Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Max

The Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Max is the most ambitious single-bar soundbar made, and it is enormous. Sennheiser’s argument is that with enough drivers and enough processing, one bar can produce convincing three-dimensional sound without any satellite speakers at all.

Thirteen drivers and Sennheiser’s AMBEO virtualisation do that work, with a calibration routine that measures the room using the bar’s own microphones.

What Apple Home actually does with it

This is an AirPlay 2 device rather than a HomeKit accessory.

• It appears in the Home app as a speaker you can play to, and as an AirPlay target in Control Centre.
• You can put it in a room and group it with HomePods for synchronised multi-room audio.
• Siri can send music to it by room name.
• It can be the audio output in a scene or an automation.

Television sound does not go through Apple Home at all. That arrives over HDMI ARC or optical from the television, and the soundbar’s own remote and app control the modes and the volume.

Before you buy

Measure first. The Max is very large and very heavy, and it will dominate the space under a television. Check both the width and the height against your stand.

Run the room calibration. The AMBEO effect depends on the bar knowing the walls it is bouncing sound off, and skipping calibration wastes most of what you paid for.

It needs no subwoofer, which offsets some of the cost and removes a box from the floor.

Specifications