Get your small screen roaring

The LG NB5540 is a sleek sound-bar system with high-definition sound and 4.1-channel surround capability. It’s a sleek 35mm thin in a metallic design that will perfectly match any thin-bezel TV set.

It can be mounted on the wall neatly under your LCD TV and take over the sound system to produce more power and higher quality. Wall brackets, screws and an installation guide are provided.

The NB5540 really is powerful, with two 40-watt front channels and two 40-watt surround channels arrayed on the bar itself and 160 watts more coming from a wireless subwoofer.

The subwoofer needs no installation. You just plug it in to a power socket and it’s wirelessly connected automatically when you turn out the sound bar.

If you use the sound bar with an LG TV with Sound Sync function, they can be synced easily – either with an optical cable or with a Bluetooth connection. I tested it with LG 49UB850T reviewed on this page and synced up effortlessly.

The NB5540 sounds good with a Hi-Fi DAC (digital-to-analogue converter) that supports lossless high-resolution decoding of audio in Flac format at the high sampling rate of 24bit/192kHz. At this format and sample, the music has about five times more definition than an audio CD.

The display panel is neatly hidden under the front speaker grill of the sound bar. It shows functions in use, folder names, playback times and sound file data.

At the back of the sound bar are the HDMI-in, HDMI-out, USB port, optical-in port and 3.5mm stereo jack.

You can connect an HDMI cable from your Blu-ray disc player or HD movie player and then run the sound bar’s HDMI out to the TV, thus passing through the movie picture to the TV set.

You can also play music from your smartphone using a Bluetooth connection.

I tested it by playing music from an iPad linked via Bluetooth and the sound was loud and clear, filling my large living room. The bass was really booming, especially when I used the “Bass” audio effect. Other available sound effects are “Standard” without an equaliser, “News” with clear voice sound, “Music”, “Cinema” and “Sports”, all with truly dynamic sound.

I played music stored on a USB drive and the system handled most of the sound files smoothly, reproducing clear and detailed sound, especially from the lossless Flac files.

I listened to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” coded in 24bit/192kHz and noted the high quality, but every time the player moved to the next track, there was a second or two of silence. This is fine, of course, when the tracks are recorded with brief silences between them, but not when the music is meant to be continuous, as it usually is on “concept albums”.

I had no such problem, though, playing Pink Floyd’s “The Division Bell” in 24bit/96kHz. David Gilmour’s lead guitar sounded very sweet and powerful, quite plaintive in several songs, but fully enveloped by the backup details rendered by the other instruments.

The LG NB5540 retails for Bt17,990.

 

KEY SPECS

 

Amplifier: 320W (40W x 4, 160W)

Input/output: Optical In, Portable In, HDMI In, HDMI Out, USB 1.1

Sound bar dimensions: 1020x35x82mm

Sound bar weight: 1.86kg

Subwoofer dimensions: 296x332x296mm

Subwoofer weight: 7.6kg