Dimension

Focal Dimension Soundbar

A fancy pants TV setup has never been my priority. Music is where my interest is, and the hi-fi system gets all the attention. Many years ago I did have a big surround system with a Denon receiver and Dynaudio Confidence speakers and a Loewe tv etc, but that’s all long gone, turns out I didn’t care that much about surround sound. Still, we do watch a fair amount of film in this house, and good sound matters there too, even if it’s a secondary concern.

For a while I was limping along with a Monitor Audio soundbar, a big, bulky thing that took up far too much real estate and had developed an irritating habit of misbehaving at the worst moments. Unreliability in audio equipment is something I have very little patience for, and so it had to go.

I’d been keeping an eye out for something that would complement the Panasonic rather than dominate it visually, and ideally something made by a brand I had some respect for. When a second hand Focal Dimension system came up at the right price, I grabbed it pretty quickly. Focal is not generally a brand that speaks to me. Their approach to hi-fi, their tonal house sound, their design philosophy, it’s just not my flavour. There are plenty of people who love what Focal do and I understand the appeal, but when I’m sitting down for a serious music listen, Focal wouldn’t be my first call. That said, this isn’t a hi-fi purchase. It’s a TV soundbar, and it deserves to be judged differently, and judged on those terms, it’s quite good.

The Dimension is a proper 5.1-channel system in a slim, elegantly finished bar. It uses five 4-inch full-range low-profile drivers, with six channels of amplification drawn from three two-channel Class D modules totalling 450 watts. One of those amplifier channels is dedicated to the subwoofer output, so in a bar-only setup it goes unused. The matching passive subwoofer is an unusually slim, broad box sized to lie flat directly behind the bar, functioning as an under-TV soundbase, though I’m not using one. Compared to the chunky Monitor Audio it replaced, the difference in footprint and appearance is considerable. It looks like it belongs there.

Setup involves more than simply plugging it in. The rear panel carries four switches, each with three positions, that optimise the bar for its environment: a Position switch for on-wall, on-shelf, or freestanding placement; a Distance switch that adjusts the surround DSP for the listening position; a Room switch governing surround effect level and treble balance; and a Subwoofer switch with settings for the passive Dimension Sub, a line-level powered subwoofer, or no sub at all. It’s a thoughtful approach. Rather than a menu-driven system you fiddle with from the sofa, it’s a one-time calibration via physical switches that you then leave alone. Beyond that, the only day-to-day user adjustments are volume, source selection, and a modestly ranged bass control, with no listening modes, tone controls, or channel-level adjustments. Focal’s intention is clearly that the system should be set up properly once and then trusted to do the right thing, which suits me fine.

Connectivity is workable but worth noting. The bar has two HDMI 1.4 jacks, one input and one ARC-ready bidirectional port, along with a single optical digital input and an analogue stereo minijack. With an ARC-capable TV, setup is simple and the television acts as source selector. My Panasonic handles ARC without any drama, which keeps things clean.

Sonically, the first thing to say is that it’s a very significant step up on the Panasonic’s built-in speakers, which like most flat panel TV audio are best described as functional at close range and unpleasant at anything approaching a proper listening level. The Dimension is on a completely different planet. Voices are crisp, uncoloured, and articulate. Tonal balance across the midrange is really good.
I’m running the bar without a subwoofer, I wasn’t sure how important one would be. The answer so far is not much at all. The bass output from the bar alone is massive for a unit of this size. Even without a sub, the soundbar’s low end is notable for its extension and substantial output, and in a normal domestic living room that’s more than enough. The review I’d read prior to buying noted that bass extension with the full system reaches comfortably below 40Hz and is about as free of boom or artificial thud as any soundbar system around, and even running bar-only, the low-frequency character has that same quality of sounding like real bass rather than a mid-bass hump dressed up to sound like it. If I ever felt the need, I could always press my Tannoy TS-8 into service via the line-level subwoofer output, but I don’t think I will have to. For TV watching, films included, the bar handles it on its own without any sense of strain or shortfall.

For films, which is really the point of the exercise, the performance is pretty impressive. The system decodes Dolby Digital and DTS bitstreams directly, and on multichannel material it gains several solid decibels of headroom compared to stereo, meaning it can play as loudly and cleanly as you’d reasonably want. The DSP-based surround virtualisation is better than I expected. It can’t create a fully three-dimensional bubble, but on surround-intensive material it produces considerable spread and reach of effects throughout the front hemisphere, up the side walls and even a little beyond, while maintaining clear dialogue and music. The effect is dependent on sitting in the sweet spot and at the right distance, but once you’re there it’s genuinely convincing. The higher the volume, the more effective and enveloping the surround becomes, which is exactly how it should be for film watching.

On music, and I did give it a fair listen, the results are reasonable rather than exciting, which is about what I expected. The system doesn’t mess excessively with two-channel audio, widening the stereo soundstage modestly while avoiding the more extreme DSP processing that tends to damage timbre. Treble is extended and generally satisfying given the lack of dedicated tweeters, though it obviously can’t match the airy ease and fine top-octave detail of proper speakers, and at higher volumes it can become slightly forced. None of that troubles me particularly, it’s certainly good enough for casual background listening.

The bottom line is that Focal’s house sound and hi-fi philosophy isn’t something I particularly warm to, and that hasn’t changed. But the Dimension soundbar isn’t asking to be compared to my reference system, rather to the TV’s built-in audio. On those terms it wins comfortably. It’s slim, it looks right under the Panasonic, it handles films with real authority, and it makes TV watching a genuinely more enjoyable experience, even if it is an ancient piece of technology now.
Five out of five Smurfs from me.