NakamichiShockwafe Ultra 9.2.4 Channel Dolby Atmos/DTS:X Soundbar with Dual 10" Subwoofers (Wireless), 4 Rear Surround Effects Speakers, eARC and SSE Max Technology (Flagship)

Update 24 DEC 2019:-- All is basically forgiven, the sound is that good --It's sorta of complex to get perfect sound, but this thing can make great sound; see long discussion of what I did to get that sound at the end...At this time I can say this thing sounds awesome. Like it brings me joy to listen to this soundbar. However was a pain to get to this point. Nakamichi service, Alberto, was extremely professional and efficient.In retrospect it was all clear. One of the two HDMI inputs the soundbar that supports Dolby Atmos (must use either #2 or #3) was broken. In particular it was intermittent. This was infuriating and really hard to debug. It also has an aggravating quirk (when soundbar is reset, the two memories get set at super loud, you will be shocked how loud it is when you accidentally hit "M1" or "M2")-- but All is basically forgiven, sound is that good --Nakamichi Makes great sound, but you'll be need to be an enthusiast to realistically be able to get it all set up. Or just spend a $100 and have a "geek squad" person install it.=== Getting rid of the no sound problemsI was also real disappointed like some reviewers, however after a lot of debugging it turned out the constant rebooting came from several things related to it takes the sound bar about 10 second to sync up with the input signal. Any glitches (e.g. change channels, Netflix buffers) cause some failure and then no sound. So have reported changing the volume while waiting for the sound to come back will reliably cause the problemI did several things to make "no sound" largely a thing of the past. Key was getting the Netflix streaming device (Apple TV 4K) on a wired ethernet connection. That keeps the time buffering way way less, and sound bar is now rock solid streaming. Yes that was a pain because I had to get room wired. Try it and see with a long ethernet cable...Secondly I moved the old TiVO DVR from the sound bar input to the 2019 LG C9 tv, which appears to give the sound bar a solid signal, even when changing channels on TiVo and so on. In the end I have the Apple TV and a Blu-ray directly connected to sound bar, and the DVR connected directly to the TV. That is in the manual BTWThird I found that when the now rare glitches does happen, and no sound happens, rather than reboot I j switch the soundbar input to something else, e.g. optical or other input for a second, and then immediately back to the desired input. Works every time. Yes that is a pain, but after fixing the first two things, its so rare I do not care.=== Getting amazing sound? Here's what I did.As far as poor quality sound/music I was also disappointed at first. Here are some of the things that fixed that. I love the sound now.The most important is that the sound quality is hugely impacted by the placement of the speakers.Boviously. Way more sensitive to small changes than I expected. I'm talking about a few inches. Height makes a surprisingly big difference. I placed these their sides, but which side, etc. It all matters a lot. I was casual about this, but just for fun/desperate I followed the placement suggestions on the large setup guide EXACTLY.First make sure all 4 surrounds are exactly ear height. I initially had the Backs on a shelf at wrong height and place. === Height really matters! == I finally used a tape measure, sounds silly, was a big deal.Next I use all 4 speakers, 2 back 2 front. No dipole. I have them on their side in what Nakamichi calls "Elevation". This means all four are on their side and the speakers are pointing up towards the ceiling at a 45 degree angle. Key to great surround sound. Trust me.Location matters. A lot. In particular I moved the surrounds to exactly 2m (6.5 feet) away from center of FRONT of couch, pointing exactly down the front edge of couch. Exactly as it says on the huge folded setup guide, but they don't make it emphatic that --you really need to do this--. The backs and the surrounds all point to the center of the front edge of the middle of sofa. The surrounds need to lined up along the front edge of couch and backs at 135 angle from front edge. The backs are also 2m/6.5 feet from the front edge of couch. Use a tape measure. It matters.--> Suddenly great spatial effects.--> Great music.Sounds silly; try it and see! Keep everything at ear height 6 feet from center of couch. I think you will be amazed.Next part of this puzzle, use the demo disk "Helicopter" sound track to adjust the volume of the surround and back and center speakers until the helicopter sound is at constant volume and therefore sounds like helicopter is always a constant distance away. It should sound like a helicopter circling you at a constant speed and distance.I needed to fiddle with the location of the back speakers to get constant speed from helicopter sound.I needed +8 on the back and +7 on surround and +4 on center to get constant volume. Obviously you'll need to fiddle for yourselves, but "Helicopter" really shows what this thing can do when adjusted just right.Almost done and this is