Yamaha YSP-4000

Impatient, "Plug & Play" fans steer clear: The Yamaha sound bar offers a genuine AV receiver and almost too many listening modes. Finding the perfect setup may take a while.

• Great sound for both movies and music.
• Convincing surround effect from all listening positions.
• HDMI and AV upscaling.
• Excellent feature set, including an automatic calibration system.
• Built-in tuner.

• Complicated operation.
• Deeper bass is lacking without an additional, external subwoofer.

The Yamaha YSP-4000 is a sound bar, available at around 1,150 GBP since autumn 2007. Online pricing starts from around 980 GBP. This Yamaha sound bar will fill your living room with impressive, spacious sound.

The calibration microphone helps the sound bar to match the room's acoustics as precisely as possible.

Yamaha calls their all-in-one speaker, the YSP-4000, a "sound projector", in contrast to the "sound bars" of other manufacturers. The name refers to the technical concept: The Yamaha concentrates the sound waves and uses walls to reflect them toward the listener - similarly to how a video projector displays its picture.

Yamaha is at the cutting edge of this technology, and has been offering its sound projectors since 2005, while working constantly on refining the concept. The system is already so sophisticated that can simulate sound coming from behind the listener.

This works best in rectangular rooms with little furniture. No other sound bar we know of is so effective in terms of surround modes, and no other provides even nearly as much acoustic calibration technology.

However, Yamaha's sound bar is too narrow to hold a TV on top, and at the same time too tall to be able to sit in front of the display without obscuring some of the picture. Therefore, the best options are to wall-mount it, or put it on a shelf, beneath the TV in both cases.

Yamaha offers the necessary wall-fittings, as well as tailored TV furniture, for example the YEF-ST 010 rack, which comes in a variety of colors for around 450 GBP. The sound bar itself comes in either black or silver.

Cluttered: The remote control offers convenient access to many functions, but the sheer number of buttons makes it rather unclear.

The unit contains forty digital, 2-watt amplifiers, and the same number of 4-centimeter speakers. Two further 20-watt amplifiers are responsible for the two woofers, which sit at the outer ends of the unit. A processor delays individual drivers to produce concentrated sound waves, whose strength and direction it can control. The unit will transmit up to five channels simultaneously, and thanks to the effective calibration system, you can automatically direct these channels to the listening position.

The on-screen menu is also easy to use, which is only rarely the case with sound bars. The number of manually-adjustable settings options in the setup menu is enormous: Great news for tweaking-fanatics and experienced home-theater users.

If, on the other hand, you're still a beginner in this field, the numerous sound modes and adjustable audio parameters may be a little confusing. Still, as your experience grows, you'll discover many great features within the menus, for example a "Lip Synch Delay", complete audio controls, and a full speaker setup for an external active subwoofer.

Well equipped: Yamaha's YSP-4000 provides numerous connections for the home-theater, including even HDMI.

The complete AV receiver, with all appropriate connections and capabilities, is one really special feature. It includes two HDMI inputs for 1080/24p signals, as well as an HDMI output that allows the device to relay signals to your TV.

Yamaha's sound bar can scale up analog video input signals to the HDMI format, but it cannot decode the high-definition bitstream HD audio found on an increasing number of Blu-ray discs, meaning it only provides support for Dolby Digital and DTS.

On the other hand, the receiver will process 5.1-channel PCM audio via all HDMI interfaces. In other words, it's enough simply to connect the Blu-ray player to the sound bar via HDMI. It will then decode the picture and sound signals and forward them to the TV.

For acoustically complex sound projection, the devices uses a huge arsenal of small speakers, each of which it controls separately.

We tried out various sitting positions and found that the virtual projection works particularly well if you sit relatively close to the rear wall. With the surround-sound spectacle "U-571", the ocean seems to fill the entire room.

From behind, you can hear the propeller sloshing through the water, and the submarine's metallic hull creaks and cracks from all directions, while depth charges explode far away to the left and right.

In this impressive backdrop of surround sound, loud shouts still sound clean and undistorted, but you can even clearly understand the only slightly audible whispering from some crew members.

This Yamaha sound bar will fill your living room with impressive, spacious sound.

Measurements for the Yamaha YSP-400 from the AVTOP test laboratory.