In addition to holding first place in the global TV market for fourteen straight years, Samsung Electronics has also maintained the number one position in terms of market share for soundbars.¹ What’s more, Samsung’s ‘Q-Symphony’ feature now allows joint playback once a Soundbar is paired with a television. With its ability to produce rich, immersive surround sound from both the TV speakers and the Soundbar, Q-Symphony picked up the ‘Best of Innovation’ award at CES 2020.

Following on from our previous piece exploring the sound technologies of Samsung’s QLED 8K TVs, we present Samsung’s Soundbar solutions, which are bringing dynamic surround sound to the home entertainment environment.

Perfect Harmony – The Building Blocks of Q-Symphony

Until recently, using conventional TV speakers and soundbars simultaneously could lead to the audio playback getting out of sync with the scenes playing on the screen, meaning that TV speakers had to be muted when using a Soundbar. However, Samsung’s 2020 QLED TVs are equipped with upper speakers, enabling simultaneous use of TV speakers and a Soundbar. Furthermore, Q-Symphony technology has unlocked compatibility between the 2020 Q80T TVs (which include the moving sound feature for models 55 inches and wider) and the 2020 Q Series soundbars.

The idea for Q-Symphony started from an idea to provide higher quality surround sound by using the upper TV speaker in combination with a Soundbar. To make this hybrid solution a reality, the sounds from the TV speakers and Soundbar had to be synchronised in terms of timing and volume.

Moreover, in the latest technology, the respective roles of the TV speakers and the soundbar have been clearly distinguished to allow for better harmonisation of sounds. While the soundbar delivers primary sounds such as human voices, the upper speaker delivers the ambient sound effects. In this way, the two devices avoid interfering with one another, and provide a richer sound experience.

Hearing is believing ­- experience the reality of Q-Symphony above.

A Top-tier Soundbar – Nine Channels with Just Four Speakers

The current top sound specifications for a home theatre system are a 9.1.4-channel set-up, which would ordinarily require a total of 14 speakers. However, the top-of-the-line HW-Q950T Soundbar from the 2020 Q Series is capable of realising these excellent channel specs with only four speakers.

Following the advent of the home theatre market in the 1990s, users were afforded the chance to experience surround sound that covered not only the left and right-hand sides but also the front and rear too. Further down the line, the 2014 introduction of Dolby’s ATMOS technology enabled 3D surround sound that covered sounds from the top and bottom too.

Samsung’s development of premium surround sound hasn’t happened overnight though. In 2016, Samsung released the HW-K950, a soundbar that only required four speakers to provide 5.1.4-channel surround sound. Samsung didn’t stop there though, instead introducing the HW-Q90R, a 7.1.4-channel soundbar that featured a rear surround channel. This year, Samsung took another step forward with its introduction of the HW-Q950T, a 9.1.4-channel soundbar equipped with two additional wide channels.

Dynamic Sound from a Wide Range of Angles

Representing the next stage in the progression from the HW-Q90R soundbar, the aforementioned HW-Q950T 9.1.4-channel soundbar features two wide channels that deliver sound at angles of 60° to either side of the center. To provide a fuller sound, the speakers at the far right and left, which provide the surround sound, have been moved to the edges of the soundbar. Furthermore, two additional speakers that are oriented at an angle that is optimised for wide channel functionality have been incorporated in the far left and right positions.

With wide channel functionality, users can benefit from the sound being emitted from a host of different angles and benefit from a more complete audio experience. This effect additionally provides a broader sense of realism, and, by adding vitality to the movements on the screen, guarantees a better experience when watching content such as concerts, musical performances, and films.

Maximising the Audio Experience

Before being finalised, all of Samsung’s soundbars undergo a final tuning process at Samsung’s Audio Lab in Valencia, California. The high-level expertise of the Samsung Audio Lab are well established, as was demonstrated when three of the lab’s papers were selected among the top 10 papers by the Audio Engineering Society at AES 2019. Likewise, Samsung more broadly is working to optimise users’ audio experiences by applying powerful, innovative technology to its soundbars.

Over recent years, the home audio experience has been constantly evolving and diversifying to offer users increasingly vivid sound experiences. Now, as the industry looks to realize the next stage in the evolution of sound, Samsung is providing comprehensive sound solutions for the future of top-tier audio experiences.

1 According to global market research firm FutureSource, from 2014 (the first year to officially include soundbars in the survey) until 2019, Samsung has maintained the top spot globally in terms of soundbar market share.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – 21 August 2020 – Just as Samsung TVs have ranked number one globally for 14 consecutive years*, the company’s soundbars also hold the number one position in the global soundbar market. Samsung has held the number one spot in the global soundbar industry ever since international research firm Futuresource Consulting started officially recording in 2014. According to Futuresource, Samsung ranks number one in sales revenue, maintains 21.8 percent of the global market share, and accounted for 16.5 percent of the industry sales volume in 2019.

All Samsung soundbars and audio technology are tuned at the Samsung Audio Lab in Valencia, California, just outside of Los Angeles. Thanks to continuous efforts from the Samsung Audio Lab, the ‘Q series’, a part of its 2019 premium soundbar lineup, boasts high quality sound for which it garnered positive reviews from key tech media in the U.S. and Europe.