easy. Make sure all the DSP stuff is OFF. No stereo, no night, not native, not game, not music, SSE is off; get rid of it all. No easy way to do that. Just cycle thru "info" on remote and see what is turned on. Then get rid of it.You want ONLY "movie" and "dolby surround". Now the fun! Fiddle with room size and SSE. SSE has 4 choices (0-3), and size has 3; try all 12 combs (easy). I find small room SSE 2 or 3 works WONDERFUL for TV and music. You might prefer SSE 0 for music.SSE makes it seem, for example like the saxophone player is standing up, and it changes how tall he is. It also changes the sensation of how far apart sideways the musicians are. Makes the stage seem bigger. When I got it just right? I can stare with my eyes at the sound bar and it still sounds exactly like Coltrane is 6 feet tall and about 6 feet from the piano. My sound bar is 24" off the floor. I find most of "stereo imaging" stuff like this doesn't work if my eyes are open. This sound bar does this wonderfully using my Apple TV 4K to play music.Lastly I fiddled with the subs. I was amazed how critical it is to get them at the right place and pointing in the correct direction. Other wise I got nothing but room resonance or "boom". This makes bass guitar sound like a thud; you know loud but cheap stereo in a car. I moved, and turned and fiddled with the subs while listening to John Coltrane music; key is prominent acoustic bass on a quality recording. Try his song "I Want to Talk About You". That sort of music usually causes a sub to resonate with the room making bass sound like drum; it "booms". I tried moving the subs out of the corner, into the corner, away from the walls, point the port on the back towards corner, towards side wall, or the back wall. etc etc.Hint: turn the volume way down and the bass up to say 8 and move the sub around. At very low volume you know the sub is not distorting from lack of power and so on. You may or may not like booming bass, some do, (but you'll know it when you get what you like).Slowly but surely I got clean, deep bass with little booming. In my particular case the ports point away from the couch, the subs are near the couch but a foot away, and the couch is about 2' from wall. That was to get the back surrounds in right place. I expected very low "spouse approval" for subs in room, but we have small end tables. And sounds so amazing, this is not a factor.Sound really is almost perfect. Last key step, the sub crossover frequency on setup menus needed, in my case, to be turned down from 180 to 110.Hint: while fiddling with this crossover setting, nothing happens till you exit the setup menu, and there is a few second delay when you change it; etc. $%&# , but try it and see if the boom goes away.Whew. Watch something with clean sound on Amazon that I thought had bad sound; I found "Seal Team" dialog amazingly clear. A first! Explosions do NOT boom! Music? Bass sound like a bass, not a drum. Listen to some techno and you'll see most techno is all drum, no bass! And so on. Clear Clear Sound. And when the people down stairs are away; crank this bad boy up. Lots of clean power + clean sound = wow.I'm telling you this thing started like a nightmare and now makes sound so clean, it brings me joy. Obviously you going to have to fiddle with your subs location and orientation and the couch's position for the back surrounds, and so on; but keep all the surrounds and back at the exact same ear height, and at the correct distance from a very unlikely place, (aka center front edge of couch), and I think you will have awesome sound too.

The 11.2.6 Soundwafe Wireless delivers excellent sound quality for its price right out of the box. Unfortunately, when I purchased in July 2025 the bar needed a manual USB firmware (FW) update to work with the app as it was still on early FW. However, the support experience was amazing. They made it easy to update with very clear instructions online and excellent phone / email support that is rare these days. Now that it's calibrated it exceeds my last AVR-based 7.1 setup. The reviews don't do this system justice. It's truly amazing the sound that fills our large, open living room. Be sure to turn down the LFE out of the gate (the dual 10s are crazy!) and take the time to configure the channel distance and levels in the app as it really makes a big difference in the audio experience.Note: Review updated due to support and audio experience after configuration.

We bought this to upgrade from our LG C1 65 inch TV sound, so anything would be an upgrade. That being said, this sound bar setup is AMAZING! My girlfriend was apprehensive at first, until we watched Deadpool and Wolverine (she loves that movie) and she quickly changed her toon. She now loves it also. The only issue (it’s not that big of one) is there’s a slight delay/silence when switching apps and/or pausing/playing movies when playing on “Passthrough.” I have EARC enabled. If the LG is set to “auto” it goes away and shows as Dolby MAT instead of Dolby Atmos. I’m not an audiophile so I can’t really hear the difference. (I’m also almost deaf in one ear, so that probably doesn’t help)That all being said, we are very happy with this sound bar.

