Yamaha SR-B30A Dolby Atmos Sound Bar with Built-in Subwoofers (Black)

Works great with self-powered sub-woofer.
Bar sounds great and works really well if you have a self-powered sub-woofer that you want to hook up to it. Everything linked up perfect and sound is great! Also has its own remote if you need it, with separate sub-woofer control so really makes things nice.

Good as a standalone. Gets very loud
Sounds great. Very clear. Was hoping for my external hts 10 polk sub to crossover a little more seamless with the sub out port. Bass signals to sub are okay but not great. Returned.

Yamaha: Please Don’t Stop Offering Options with a Sub Pre-Out!
First, I’ll start by saying that this is the first soundbar I’ve ever owned, so I don’t have a prior soundbar to compare this to. What I did have previously, was a 7.2 surround sound component system,built over the years with seven independent full range speakers, two 10-inch subwoofers, and four tactile transducers installed in the seating. My wife put her foot down and told me to choose the surround system or her. So out of the house I packed my surround system. Most of it, anyway.I purchased the SR-B30A, specifically because this model includes a subwoofer pre-out port. I had invested a great deal of time, energy and effort to get the tactile transducers setup and balanced with the subwoofers, and I didn’t want to loose that. For me, the most immersive aspect of the system I had before, was always the way that you could really feel the low end. I knew that no soundbar with a wireless sub was going to be able to come close to delivering that for me, so Yamaha had me sold on this aspect principally, but I also wanted to experience Atmos in my home. In this regard, the SR-B30A was really the only choice I saw for myself. Even if I had spent three, four or even more, times the money I would always feel that I was missing out.This being said, the spacial aspect of the sound that the bar produces doesn’t compare to what I had with the seven separate speakers on stands and mounted to walls around the room. Those seven speakers are what my wife hated, and I didn’t expect a 2.1 speaker arrangement to be able to replicate that. I am, however, impressed with how well dispersed the sound is, when playing back Dolby Atmos and surround sound source material. If Yamaha can do this with just the 2.1 speakers, I can only imagine the awesomeness that could happen were they to expand the number of speakers with different angled mountings. Yeah, more speakers would necessitate a higher price tag, but I’d pay it. There are speakerbars out there that are selling for around $1K.There are a couple of weak points, but nothing that would cause me to knock any stars off; your situation may be different though. The app for adjusting the settings of the bar is really basic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it’s there, but coming from a home theater receiver with loads of crossover and room correction adjustments available, what is offered by the app seems geared to those without much audio equipment experience. The app also needs to be reconnected to the speakerbar most times after you switch apps or close it. A way to connect some Bluetooth headphones to the bar for late night listening would be a good feature too.Speaking of Bluetooth, one thing that I hadn’t need expecting, was that I’m unable to utilize the Bluetooth source when the TV is on. I suspect that this is due to me using my TV’s eARC CEC for control of the basic power and volume functions of the speakerbar. I have Spotify and the other streaming services available through my TV already, so it isn’t a problem for me. Just unexpected.All told, I’m very pleased with what I got from the SR-B30A. Not the downgrade I thought it would be!

Great sound
Easy set up and convenient to control with app Sounds good

The Yamaha SR-B30A is a hidden gem!I bought the SR-B30A over the holiday to compare it with the Samsung HW-Q600C that I bought. And I ended up keeping the Yamaha. It performed much better in bass despite only having the built in subwoofer, as compared to the separate subwoofer on the Samsung. The Samsung had better sound separation, as it’s a 3.1.2 vs the Yamaha’s 2.1 — but the Samsung was WAY too tinny. The Yamaha despite having less channels sounded much richer.The audio from the Samsung was pretty good for movies, though the bass was still a bit lacking, but where it failed miserably was with MUSIC. I played with all the settings on the Samsung, which are fairly limited and couldn’t get music to sound decent, zero bass… and again, very tinny. The Yamaha sounded almost as good for movies, still much richer sound, but not as clean sound separation — but for music it sounded much much better than the Samsung — almost like it was in a different class.The reason I chose the SR-B30A over the SR-B40A is the built in subwoofers AND it supports an external subwoofer. So I picked up a wireless Klipsch subwoofer from Costco to pair it with the B30A. It’s an AWESOME pairing, more bass than you’ll really need — but you can crank it up if you want to physically feel the rumble! And the sound quality and bass from that pairing is way better than any out of the box soundbar/sub combo you can get for the price I paid.CONSThe few things I don’t like about the Yamaha are the fabric vs the metal construction. But I think the fact that really high end speakers use fabric to cover speakers, I think it was a deliberate choice by Yamaha to use fabric over metal for quality of sound purposes! So I think there’s a reason it’s using fabric and it’s not to save money! This could be a reason why the Samsung, which was all plastic/metal, sounded very tinny.The other minor things I don’t like are it doesn’t pair as well with my Samsung TV, which is to be expected. It doesn’t show volume level on screen. And the soundbar has no display, only a few lights that blink — which isn’t very intuitive. Samsung wins in terms of usability, but Yamaha wins in terms of sound quality.

Easy set up and great all in over speaker/sub. Save a lot of room and top notch quality.