HT-A7000 sound bar+Sub and rear speakers. Will I get the full features if connected to my Sony ZD9?

[MarkB-E]

If I connect the New HT-A7000 Sound bar, Sub and rear speakers to my Sony ZD9 75'' will it work?

Also If I purchase an upgraded HDMI cable for the above Sound bar, would this help?

Any replies / Assistance would be Greatly appreciated, and thank you in advance for your time.#

Sincere Regards from Mark

[royabrown2]

@MarkB-E 

Asked twice and answered once 😛

Yes, it will work. But bear in mind that your TV, an enormous investment that I am sure you will want to get a good few more years out of, only has ARC, not the more modern eARC, so audio passed to the soundbar will be limited accordingly - no true uncompressed Atmos, only compressed Dolby, and so on.

This soundbar will do some post-processing to attempt to overcome these limitations; you would have to audition it, fed by a TV held down to ARC, not eARC, to see how well it does that.

Any external devices, though, like a UHD BluRay player, could be fed directly into the soundbar, for completely uncompromised sound; personally, I would buy a Roku Express 4K and connect that to the other input on the soundbar, to replicate all the Players on your TV in uncompromised sound, for when you wanted to do any really critical listening. That would be a very small oncost compared with the soundbar, for a big improvement in the audio potential.

As to the HDMI cable, you will find that one comes with the soundbar; and if you get the Roku, one comes with that as well.

I see that the soundbar is described as having a built-in sub; but no doubt you are contemplating adding the compatible SW5, or maybe only the SW3, as I am always slightly chary of built-in subs in slim bars. But I haven’t actually auditioned the A7000 yet, as you should to judge if the low bass needs augmenting or not; perhaps it would surprise me.