Philips Fidelio SoundQuake B8/12 sound bar review: 400W of audio power

Introduction

Shrinking home spaces have seen more home owners chose a single sound bar over the traditional multi-speaker setup. Manufacturers have adapted to this, and many of today’s sound bars are Dolby Atmos compatible, and rely on angled drivers to bounce sound both sideways and upwards to envelop you in sound. The Philips Fidelio SoundQuake B8/12 (henceforth B8 for simplicity), one of the latest sound bars to be available here, is one such example.

Featuring a slim sound bar and a subwoofer that’s taller than its width, the B8 is a compact offering that offers Dolby Atmos capabilities and matches that with their own Ambisound technology. Like any modern speaker, it also features Bluetooth aptX and AAC support, while also offering easy pairing via NFC.

Despite its slim body, the B8 is a full 5.1.2-channel system. And it manages to pack in a total of 18 drivers (10 racetrack drivers and 8 soft dome tweeters) into its 105.8 x 5.2 x 12cm chassis. The accompanying subwoofer pumps out 220W of power and is a wireless one, so you can place it wherever you wish. This covers the 40Hz - 190Hz range, while the sound bar goes from 190Hz - 20kHz, hence covering most of the crucial audio spectrum. In short, you should (in theory) get everything except for the lowest rumbles.

In terms of ports, the B8 gives you the flexibility to hook up a variety of source devices with these ports:-

• 1 x HDMI 1.4 port (supports 4K pass-through)
• 2 x HDMI 2.0 ports
• 1 x Digital optical input
• 1 x Digital coaxial input
• 1 x 3.5mm audio input
• 1 x USB audio port

Of course, there’s also a remote control included, and this lets you adjust the treble and bass levels as well as the height level, giving you better control over the Dolby Atmos effect.

Overall, setting it up was a simple affair, as the sound bar easily paired with the woofer after it was powered on. Despite not having wires between them, we thought both sub and sound bar were perfectly in sync throughout our testing and worked as one cohesive unit.

Testing (Music)

In our testing, we thought the B8 played like a sound bar that’s tuned more for movie watching, as the center channel (which handles dialogue) easily overwhelmed everything else. That aside, the accompanying subwoofer also seemed to suffer from poor bass performance.

With our formal test tracks, we thought the sound bar performed best with Adele’s Melt My heart to Stone. This piece featured more heavily in the highs, and the sound bar’s emphasis on vocals helped to keep the attention largely on Adele. However we do think sibilance could have been handled better.

Next up was Hotel California by The Eagles, and we thought the piece highlighted how lower mids and bass were lacking with the speaker, as we barely felt the bass in the piece and there wasn't enough body overall. Lack of dynamics also meant the piece didn't move us as much as it should.

With Tiesto’s Elements of Life, we thought the sound bar brought good energy and pace to the piece, and even a fairly forceful bass beat to go with the track. However, some of the highs in the piece sounded sharp and slightly screechy. Disappointing; given that highs seemed to be its strengths.

Ending our audio testing with Buckethead’s Sail on Soothsayer, we felt that the sound bar managed to provide good clarity on the solo and backed that with just enough bass to move the piece.

Testing (Movies)

Moving next to our movie testing, we used clips from the Dolby Atmos Blu-Ray demo disc to get an idea of how the sound bar performs. The disc has both movie trailers and sound effects clips, as well as the actual Dolby Atmos trailers you see in the cinemas.

On the sample track from Game of Thrones, we thought the sound effects in the clip weren't as crisp as we’d heard from other sound bars. Vocals again took center stage, overwhelming the soundtrack and some of the sound effects.

Next up was a clip from Unbroken, which featured a dogfight between warplanes. Here, we felt that sound effects like the various bits of the plane shaking when it was flying and the boom of explosions during the battle weren't as realistic 

The Amaze trailer gave us our first experience of the Atmos effect. This clip featured sound effects of an incoming storm mixed with instrumental music as well as nature sounds (like birds chirping), and we thought the sound bar did a good job with the naturalness of all the sound effects, even if the surround effect was mostly coming from just the front.

Rounding off our testing with a clip from the Star Wars: Battlefront game, we thought the sound bar managed to pull off a decent degree of the Atmos effect, as we got a good sense of the tie-fighters flying overhead. However, we thought the accompanying sound track lacked dynamism so it wasn't as epic as it should have been.

Conclusion

When it comes to sound bars that boast Dolby Atmos capabilities, we generally have to taper expectations as there is obviously a limit to how much they can replicate actual physical speakers. The Philips Fidelio SoundQuake B8/12 did reasonably in that aspect, providing a good sense of positioning for the clips that we played. However, it struggled with separation between audio elements; for example, the vocals almost always overwhelmed everything else.

With a name like “SoundQuake” and boasting 400W of continuous audio power, we expected the sound bar to be capable of huge, rumbling sound, but what we eventually got was a rather lean bass that didn't move us. Worse, it produced screechy highs, which means its sole strength is in the midrange. And that simply isn't enough for a home theater sound bar system, especially when its overall presence and surround effect was not strong enough in our opinion. Of course, the sound bar is an upgrade over most built-in TV speakers (Sony's OLED TVs with Accoustic Surface are tough to beat), but at S$1,899 we really expected it to do much better.

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