If you prefer your home theatre and audio gear to be invisible and out of sight in a room, you’ll want to move along, because the 911 Soundbar 2.0 Pro is for those who want everyone to know they’ve spent $US12,000 (around $16,658) on a soundbar. It has Porsche written all over it — both literally and figuratively.
Even if you lack the need for speed and find the idea of a car going repeatedly around a track immensely boring, the sound of a $US100,000+ ($140,000+) sports car’s revving engine is still both impressive, and maybe a bit intimidating. For the Porsche 992 GT3, that roar comes from a highly-tuned engine paired with an exhaust deliberately designed to amplify those engine sounds.
Normally, the 992 GT3’s exhaust system is hidden behind the car’s rear bumper and only visible to those willing to climb under the vehicle. But Porsche Design, a subsidiary of the auto maker focused on bringing the company’s aesthetic to consumer goods, has decided the exhaust finally deserves some time in the spotlight, and has put it front and centre on its new 911 Soundbar 2.0 Pro.
Unfortunately, on the soundbar, the welded metalwork and polished chrome exhaust pipes aren’t functional. As novel as it would be to have all the sound pumped through there, the soundbar simply wouldn’t sound like a $US12,000 piece of high-end audio gear.
Just above the exhaust hardware, hidden behind a mesh screen, is where you’ll find the 911 Soundbar 2.0 Pro’s 300-watt array of speakers providing a 2.1.2 Dolby Atmos virtual surround sound experience. Two speakers and a woofer fire directly at a listener, while two additional speakers fire up at the ceiling, bouncing the sound back down to trick the listener into hearing sound with a more spacial effect. It’s not as convincing as a true surround sound setup with speakers located all around a room, but it’s much easier to setup and install, and sometimes cheaper — but that’s obviously not the case here.
The 911 Soundbar 2.0 Pro also comes with 4K compatible HDMI ports, Bluetooth so it can be used a wireless speaker, Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay 2, and Chromecast support, and it can be connected to other Porsche Design soundbars for multi-room sound streaming. It’s also going to be limited to a production run of just 500 units. You can pre-order it now through the Porsche Design website, but it won’t actually be available until January 1, so if you put one on your holiday wish list, you might be disappointed to not find one under the tree on Christmas morning.