I am remodeling my livingroom and was thinking I'd replace my aging 5.1 setup with a new soundbar with surrounds. My old setup is Polk Monitor 10B's, Polk rear surrounds, CS400 center, Polk PS200 sub, and a Yamaha RXV-995.
I bought the Sony HT-RT5 today from Costco, in fact I have it playing some Joe Bonamassa right now.
Here's my overall soundbar opinion, based on only hearing this soundbar, a Sonos setup and listening to the Bose 5.1 soundbar setup.
My tests consisted of watching Saving Private Ryan in DTS, Eagles hell freezes over in DTS, then several BT sources such as my laptop and streaming Pandora via my S5 phone.
First I calibrated the system with the included mic setup. It seemed to put the rear surrounds a little low, but did notice that my rear right was farther away and boosted its level by 1 dB.
Saving Private Ryan - On my older system, the bullets flying in the beginning of the movie have very distinct direction. Theres a scene where rain starts, you can hear it hit leaves, then the puddle below followed by footsteps. At the end of the movie there is a tank scene where the tank rolls into town, it has very low bass. I was very disapointed with the soundbar for several reasons. First, the bar is not long enough to get real separation, and the transfer of sound from side to side and front to back such as a bullet shot is very hard to hear. If I didnt know what to expect, I would have never noticed that effect in the movie. The sub is very positional, its crossover is too high, you can hear where the bass is coming from if its not out front near the TV. Its also very singular note sounding, more of a thud than a varying low frequency.
For the Eagles DVD, it was simply very poor sounding. With no separates in the soundbar, the treble is VERY weak. DTS separation is poor though you can hear things from the individual speakers, hearing it on my previous system leaves this very lackluster.
BT music is just OK, again not having separate drivers and a one note subwoofer leaves the music not very inspirational.
I think if Sony decides to make this type of system with their Hi Res components it might be a decent system.
IMHO the Sonos has a better frequency range and is more full sounding, but obviously more than twice the price. I would put this Sony system on par with the Bose system.
As I write this I am experimenting with the various settings. The football setting is nice (NO is winning over Atlanta), it boosts ambient noise to make it seem more like your in a stadium. The Cinema Studio 9.1 ch setting is better for movies than the other settings, however it still seems like the bar is only one speaker, not 3. They could have done more with the effects to simulate a wider sounding bar.
It is nice looking, and obviously the lack of wires lets you put things in easy places, however if you dont have a plug handy, the power cords will be as ugly as speaker wires.
The rear speakers are front facing, if you dont point them at you, you cant really her them well. They seem to have a narrow field of sound dispersion.
Maybe I was expecting too much, but I realize now that the system is made from mostly 2-3" full range drivers, thus the limited frequency range.
Honestly the system sounds bland to me, I will be returning it. I will have it for a few more days if anyone has any questions.
This has made me reconsider using most of my old setup, maybe replacing the Yamaha with a new HDMI/BT/Network capable receiver, and maybe some decent ceiling speakers for the rear surrounds. I cant imagine I will be satisfied with a soundbar other than for regular TV watching.