Sony HT-A3000 Soundbar Review

It's a simple bar with a similar design to the Sony HT-A5000, although it doesn't come with up-firing drivers. It's mostly made of texturized plastic, and there's a metal grille covering the front. On each side of the bar, you find a sound port.

It comes with a built-in dual subwoofer. You can add a dedicated sub if you want, and the manufacturer sells it separately.

The manufacturer sells compatible satellites separately.

The bar is fairly wide, so it doesn't fit between the legs of a 55" TV stand. That said, it's not very tall, so you don't have to worry about it blocking your screen.

It has a great build quality. It's mostly made of texturized plastic, with feels very solid and durable. The metal grille on the front helps to protect the drivers inside, too.

• Operating Instructions
• Mounting Template
• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• AC power cord (4.9 ft / 1.5m)
• TV center speaker mode cable (6.2 ft / 1.9m)
• HDMI cable (4.9 ft / 1.5m)

The Sony HT-A3000 has a decent stereo frequency response. Its sound profile is pretty balanced, especially in the mids, so voices and lead instruments in your favorite songs are clear and present, and dialogue in TV shows and movies is portrayed accurately in the mix. That said, there's a slight lack of treble, so these instruments and voices lack a touch of detail. It's most noticeable with high-pitched voices and instruments, like cymbals. As with most standalone bars, there's a lack of low-bass, too, so you don't get the rumble in bass-heavy genres like EDM.

It lets you choose between two different virtual surround settings: you can either turn Sound Field on or off. That said, the Sound Field feature didn't provide a good sound quality with stereo content. Instead, audio sounded diffused and unnatural. Turning it off resulted in a better sound. Of course, your personal preferences may vary, but we prefer to listen to the bar with Sound Field Off. That said, the feature performs better with the Sony HT-A5000.

The Sony HT-A3000 comes with a subwoofer level adjustment feature, and it lets you choose between three different settings: MIN, MID (default), and MAX. If you prefer a more neutral sound, we recommend setting it to MIN. The resulting sound is more balanced, and the treble is more even, so you get a more detailed sound overall.

The bar has a decent stereo soundstage. The soundstage is perceived to be a touch wider than the bar itself, but it doesn't have any tricks to make it seem bigger than that. The bar's focus is better when you turn the Sound Field Optimization feature off. It sounds less diffused, and you can pinpoint certain instruments and voices to more accurate locations in the soundstage. For example, instruments in an orchestral recording seem to come from the general area on stage where it's being played.

The bar has good stereo dynamics. It gets fairly loud, so you can fill a typical living room with sound without issue. There's a touch of compression when you push it to max volume, but it isn't very noticeable, so you can crank up the volume without impacting the quality of audio reproduction.

The Sony HT-A3000 has a great stereo THD performance. Distortion falls within good limits, whether you're listening at max volume or a more normal volume level. As a result, audio reproduces with purity.

The Sony HT-A3000 has a great center channel performance. This 3.1 setup comes with a discrete center channel, improving vocal clarity overall. Given the balanced sound profile on this channel, voices are reproduced with clarity and detail, so you don't have any issues making out the dialogue in your favorite movies.

As with the Sony HT-A5000 and the Sony HT-A7000, you can connect the bar to a compatible BRAVIA TV using the S-Center Out port. This activates the Acoustic Center Sync feature, which uses your TV speakers as a discrete center channel to create a more immersive listening experience. In practice, it does anchor dialogue more vertically, so voices seem to come from more accurate locations in the space around you. However, the difference in volume between the bar and the TV decreased the overall sound quality. Your preferences may vary, but we found that the bar is suitable to use without this feature on.

It's a 3.1 bar, so its surround performance isn't very impressive. It has to downmix surround content, including Dolby Digital, into stereo in order to play it. The resulting sound isn't very immersive, and you don't get the impression that sound effects stretch to the space around you. Instead, it seems like audio just comes from a speaker placed in front of you. You can add on separate satellites if you want to improve its performance, though, which is a nice touch.

The bar has to downmix Dolby Atmos content into stereo to play it, too. As a result, you can't take advantage of Atmos technology, which is mixed to give the impression that sound stretches both above and behind you for a more immersive feel. Rather, audio seems like it's focused to the space in front of you.

Subjectively, the lack of up-firing drivers makes a considerable impact on the bar's sound. While sound effects reproduce with clarity, they seem to come from in front of you, and there's no feeling that they stretch to the sides of your couch. Similarly, you don't get an impression of sound reaching above your head, even when helicopters or drones fly overhead. You also notice the lack of low-bass, especially with action-packed scenes.

The Sony HT-A3000 doesn't offer a lot of sound enhancement tools. As a standalone bar, its features are limited, and you need to buy rear speakers separately to use the Sound Field Optimization room correction feature. Therefore, it sounds a little different depending on the room you're listening in. You can adjust for this a bit thanks to its subwoofer level adjustment tool, but unfortunately, it doesn't come with bass and treble adjustments or a full graphic EQ. Its EQ presets are limited, too: you can choose between turning the Sound Field on and off, but that's it. Sound Field is a virtual surround tool designed to expand the soundstage for a more immersive feel, but in our tests, we found that it made audio seem diffused and unnatural.

You can connect the Sony A3000 to your TV over HDMI or Optical connections. Also, there's an S-Center Out port that lets you connect a compatible BRAVIA TV for Acoustic Center Sync.

The Sony HT-A3000 supports lots of different audio formats via ARC. You can enjoy common 5.1 surround sound formats like Dolby Digital, as well as lossless and object-based formats like Dolby Atmos. Of course, as a 3.1 bar, it has to downmix these formats into stereo in order to play them.

Over Optical, the bar supports Dolby Digital content, which is commonly found on streaming platforms. It also supports DTS content, which you're likely to come across on certain Blu-rays.

The bar has fairly high latency; however, when you watch videos over ARC or Optical connections, you don't notice much of a delay between the audio you hear and the video you see on screen. There aren't noticeable lip-synching issues, either. Of course, the app or TV you use may compensate for latency differently, so your real-world experience can vary.

There's no HDMI In port, so you can't use the bar for video passthrough.

The Sony HT-A3000 lets you stream audio from your mobile devices to the bar over different connections. It's also advertised to support Spotify Connect, too.

The Sony HT-A3000 has a display on the front of the bar. It shows the volume and the inputs you're on, although you'll need to check the TV or the app to see the settings you change.

There are some controls on top of the bar. You can use them to power the bar on/off, change the input, activate Bluetooth pairing, connect to music services like Spotify, and adjust the volume.

The remote matches the remote that comes with the Sony HT-A5000. It's large with lots of buttons to control its features. The Sony Music Center acts as a remote, too, and you can use it to control the bar's settings from your phone.

The Sony HT-A3000 doesn't have built-in voice assistant support. However, if you own a third-party Amazon or Google device, like a Google Nest or an Amazon Echo, you can connect it to the bar to control it with your voice.