The Sony SRS-RA5000 Premium Wireless Speaker, which has seven driver units, seeks to fill your room with sound. And it kind of works. Even while it has the potential to sound fantastic, standard tracks sound compressed and hollow when using the Immersive Audio Enhancement mode. It is possible to listen to what Sony refers to as 360 Reality Audio if you have a Tidal, Nugs, or Deezer membership. These spatial tracks sound far better: well-balanced and fleshed out. This format isn’t supported by all songs, and famous online streaming service Spotify doesn’t either. Additionally, Apple Music uses its own proprietary Spatial Audio format.
Regardless of what you think about the sound quality, the Sony SRS-RA5000 looks like a million bucks. With a front covered in black fabric and three copper grilles on top, the speaker looks like a work of modern art and takes up a respectable amount of space on a table at 9.38 x 13 x 8.8 inches (W x H x D). If you wish to switch the audio source between Bluetooth, 3.5mm, and Wi-Fi, you’ll need to utilise the controls for the speaker, which are situated near the top on the left face of the speaker.
The speaker will calibrate itself after being placed by playing a series of sounds and observing how they reflect off objects in the space. It takes little time and can be repeated as often as necessary (usually whenever you move the speaker, or move other large objects in the room). The SRS-RA5000 supports Bluetooth codecs SBC and AAC and is Bluetooth 5.0 compliant. It lacks an internal battery for portability.
To restate the fundamental concept, Sony’s 360 Reality Audio is an object-based immersive audio system, conceptually similar to Dolby Atmos or DTS:X, but with music as its intended use rather than soundtracks. Utilizing immersive audio tools, content producers mix audio tracks by putting instruments anywhere in a virtual, three-dimensional world. The final mix is compressed using the immersive audio codec MPEG-H.
The SRS-RA5000 is a speaker with a specific goal: to allow people to “upgrade” existing non-360 RA sources into a more immersive audio experience while also allowing them to listen to Sony 360 RA music without the need for headphones. Given its high price, these two possibilities had better be fantastic; otherwise, it will be difficult for us to suggest the RA5000.
The Sony SRS-microphone RA5000’s is only used for the sound calibration feature; it does not support voice assistants. When both devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, it is claimed that this speaker can be controlled by an Alexa-enabled device. However, because doing so would necessitate purchasing a third-party gadget, we don’t test for this.