NakamichiShockwafe Ultra 9.2.4 Channel Dolby Atmos/DTS:X Soundbar with Dual 10" Subwoofers (Wireless), 4 Rear Surround Effects Speakers, eARC and SSE Max Technology (Flagship)

Update 24 DEC 2019:-- All is basically forgiven, the sound is that good --It's sorta of complex to get perfect sound, but this thing can make great sound; see long discussion of what I did to get that sound at the end...At this time I can say this thing sounds awesome. Like it brings me joy to listen to this soundbar. However was a pain to get to this point. Nakamichi service, Alberto, was extremely professional and efficient.In retrospect it was all clear. One of the two HDMI inputs the soundbar that supports Dolby Atmos (must use either #2 or #3) was broken. In particular it was intermittent. This was infuriating and really hard to debug. It also has an aggravating quirk (when soundbar is reset, the two memories get set at super loud, you will be shocked how loud it is when you accidentally hit "M1" or "M2")-- but All is basically forgiven, sound is that good --Nakamichi Makes great sound, but you'll be need to be an enthusiast to realistically be able to get it all set up. Or just spend a $100 and have a "geek squad" person install it.=== Getting rid of the no sound problemsI was also real disappointed like some reviewers, however after a lot of debugging it turned out the constant rebooting came from several things related to it takes the sound bar about 10 second to sync up with the input signal. Any glitches (e.g. change channels, Netflix buffers) cause some failure and then no sound. So have reported changing the volume while waiting for the sound to come back will reliably cause the problemI did several things to make "no sound" largely a thing of the past. Key was getting the Netflix streaming device (Apple TV 4K) on a wired ethernet connection. That keeps the time buffering way way less, and sound bar is now rock solid streaming. Yes that was a pain because I had to get room wired. Try it and see with a long ethernet cable...Secondly I moved the old TiVO DVR from the sound bar input to the 2019 LG C9 tv, which appears to give the sound bar a solid signal, even when changing channels on TiVo and so on. In the end I have the Apple TV and a Blu-ray directly connected to sound bar, and the DVR connected directly to the TV. That is in the manual BTWThird I found that when the now rare glitches does happen, and no sound happens, rather than reboot I j switch the soundbar input to something else, e.g. optical or other input for a second, and then immediately back to the desired input. Works every time. Yes that is a pain, but after fixing the first two things, its so rare I do not care.=== Getting amazing sound? Here's what I did.As far as poor quality sound/music I was also disappointed at first. Here are some of the things that fixed that. I love the sound now.The most important is that the sound quality is hugely impacted by the placement of the speakers.Boviously. Way more sensitive to small changes than I expected. I'm talking about a few inches. Height makes a surprisingly big difference. I placed these their sides, but which side, etc. It all matters a lot. I was casual about this, but just for fun/desperate I followed the placement suggestions on the large setup guide EXACTLY.First make sure all 4 surrounds are exactly ear height. I initially had the Backs on a shelf at wrong height and place. === Height really matters! == I finally used a tape measure, sounds silly, was a big deal.Next I use all 4 speakers, 2 back 2 front. No dipole. I have them on their side in what Nakamichi calls "Elevation". This means all four are on their side and the speakers are pointing up towards the ceiling at a 45 degree angle. Key to great surround sound. Trust me.Location matters. A lot. In particular I moved the surrounds to exactly 2m (6.5 feet) away from center of FRONT of couch, pointing exactly down the front edge of couch. Exactly as it says on the huge folded setup guide, but they don't make it emphatic that --you really need to do this--. The backs and the surrounds all point to the center of the front edge of the middle of sofa. The surrounds need to lined up along the front edge of couch and backs at 135 angle from front edge. The backs are also 2m/6.5 feet from the front edge of couch. Use a tape measure. It matters.--> Suddenly great spatial effects.--> Great music.Sounds silly; try it and see! Keep everything at ear height 6 feet from center of couch. I think you will be amazed.Next part of this puzzle, use the demo disk "Helicopter" sound track to adjust the volume of the surround and back and center speakers until the helicopter sound is at constant volume and therefore sounds like helicopter is always a constant distance away. It should sound like a helicopter circling you at a constant speed and distance.I needed to fiddle with the location of the back speakers to get constant speed from helicopter sound.I needed +8 on the back and +7 on surround and +4 on center to get constant volume. Obviously you'll need to fiddle for yourselves, but "Helicopter" really shows what this thing can do when adjusted just right.Almost done and this is easy. Make sure all the DSP stuff is OFF. No stereo, no night, not native, not game, not music, SSE is off; get rid of it all. No easy way to do that. Just cycle thru "info" on remote and see what is turned on. Then get rid of it.You want ONLY "movie" and "dolby surround". Now the fun! Fiddle with room size and SSE. SSE has 4 choices (0-3), and size has 3; try all 12 combs (easy). I find small room SSE 2 or 3 works WONDERFUL for TV and music. You might prefer SSE 0 for music.SSE makes it seem, for example like the saxophone player is standing up, and it changes how tall he is. It also changes the sensation of how far apart sideways the musicians are. Makes the stage seem bigger. When I got it just right? I can stare with my eyes at the sound bar and it still sounds exactly like Coltrane is 6 feet tall and about 6 feet from the piano. My sound bar is 24" off the floor. I find most of "stereo imaging" stuff like this doesn't work if my eyes are open. This sound bar does this wonderfully using my Apple TV 4K to play music.Lastly I fiddled