Yamaha has been making soundbars for more than 20 years. Throughout the first 15 years, its flagship models were among the best you could get. Since 2015, however, it shifted its focus to more accessible models with lower prices, ceding the top of the market to brands like Sonos, Sennheiser, and Samsung.
Now Yamaha is back in the flagship business, big time. The recently launched True X Surround 90A is also its most capable Dolby Atmos soundbar yet. It comes with a wireless subwoofer and a pair of fully wireless, portable surround speakers that can also be used individually or as a stereo pair when connected to your smartphone.
It’s also the first soundbar with Auro-3D, an immersive spatial audio processor typically only found on high-end AV receivers. The price for this package is eye-watering: At $3,500, it’s one of the most expensive soundbar systems you can buy. After spending a week with it, I’m still on the fence as to whether I think it’s worth it.
Tricky Setup
Soundbars, by definition, are meant to be a simpler option than an A/V receiver for home theater sound. But Yamaha’s approach to the True X Surround 90A is anything but straightforward.
When you start the setup process, it becomes apparent that the True X Surround 90A is really just Yamaha’s True X Bar 90A with a pair of True X Speaker 3As thrown in as an add-on, not an integrated component. To add them, you need to download the 90A’s full instructions, because the steps aren’t covered in the quick setup guide.
Simple operations like volume control, muting, and source selection can be done quickly using the included remote. For deeper settings, you need the onscreen menu system. Navigating it is relatively easy, but once again, you’ll need the full user manual to guide you through the options.
However, to use the soundbar as more than just a TV speaker, you’ll also need the Yamaha MusicCast app. MusicCast helps you get connected to Wi-Fi, gives you native access to popular streaming apps, and provides a friendlier version of some of the 90A’s onscreen menus, but not all of them.
Needs More Ports
I can’t lie, the techie in me loves the way the main soundbar looks. It’s a big, heavy beast (just shy of 25 pounds), wrapped in a full metal jacket. It sits on a pair of large disc feet, which gives the bar high-end hi-fi component vibes.
At each end, large circular perforations in the top of the metal sleeve let you peer at the six beam height drivers. Unless you’ve got 20/20 vision, a laughably hard-to-read backlit LCD display on the front provides critical information, once again recalling the company’s A/V receivers.
Sadly, that’s where the A/V receiver similarities end. Around the back is a meager collection of ports: a single HDMI input, an HDMI ARC/eARC output, and an optical input. An Ethernet jack and a service-only USB port round out the list. For the price, there should be at least three HDMI inputs, and a line-level analog stereo input wouldn’t go amiss, especially for the turntable crowd.
It’ll support up to 4K/60 Hz, with Dolby Vision, HLG, and HDR10+, but gamers be warned: Although auto low-latency mode (ALLM) is supported, you don’t get VRR pass-through, and 120-Hz refresh rates are limited to 1080p resolution.
The included wall mount brackets are suitably hefty chunks of metal. But other than a remote control, a set of AAA batteries, and two power cables, that’s all you get. You’d think that maybe you’d at least get an HDMI cable, but no.
The surrounds have internal rechargeable batteries rated at 12 hours of continuous use. Continuous, in this case, means “as long as the soundbar is turned on.” As soon as you turn it off, the surrounds power down too, and you’ll need to manually turn them back on next time you want to listen to something. The only way around this is to keep them plugged into power using a USB-C cord, or you can buy Yamaha’s $30 charging cradle for a cleaner look (you should probably do this if you plan on setting them up permanently).
I didn’t test it separately, but the True X Speaker 3A doubles as a stand-alone Bluetooth speaker with an impressive IP67 water- and dustproof rating. You can swap between surround and stand-alone mode at the press of a button: You’re essentially getting a second, portable sound system as part of the package.
Tons of Detail
The system delivers impressive sound. You’ll find plenty of soundbars that can overwhelm you with volume—power and loudness aren’t that hard to achieve. The trick is to keep detail, nuance, clarity, and tonal balance preserved as you ramp things up from a whisper to a scream. This is where the True X Surround 90A shines.
Whether you’re watching Hollywood blockbuster movies in Dolby Atmos or DTS:X, or streaming your favorite tunes, Yamaha’s processing and acoustics let you hear details that other systems—even ones that come close in price—tend to mask. It became apparent when I put the True X Surround 90A head-to-head with a Sonos Arc Ultra (with a Sonos Sub and two Era 300 surrounds—worth around $3,000) while screening two of my go-to Atmos test clips: the bombing run from Unbroken and the Daytona race from Ford v Ferrari.
