German speaker company Raumfeld is well-known across the Atlantic, but has only recently begun pushing into North America, and the Raumfeld Soundbar is one of its first big products to hit our shores. The $1,599 soundbar is undoubtedly expensive, but its slim wireless companion subwoofer lets it produce some really impressive cinematic thunder. The system also uses Wi-Fi, and can be linked with Raumfeld's other Wi-Fi speakers for multi-room audio. But the Soundbar's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: The same powerful subwoofer that makes movies sound huge and exciting easily overwhelms more subtle musical tracks unless you actively fiddle with the settings, and unfortunately that fiddling is an inconvenient, awkward process through a mobile app that begs to have some content-specific EQ presets added. 

Design

The 39-inch-wide soundbar half of the Raumfeld Soundbar package has a nearly square-shaped 3.9-by-4.3-inch (HD) profile. It's a stark, solid rectangle made of aluminum that weighs a hefty 19 pounds, and is available in black or white. The front and sides are covered in grille cloth save for a small control panel in the center that holds power and volume buttons, along with two indicator lights. The grille hides six separate drivers, including a set of side-facing drivers to help produce a large sound field with acoustic reflection (bouncing some of the sound off of the walls of the room to make it seem like the audio is surrounding you).

The back of the soundbar holds the various ports and setup controls in two recessed areas. An Ethernet port, a USB port, and the power connector sit in the left recess, alongside the Setup button that lets you connect the Soundbar via Wi-Fi. The right recess holds coaxial, optical, and RCA stereo audio inputs, an HDMI port for connecting to your television via an Audio Return Channel (ARC)-enabled input, and a button for pairing the soundbar with the wireless subwoofer.

At 4.7 by 37.6 by 13 inches (HWD), the included subwoofer is short and wide enough to be easily mistaken for a soundbar or a sound slab like the Zvox SoundBase 570. It's aluminum, just like the soundbar, and weighs 30.9 pounds. Its squat design is intended to fit easily under a couch, compared with more conventional cube-like subwoofers that beg to either be used as an ottoman or stashed in a corner.