For years, setting up a home surround sound system has been almost an exercise in geometry. Speakers placed at exact distances, angles measured to the millimeter, furniture moved so that everything fits. An exact TV size to make the entire set compatible… The sound, in a way, imposed its rules on the space.
The Sound Suite AI system from LG Electronics proposes just the opposite: Let the sound adapt to the room, and not the other way around. And the technology it uses for this is Dolby Atmos Flex Connect. How do you get it? To explain it we need a metaphor that resonates with us.
Imagine that You decide to put on a concert in your living room, but the musicians (the speakers) don’t fit on the typical stage. You have the “violinist” sitting in a corner behind the couch, the “wind section” on a high bookshelf, and the “pianist” by the window.
In a normal system, this would sound terrible because the sound would arrive out of time and unbalanced. But with FlexConnect the television is the conductor of the orchestra: From his central place he raises his baton (his microphones) and begins his address.
Thanks to the microphones, each musician (each speaker) knows exactly how far he or she is from the conductor and the others. But not only that, the system’s AI makes adjustments in real time: if one of the speakers is forward, asks you to lower the volume and broadcast a millisecond later. Or vice versa.
And therein lies its greatest revolution. Instead of forcing the user to build a perfect environment, this system uses artificial intelligence to understand what the room is like, where the speakers are, and even where you are. From there, it recalculates the audio in real time. It is not an incremental improvement. It’s a paradigm shift.
In short: the room no longer needs to be perfect for the sound to be perfect. Added to this is the α11 AI processor, which constantly analyzes what we are listening to. Not only does it separate voices, music and effects, but it readjusts them so that everything makes sense in that particular space. It is what LG calls AI Sound Pro: a kind of “automatic mixer” that works in the background.
The result, when everything fits together, is the home theater. Not the one in the headlines or the labels on the boxes, but the real one, the enveloping one, the one that forces us to look back to make sure we are alone or the one that makes us look to the sides when “a helicopter passes by.” But there is more.
LG’s Sound Suite system also introduces something almost counterintuitive: the sound that follows you. The Sound Follow function analyzes your position in the room and adjusts the optimal listening point so that You don’t have to be sitting in “the perfect place.” It’s a small detail… until you try it. And then it’s hard to go back.
All this technological deployment is based on a key idea: modularity. The system is not a single device, but an ecosystem. A center bar (H7), wireless speakers (M5, M7) and a subwoofer (W7) that you can combine according to space and budget. From relatively simple configurations to systems that border on professional home theater, with dozens of speakers working together. In total 27 possible combinations in which we can count on 3 M5s and a single M7, without having to think that two and two must go, as until now. The AI part of the Sound Suite is responsible for all of this.
Another of the great advantages of this system is that it does not require cables: The speakers connect to the television directly, which avoids strange designs in the living room and having to go around walls and install trim to hide meters of cable. And, as for the design, it is careful, with clean lines: they are clearly speakers, but they do not clash in almost any home.
Important detail: If we do not have a television compatible with this system, we must get the H7 sound barwhich acts as a control and calibration hub for the entire sound system. From that moment on, installation is very simple since you do not have to follow a certain order or think about which speaker goes in pairs with which one and at what height to place them.
Verdict:
If we have a compatible television, for 500 euros (the price of two LG Sound Suite M5 speakers) we will already have a substantial improvement. Now, if we look for the complete set, we will have to invest about 3,000 euros: only the H7 sound bar costs 999 euros. It’s worth it? That is the key question. If we like to watch movies at home, sporting events or concerts, this system undoubtedly elevates the experience. But it is not for all budgets.