Despite the Sonos system’s much more powerful surround speakers, the True X Surround 90A did a better job placing surround channel elements in the room, and let me hear them with superb clarity. In Unbroken, I had no idea that the B-24’s crew was shouting intelligible words above the chaos of engine noise and constant machine gun fire. The roar of Ford’s GT cars as they battled for dominance on the track came across with greater realism.
While the True X Surround 90A’s surround capabilities are excellent, its height effects remain subtle, even after adjusting the settings. This could be due to the surround speakers’ lack of height drivers; the main bar does all the heavy lifting.
What Did They Say?
Ironically, while I just praised the system for letting me hear voices in the surround channels, the soundbar’s delivery of center channel dialog isn’t as clear. Even with Yamaha’s Clear Voice mode active, I sometimes struggled to make out what actors were saying.
I suspect I could have fixed this by bumping up the center channel level relative to the other channels, but Yamaha locks the main soundbar’s channels (left/center/right), only giving you control over the subwoofer and surround levels.
The Sonos system not only provided better dialog clarity, it also delivered a more visceral rendering of movie sound. In No Time To Die, when James Bond’s vintage Aston Martin is surrounded by bad guys with automatic weapons, the True X Surround 90A let me hear the individual bullet ricochets, and yet it was the Sonos system that let me feel the concussion as those rounds slammed into the bulletproof metal and glass.
These limitations are strange considering the wealth of settings Yamaha does provide. You can select from five different modes: Surround:AI, 3D Music (Auro-3D), Straight, Stereo, and All. There’s a bass boost and the dialog enhancer I mentioned above. Tone sliders let you modify bass and treble, and there’s even a beam adjustment that “aims” the height drivers up or down to help you get the best reflected sound from your ceilings.
On the one hand, these options give you good control over the sound. On the other hand, there’s no way to create presets that memorize different combinations. That proved to be annoying: Every time I switched sources (from TV to Bluetooth to Wi-Fi streaming to the HDMI input), I discovered that my preferred combo of settings no longer sounded as good, forcing me to readjust.
The Auro-3D-powered 3D Music setting proved brilliant for recorded concert footage, like Sting’s Live at the Olympia Paris, but I found it too shrill in the highs when listening to a stereo track like the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black,” from Amazon Music. Similarly, Yamaha’s Surround:AI was my favorite mode for Dolby Atmos movies and music, but depending on the material, I needed to adjust bass, treble, and subwoofer levels to get the experience I was after.
Another baffling omission, especially on a high-end system with surround speakers that can be placed almost anywhere: There’s no room correction.
Limited Streaming
Music streaming is a mixed bag, largely because of Yamaha’s limited options. The True X Surround 90A supports Apple AirPlay, Tidal Connect, and Spotify Connect, but it doesn’t work with Google Cast or Alexa Cast. It works with DLNA servers, but unlike some other Yamaha products, there’s no Roon support.
I found that the MusicCast app’s native support for streaming services proved to be the most reliable high-quality option, though sadly, it’s a very limited set: Amazon Music, Qobuz, Deezer, SiriusXM, and Pandora. Bluetooth is also an option, but with only SBC and AAC codecs, it’s best for casual listening.
Still, listening to lossless, hi-res FLAC tracks from Amazon Music and Qobuz was exhilarating, especially when using the All listening mode.
Bottom line? Yamaha’s True X Surround 90A can enthrall you with its clarity and precision. It adds breathtaking realism to movies and shows, often revealing details that lesser soundbars obscure. Much of that performance translates to music, too, as long as you don’t mind its streaming service limitations. The fully wireless surrounds provide excellent immersion and a lot of flexibility, both in terms of placement and use as a secondary sound system.
But Yamaha charges a hefty price for the True X Surround 90A, and with a big investment comes big expectations. The lack of inputs, the lack of control over the center channel level, and the absence of room correction are serious omissions. Apple Music subscribers who want to get the highest-quality audio should also note the absence of any way to get a lossless or Dolby Atmos signal to the soundbar, without the use of an intermediary device like an Apple TV 4K. That’s a lot of compromises.
This makes it hard to give the True X Surround 90A an unqualified recommendation. But if you value its strengths and don’t mind its weaknesses, Yamaha’s flagship is a good, if pricey, sound addition to any TV setup.
Yamaha True X Surround 90a Review: Not Quite Perfect