with the subs. I was amazed how critical it is to get them at the right place and pointing in the correct direction. Other wise I got nothing but room resonance or "boom". This makes bass guitar sound like a thud; you know loud but cheap stereo in a car. I moved, and turned and fiddled with the subs while listening to John Coltrane music; key is prominent acoustic bass on a quality recording. Try his song "I Want to Talk About You". That sort of music usually causes a sub to resonate with the room making bass sound like drum; it "booms". I tried moving the subs out of the corner, into the corner, away from the walls, point the port on the back towards corner, towards side wall, or the back wall. etc etc.Hint: turn the volume way down and the bass up to say 8 and move the sub around. At very low volume you know the sub is not distorting from lack of power and so on. You may or may not like booming bass, some do, (but you'll know it when you get what you like).Slowly but surely I got clean, deep bass with little booming. In my particular case the ports point away from the couch, the subs are near the couch but a foot away, and the couch is about 2' from wall. That was to get the back surrounds in right place. I expected very low "spouse approval" for subs in room, but we have small end tables. And sounds so amazing, this is not a factor.Sound really is almost perfect. Last key step, the sub crossover frequency on setup menus needed, in my case, to be turned down from 180 to 110.Hint: while fiddling with this crossover setting, nothing happens till you exit the setup menu, and there is a few second delay when you change it; etc. $%&# , but try it and see if the boom goes away.Whew. Watch something with clean sound on Amazon that I thought had bad sound; I found "Seal Team" dialog amazingly clear. A first! Explosions do NOT boom! Music? Bass sound like a bass, not a drum. Listen to some techno and you'll see most techno is all drum, no bass! And so on. Clear Clear Sound. And when the people down stairs are away; crank this bad boy up. Lots of clean power + clean sound = wow.I'm telling you this thing started like a nightmare and now makes sound so clean, it brings me joy. Obviously you going to have to fiddle with your subs location and orientation and the couch's position for the back surrounds, and so on; but keep all the surrounds and back at the exact same ear height, and at the correct distance from a very unlikely place, (aka center front edge of couch), and I think you will have awesome sound too.

I'll start by saying that I upgraded from the Nakamichi elite 7.2 system with two surround speakers and two 8" subs (older model from 3-4 years ago), to the Ultra 9.2.4 (newest model just behind the dragon) and I'm comparing the two, and wow.... What a difference. This is long, but if you are trying to decide if spending the extra cash is worth it, I hope this helps.Bass - the bass is felt vs being heard. The Ultra has very deep bass that shakes the room, just like your favorite theater experience. The elite with the dual 8" subs were great, but the balance of sound vs bass coming out of them was just slightly off. I didnt feel this way until I heard the 10" subs and then I really noticed. You would hear what sounded like muffled voices trying to come through the speakers from the elite. I'm a big bass lover when I watch movies. If you like that rattle your windows, feel it in your toes kind of rumble, go with the Ultra. Great power without the voice distortion.Clarity- the highs are so much better with the Ultra. My dad who is hard of hearing commented on the clarity the first time he heard the system. He could actually hear it all, even with the system being turned down a bit. I really had to crank up the elite to get the clarity. That could be due to the 8" subs always drowning the highs out slightly with too much sound coming through them instead of rumbling low bass. It was a catch 22, I wanted to feel the bass, but by turning it up it would drown out a bit of the highs. It just wasn't as balanced. I think I was looking for too much bass out of the elite. That's on me. The elite is more than enough for 90% of home viewers.Surround- this system makes movies so much fun. It's truly a theater experience. I can't tell you how many times someone has looked over their shoulder looking for the noice they just heard. It takes scary movies to the next level. If you are a gamer, you can tell what direction something is coming from and respond as needed. Behind you, next to you, in front of you... Very emersive. Yes there are wires, so there's limitations on how you set it all up depending on your room.Connectivity- this was the game changer. The elite had issues with the Bluetooth from the sound bar to the subs, which means connectivity issues from the sub to the rear speakers. Most of the time it was a non issue. Other times it was maddening and because it was unpredictable, you just never knew what to expect. It is what drove me to the Ultra to be honest. That crackle of the rear speakers and distortion of bad as it would momentarily disconnect drove me insane and nothing seemed to fix it. Though I never changed the frequency that my router ran on (Nakamichi recommended) and to be honest, I shouldn't have to. When my family replaced their cell phone's and we were working on transferring data and updating to current software, the elite was rendered almost useless during that time. We also often had to keep the cellphones in the other room to limit any potential Wi-Fi disruption. Crackle, crackle, crackle, went the rear speakers and talk about a very distracting thing to be happening during your favorite F-18 dog fight scene in Top Gun Maverick. The Ultra has had zero issues with connectivity regardless of the phone or router placement. Huge win for Nakamichi. I'm sure the newest elite models have corrected this issue, mine was older.Elite will give you the small town theater experience. Great value, big sound, solid bass, but it takes more adjusting settings to get the most out of it.Ultra will give you more of the iMax experience. Big sound, ease of use with sound settings, and you will feel like you are in the storm vs watching the storm through a window.