I purchased the 9.2 system during black Friday weekend of 2020. I wanted to wait to review the item until using it for at least a full month. I opened the box and completed the set-up on Jan 3rd, 2021. Hoping to make this review a bit more comprehensive and helpful, I am providing star ratings and splitting the review into the 5 individual sections identified in CAP LOCKS below:1 – PACKAGING (5 Stars)The sound system came well packed and protected. The box was the perfect fit and included well written and comprehensive instructions to setup the sound system and troubleshoot it. All cables needed to make the sound system work are included. It also provides links and references to online resources. Nakamichi has nothing to envy from larger companies/brands on this topic. Well done!!!2 – SETUP (3 Stars)I am reviewing this based on the expectations from must people that expect to have a Plug & Play system that will work flawlessly out of the box. Although Nakamichi provides very clear setup instructions that include images/photos, this sound system is NOT Plug & Play. After completing the set-up following the easy-to-follow steps, I noticed that speakers were not working correctly; specifically, the sound coming out of the speakers was intermittent and not constant. There were also cracking random sounds. In addition, my Wi-Fi home network basically stopped working causing my internet speed to drop from 700 Mbps to less than 100 Mbps. Upon further research, I discovered that the sound system required a firmware update (which requires to have or purchase an USB drive with certain specifications) to troubleshoot this issue and potentially resolve it. Then, made the update but issues kept going. Then, realized that I had to activate a new “dedicated frequency” mode that was supposed to resolve the issue. It certainly helped but was still affecting the Wi-Fi home network. As a last resort, I decided to reset the sound system which seemed to work. When placing the soundbar in front of my 65 inch LG OLED TV, the soundbar was too high and was blocking about 1.5 inch of my TV, which required me to buy a stand to make my TV higher (not good since I believe this could be prevented at the product design phase). Well, it took me about 4 days to complete the setup and perform all the troubleshooting steps that finally allowed me to use and test the sound system.3 – FIRST 45 DAYS OF USE (4 Stars)When working correctly and without the Wi-Fi interference, this sound system battles pretty well with Bose and Sony sound systems that I owed before. When watching Dolby Atmos content, the 2 rear speakers tend to completely loose audio for seconds sporadically which ruins the experience a bit (I believe this has to do with the conflict of the 5Ghz Wi-Fi network issue I mentioned within the setup section above). Other content, other than Atmos (Dolby Digital, DTS, etc.) works pretty well and sound quality is very good. I also tested the Bluetooth mode which I am not a big fan of since it basically utilizes the soundbar and it does not take good advantage of the other satellite 4 speakers. Initially I connected a PlayStation and a cable box to the HDMI ports of the soundbar but later decided to connect these devices directly to the TV because I had to turn on the sound system every single time, I wanted to use the connected devices but there were occasions when I did not want to use the sound system.4 – QUALITY OF SOUND AND HARDWARE (4 Stars)I believe that the sound quality is 5 stars when working correctly without the WiFi signal issues mentioned above. The display of the soundbar could certainly be better, perhaps a small touchscreen display may be installed into the soundbar instead of the small led indicators. The remote control is okay but, in my opinion, it could be simpler or have an option of a mobile app to use as a remote for advance functions. The satellite speakers need stands, I purchased the Atlantic Satellite Speaker Stands 27"- 48" which seem fine for them. The built of the speakers seem to be good quality but the subwoofers are the star of the show. The subwoofers are well built and gives you outstanding bass (sad for me I am unable to take full advantage of the bass power due to living in an apartment and having close by neighbors). If considering a redesign for a future model, Nakamichi should consider not making the sound bar that tall and maybe come up with a flatter design.5 – FUTURE USAGE (3 Stars)I wrote this review after watching the movie “Judas and the Black Messiah” that has Dolby Atmos sound and is a recently released movie. As of today (Feb 21), the sound from the rear satellite speakers was still intermittent and not constant in various occasions of the movie. I wish this was not the case and that I could simply enjoy of constant Dolby Atmos sound. However, it still a better experience than watching the movie and using your TV’s speakers. I hope that Nakamichi comes up with software update that finally resolves this intermittent sound loss from the rear satellite speakers and completely fixed the conflict of 5Ghz WiFi signals between the wireless speakers and your 5Ghz WiFi home network. Because I have to learn to live with these ongoing issues that diminish the user experience, I had to rate this section 3 stars.