Sunday, July 8, 2012

Harman Kardon’s SB-16: The sound bar speaker that packs a mean punch


My friend TK invited us over to his place for lunch the other day. TK, who I have known for years, is a true audiophile that really takes his audio and video equipment seriously—virtually investing quite a lot in achieving the true audio visual experience. The lunch invite, according to him, was for me to check out his latest find, the ‘Harman Kardon SB-16,’ which he claims would blow my mind away.

Dropping by over the weekend, TK had me and RJ (who was also invited over) feasted on beef briskets and apple cobblers. After the meal, he ushered us into his living room to show off his new baby.


The Harman Kardon SB-16 is a sound bar speaker presented in a sleek 2.1 channel system—splendid with both right and left speakers and built in amplifiers. Aesthetic wise, the SB-16 blended well into TK’s 40+ inch Samsung Smart-TV. With its Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and virtual 3D surround sound circuitry, the SB-16 made us feel like we were actually part of a movie or a concert that TK played on his system.

Spec wise, the SB-16 comes with  two by 3” (75mm) cone midrange speakers and one x 3/4” (19mm) dome tweeter per channel. The speaker is powered by an amplifier power of  2 x 25W and wireless subwoofer amplifier power of 100W. The operating system frequency response is set to 50Hz - 20kHz.

My call on the SB-16 is that it would make a great speaker system for small rooms, as it definitely brings the punch in terms of sound. The non-presence of a remote control, gives users like TK, a command on everything through his TV remote…and yes, that’s all you need to flick you over to another dimension and reality in sound appreciation.

According to TK, he was able to purchase his unit at the harmanhouse branch located atthe Dubai Mall. The SB-16 is priced reasonably.      

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