Klipsch Cinema 1200 impressions: Powerful, junior-sized Atmos—with compromises

Enlarge / The Klipsch Cinema 1200 set includes a sound bar, two satellite speakers, and a subwoofer. Hidden within a few of these are the key differentiators: upward-projecting speakers. (credit: Klipsch)

I'm a longtime apartment dweller in a dense city, so home theater space is hard to come by. I have to decide what I can comfortably add to a living room already packed with PC and console hardware. For too long, that has meant saying "no" to good surround sound.

But surround-friendly soundbars now make good sound possible in a smaller package, without needing to run wires through walls or drop some speakers in the ceiling. Some systems claim to do it all, complete with creative speaker placement and virtualized surround-sound tricks. Others use wireless pieces, including subwoofers and satellite speakers. In a particularly recent development, some soundbars even offer compatibility with the "spatial surround" standards of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. The latter development, especially on game consoles, has jumpstarted my interest in finding a powerful system that balances performance needs and space demands.

We don't review a lot of home audio at Ars, but a recent test opportunity with the $1,900 Klipsch Cinema 1200 let me try one of the new higher-end "spatial surround" soundbars. (This impressions article is the first of a spatial audio two-parter, with a longer look at Apple Music's growing Dolby Atmos music library to come.)

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