“It is rewarding to see that our competitiveness in the audio market over the last several years has culminated in this result,” said Nivash Ramsern, Head: Visual Display at Samsung South Africa. “We will ensure Samsung remains an industry leader in both the global TV and soundbar market for years to come.”

Samsung’s position as the soundbar market leader will be further strengthened through synergies with Samsung TVs. This technology received the CES 2020 Best of Innovation award, and is standardised across the entire range of Samsung’s soundbars (above Q60T) and some QLED models (above Q80T).

For more information, please visit https://www.samsung.com/za/.

* Source – Omdia, Jan-2020. Ranking in terms of shipments. Results are not an endorsement of Samsung. Any reliance on these results is at the third-party’s own risk.

Allan Devantier, Audio Lab Head, Samsung Research America

Devantier started working for Samsung in October of 2013. By January of 2014, Samsung had acquired lab space and recruited four staff members, and by October of that year the staff had grown to number 10 engineers and research scientists and the Audio Lab had been made fully functional. From there, the lab was ready to begin working towards its mandate of ‘taking Samsung’s audio technology to the top of the industry.’

Devantier says that “The first product we worked on was the Radiant 360 loudspeaker – it was the first mass-market speaker to feature 360-degree sound. We were the industry leader, and now 360-degree speakers have grown very popular in the market.”

Evolutionary Change

Cut to the present, when Samsung’s LA Audio Lab is staffed by more than 20 people with over 300 collective years of experience in the audio field between them. Eleven members of the team hold Master’s or PhD degrees in audio technology, while eight are both engineers and musicians who continue to play in bands. The lab also collaborates extensively with Samsung’s audio engineering teams in Korea.

“Our focus starts at the ear of the listener,” Devantier explains, “then expands out to the listening environment – the transducers (woofers and tweeters), amplifiers, and digital signal processors (DSPs).” And this emphasis has led to a steady stream of important contributions coming out of the lab. Whereas, in 2014, industry publications awarded Samsung’s Soundbar solutions a rating of three-and-a-half stars out of five, by 2019 the average score for Samsung Soundbars had been lifted to four-and-a-half stars. What’s more, in 2019 the HW-Q90R premium Soundbar model received a perfect five-star rating from several industry publications. In addition to improvements in the pure audio sphere, the Samsung Audio Lab has contributed to remarkable advancements in TV sound quality as well.

The Samsung Audio Lab has proven its ability to discern changes in the audio market and act upon them swiftly, as is demonstrated by the nature of its recent innovations. The Q-Symphony solution announced at this year’s CES enables a TV equipped with a Soundbar to provide surround sound that closely reproduces the spatial feeling of original sound fields. Devantier explains that Q-Symphony “uses the top-firing speakers in the TV to improve envelopment and immersion.”

Another example of this cutting-edge innovation is Samsung’s OTS (Object Tracking Sound) technology. To improve upon Soundbar technology that allows sound to be delivered in fixed directions, the lab developed TVs that incorporate speakers not just on the bottom and sides of the screen, but in the top left and right sections as well. This allows OTS technology to make use of deep learning that can recognise what kind of content is being displayed on the screen and deliver multichannel sound accordingly. Thus, users can enjoy actual, physical surround sound that is not only immersive but is specifically tailored to whatever they are watching at the time.

What’s more, in 2020 Samsung’s Q-Symphony and OTS technologies are coming together to truly maximise the potential of both solutions. While OTS delivers multichannel surround sound through the TV speakers, Q-Symphony makes the TV-speaker-Soundbar combination possible, enabling the TV’s speakers to provide rich, lively surround sound while the Soundbar delivers powerful, absorbing bass.

Taking Audio into the Future

The inception of AI is set to reshape the audio industry, and Samsung is working to anticipate the changes it will bring about. Asked to outline what he sees as AI’s role in the audio industry, Devantier says, “I think we can use AI to help our loudspeakers play louder, with more perceived bass and less perceived distortion. AI will also help make old recordings sound better and allow our loudspeakers to adapt to different listening environments.”

Another way in which AI is empowering future solutions is by enabling features like Active Voice Amplifier (AVA). Samsung’s AVA feature makes it possible for the TV to recognise the audiovisual space environment and provide sound that is optimised not only for the content being displayed on the screen but also for the viewing space that the consumer is in. In 2020, sensors embedded in QLED solutions will make optimised viewing possible, even in rooms with high levels of noise. For instance, if a user is watching something and a member of their family switches a blender on in the adjoining kitchen, the system will adjust to ensure that the dialogue remains audible to the viewer in real-time despite the unexpected peripheral noise.

As far as how his lab will contribute to delivering better audio going forward, Devantier reports that it will continue to meet the needs of customers who are looking for “high quality and portable sound” while improving and expanding its OTS technology. “Maybe one day we will develop a loudspeaker that sounds great, plays very loud and is nearly invisible or exceptionally small and portable,” Devantier concludes, “Until that time, we will continue to produce solutions that make incremental improvements to sound quality.

Samsung Audio Lab