About The Bowers & Wilkins Formation Soundbar
The Bowers & Wilkins Formation Bar is a magical mix of stunning visual design coupled with cutting edge acoustic design to produce a soundbar that fully immerses you in the movie, the show or the music. Its sleek shimmering appearance will look right at home in a thoroughly modern interior or form an arresting visual counterpoint in a more traditional setting.
Wireless soundbars are supposed to help give a full, immersive home theatre sound experience in a compact design, but often they fall short, with too few speakers that aren't placed at an optimum angle due to the limited shape and size. With Formation Bar, Bowers & Wilkins has created a powerful multi-room soundbar that delivers legendary sound quality with wireless streaming flexibility.
Bowers & Wilkins engineers designed nine optimised drive units born from their legendary loudspeakers and have them optimally positioned in a sleek design to create a wider, all-inclusive, soundstage, while a dedicated centre channel layers in crisp, clear dialogue. The combination makes an entire room "centre stage," for a truly immersive audio experience that will make your home theatre experience enthralling and engaging.
Sound That Provides a Clearer Picture
9 Optimised Drive Units: Born from Bowers & Wilkins's legendary loudspeakers, each driver is optimally positioned to create a wide and immersive soundstage for all your music and movies.
Dedicated Centre Channel Speakers: With dedicated centre channel speakers designed to bring out the best sound from your favourite movies and TV shows you'll hear crisp and clear dialogue every time.
System Centrepiece: The Formation Bar is just the beginning of a full Formation system that can include the Formation Bass Subwoofer for the impact & scale a larger room requires plus a pair of Formation Flex Rears for the full 5.1 surround sound experience.
Not Just For Your TV: As well as accepting a digital signal from your television the Formation Bar can also be used via Bluetooth, including the highest aptX HD standard, as well as AirPlay 2 from iPhone, iPad or Mac computers. It can also be controlled using Roon which can access your iTunes library or NAS drive.
Just The Beginning: The Formation Bar can form the heart of a stylish and extremely capable surround sound system but that is just the beginning. You can set up multiple Formation products such as the Flex & larger Wedge speakers and the Bass subwoofer in other areas of your home to create a whole house sound system that can be as flexible as you need it to be.
Acoustic Design: The secret to the Formation Bar's expansive soundfield lies in its design. The sound bar has a total of nine speakers, configured in three channels. Each channel includes a 25mm double dome tweeter and two 65mm woven glass-fibre cone mid/bass drivers. A total of 240 Watts of power allows the 9 speakers to easily project a hugely impactful sound from such a slim design. And of course the dedicated centre channel ensures crisp, clear dialogue, and all the drivers have been positioned carefully to generate a wide, immersive soundfield.
Meshed Together: Acoustic design aside, what makes this range of particular interest is Bowers & Wilkins's own mesh network that runs independently from a home Wi-Fi network, keeping the load off it and allowing ultra-tight synchronisation between all speakers on the network. This, says Bowers & Wilkins, results in a 1-microsecond sync disparity between products – which is beyond the limits of human hearing. As a result, there's no 'time smear' or compromise to the sound. The Formation Bar runs at up to 24-bit/96kHz resolution, which is best-in-class. This ensures clear, accurate sound and that the Bar will do justice to your high-resolution music files.
What Is The Matrix? As you'd expect from this iconic manufacturer of conventional hi-fi loudspeakers, the Formation Bar employs Bowers & Wilkins design best practice. The cabinet is made from extremely tough plastic and uses the company's Matrix construction inside – effectively a lattice of cross-bracing to stiffen the structure to minimise sidewall flex. This makes for lower colouration and improved timing. The Formation Bar also incorporates Dynamic EQ, a real-time digital signal processing system that optimises the performance of the system.
Simple Multi-Room App Control: Formation wireless speakers are easy to use, thanks to the Bowers & Wilkins Home app. Download it from the Apple App Store or Google Play to your smartphone or tablet. The app walks you through the setup process. It also lets you add other Formation speakers easily as you build up your multi-room audio system. You can assign room names to your Formation speakers, group them to simultaneously play the same song, or play different songs from different sources in each room.
Wireless Options: The Formation Bar features Bluetooth 4.1 for playing audio sources from a wide variety of apps on your mobile device. Built-in aptX HD and AAC decoding provide high-quality music streaming from compatible devices. Spotify Connect is built-in too, so you can easily stream from this popular service if you have a subscription. Apple AirPlay 2 technology lets you play audio directly from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac computer through the Formation Bar. That includes soundtracks from YouTube videos and Netflix movies.
Roon Compatible: For serious music lovers, the Formation system is also compatible with Roon, a subscription digital music player for your smartphone, tablet, or computer. It gives you multi-room audio playback for all your Formation devices and more. Roon accesses your digital music collection from your iTunes library or NAS drive. It also works with your TIDAL subscription. Roon lets you delve deep into your music, showing artist bios, photos, reviews, and lyrics. Roon can also suggest other artists and songs based on your selections, making it easy to discover new music you'll enjoy.
Formation Bar In The News
"The Formation Bar and Formation Bass delivered performance befitting their elegance, price, and manufacturer's reputation. I was impressed with the ease of setup and operation even before the components delivered their first audio notes, and became absolutely enamoured with them afterward. The Bar and Bass melded perfectly without any crossover settings to tweak, and the system provided an expansive soundstage while delivering pinpoint imaging and crystalline clarity with both vocals and instruments." Home Theatre Review
Main Features & Specifications
- Design: Slim Stylish Soundbar System with Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect & Roon compatibility
- Technical features
- Apple AirPlay 2 – compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with iOS 11.4 or later, Apple TV 4K or Apple TV (4th Generation) with tv OS 11.4 or later, Mac or PC with iTunes 12.8 or later
- Spotify Connect
- Roon Ready
- Bluetooth In
- Dolby Digital
- Digital Signal Processing (DSP)
- Digital amplifier
- Dynamic EQ
- Drive Units
- 3 x 25mm (1 in) Decoupled double dome high-frequency
- 6 x 65mm (2.6 in) woven glass fibre cone bass/midrange
- Frequency Response: 40Hz to 28kHz
- Amplifier Power Output: 6 x 40 Watts
- Power Consumption: Below 6 Watts (Sleep)
- Connections
- Digital audio in (Toslink)
- Network (RJ45 Ethernet or Wi-Fi)
- USB – service only (does not play music via USB)
- Bluetooth
- Bluetooth v4.1, Class 2
- aptX HD
- AAC
- SBC
- Colour: Black
- Dimensions (WxHxD): 1,240 x 109 x 107mm
- Weight: 5.5kg
- Manufacturer's Warranty: 1 Year
Note: All specifications subject to change without notice. E&OE.