and watching TV shows and movies, though it does largely depend on the shape and size of the room you’re in. The curved design of the sound channels pushes the audio in all directions, aiming to bounce off walls back to you to emulate surround sound. In my open loungeroom, that wasn’t as effective, however it still produced much better sound than the built-in sound bar on the TCL X925 Mini LED TV, which I already thought was pretty good.
This review utilised a unit provided by Livewire Group and the TCL Ray-Danz TS9030 Sound Bar is available for AUD499 from JB Hi-Fi (retails at $799).
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Written by: @ChrisJInglis
