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AUDIO-VISUAL
http://www.avhub.com.auaccounts these days), and internet radio. MusicCast
can also play from music shares on your home
network via DLNA, and it includes AirPlay 2,
which integrates it nicely into Apple-based homes.
Finally there’s Bluetooth for direct streaming from
any device, though the MusicCast app can also play
tunes from your device over Wi-Fi, which may give
better quality. As a final trick, MusicCast can also
send sound via Bluetooth, so you could extend the
audio to perhaps a small speaker in an open-plan
kitchen to better hear things as you prepare food,
or to wireless headphones so you can enjoy movies
and music late at night without disturbing the rest
of the home.
So a lot going on, despite the Bar 400’s simple
enough appearance. Let’s get into it!
PERFORMANCE
The surprise when unboxing the single package
is first how large the subwoofer, and second how
relatively compact the bar! In fact the subwoofer is
slim but tall, though could equally be lain down;
it’s a bass reflex cabinet ported to the front with its
driver on the right side, so will be best positioned to
the right of a TV where the driver can fire into free
space. Cabinetry couldn’t fully surround it without
affecting its performance.
The bar, then, sits in front of or below the TV,
low enough not to cover our low-slung Toshiba,
though its reflective top was slightly distracting,
and it lacks any infrared passthrough to allow TV
operation through to a blocked IR receiver.
The connections are in two bays at the back, so
cables pass easily under a TV leaving things nice
and neat at the front. We plugged in Ethernet to
give the MusicCast platform its easiest connection,
a 4K Blu-ray player to its HDMI input, and an
HDMI cable through to the TV. Power cables
plugged in, we hit the power button on the squat
little remote control, and on came the bar and
subwoofer in unison.
The remote has an interesting design —
volume buttons prioritised and large on the
right, subwoofer volume on the left. There’s an
implication that you might want to mess with the
bass regularly, rather than set and forget, and we
found this to be the case. A daytime National Press
Club address on ABC HD gave us a good variety of
speech to hear, and the subwoofer added a separated
bass mumble under many of the deeper male
voices, distracting enough that we preferred the
bar alone in this circumstance. But as soon as
we switched to more action-based content, with
music backing, we raised it back up, keeping
it around halfway or less. The Hank Williams
biopic I Saw The Light was delivered to the bar
in stereo down the HDMI’s ARC (only the new
and still relatively rare eARC standard can deliver
5.1-channel audio this way), so we tried switching
between those three audio options of Stereo,
Surround, and 3D Surround.
The Stereo setting yields the cleanest sound,
perhaps the best balance for speech-heavy material,
yet it’s a strong sound, so good for music too,, not
particularly box-bound or reduced as are many
‘stereo’ options on soundbars where higher driver
counts are cut down for stereo. This is a stereo
soundbar anyway.
But the first ‘Surround’ option doesn’t much
mess with the central channel either, so that speech
also retains its clarity with this setting, while music
and effects are spread wider; it’s a good balance
between size of sound and clarity of sound. The
fine big band sound in the movie Whiplash sounded
tightest, cleanest in Stereo or the very similar music
mode; the Surround mode expanded the sound at
the sole expanse of a slight bloom in the bass.
Up to ‘3D Surround’, which has an enormous
tonal effect on the whole sound, hollowing
out the centre, shifting and thinning speech,
sometimes overemphasising elements such as the
chirping crickets and later the rain during a porchscene which ‘3D
Surround’ lifted
from the background
into unnecessarily
prominence. The
big band sounded
phasey with muffled
cymbals. Our
preference was for
the two simpler
modes, but it’s easy
to experiment using
those big buttons on
the remote make it
easy to choose your
own preference.
The lower two
remote buttons
need a little more
attention — ‘Clear Voice’ and ‘Bass Extension’ can
be turned on and off, and since the indicators on
the bar aren’t visible from a seated position,
you might leave them engaged when you
don’t need them. It’s clearer in the app (see
above) — and indeed the MusicCast app
adds still more EQ options: Movie, Music,
Sports and Games, along with easy toggle
control of the others. Oddly the ‘surround’
option here disappears, but pressing it on the
remote switches the app to ‘movie’ mode, so
we guess they’re one and the same.
MusicCast devices can also be controlled
by either Google Assistant or Alexa — you’re
prompted to set this up when connecting
to MusicCast. Using Google required
registering with a Yamaha account, and
the two-part request of “Hey Google, ask
MusicCast to...”. It worked, but it was
usually easier to use the remote control.
Or the MusicCast app. We’re MusicCast
regulars from many past reviews, and we find
it clear to use, easy to access
our music,including high-res
files to 24-bit/192kHz over the
network, and online music. It’s even
easy to get multiroom sound happening
by joining MusicCast ‘rooms’ together.
The more music we played, the
better we were impressed. We also
resituated the subwoofer, better able
to judge its positioning with music;