Definitive Technology makes some very impressive speakers. They also tend to be relatively expensive. Both qualifiers certainly apply to the company’s W Studio, a soundbar and wireless subwoofer combination that sounds excellent and offers high-end features like HDMI switching and multi-room Wi-Fi audio with Play-Fi. It also looks stylish and is built rock-solid. Of course, all of those things come at a price, and that price is $1,299. It’s nearly twice as much as the Sonos Playbar ($999.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , and ties with the Libratone Lounge ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) in price (though none of those models are nearly as expensive as the $2,200 Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 2 , which currently stands as the most expensive soundbar we’ve tested). Despite its hefty price tag, the W Studio earns our Editors’ Choice for its performance, features, and build quality.

Design
The W Studio is a blocky, almost monolithic chunk of a soundbar measuring 3.3 by 43 by 3.3 inches (HWD). It’s covered in hard right angles, with solid metal caps on either end to reinforce the sense of strict, precise lines. It’s a stark look, but striking. The front and top is covered in black grille cloth, with a thin metal bar on the top front edge holding Power, Source, Volume Up/Down, and Wi-Fi Setup buttons. A row of white LEDs, capped at the end with a single blue LED to indicate power, sits on the right side of the soundbar behind the grille cloth. The LEDs show volume level and the currently active input, depending on how many are lit.

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Six 3-inch mid/woofer drivers and three 1-inch tweeters sit behind the grille cloth, facing front and accounting for the soundbar’s left, right, and center physical speaker channels. The back of the soundbar holds three HDMI inputs, an HDMI output, an optical audio input, a coaxial audio input, the power connector, and a USB port for firmware updates in a recessed cut-out in the middle.

The wireless subwoofer is just as stark and monolithic. It’s a hard, 14-by-12.5-by-12.8-inch near-cube distinguished only by a silver-colored square in the center of the front panel with the Definitive Technology logo. The back panel holds the connection for the power cable, the power switch, and two small switches for adjusting the power source if your outlet isn’t on a typical household circuit. The HDMI ports let the soundbar double as a three-HDMI-input switcher, letting you add additional HDMI video sources to your HDTV.

The remote is larger and more solid than the membrane remotes included with most soundbars. It features individual buttons for each input, a navigation pad, and individual rockers for the center channel, bass levels, and overall volume levels. It takes two AAA batteries, which are more convenient to replace than the button-cell batteries used with the much smaller membrane remotes.

Interface and Play-Fi
The W Studio has an on-screen menu system, but it’s minimalist, blocky, and mostly for setting up the soundbar. You can teach the soundbar to respond to your other devices’ remote controls, adjust the intensity of the Movie and Music audio modes’ sound processing, pair the subwoofer with the soundbar, activate Night Mode to reduce how much sound will travel past your walls, and enter Wi-Fi setup mode for the soundbar’s Play-Fi features. This last option only puts the soundbar into an ad-hoc Wi-Fi hotspot mode, rather than letting you enter Wi-Fi information through the on-screen menu; you need to use a mobile device with the free Definitive Technology app to configure the soundbar to connect to your Wi-Fi network.

Play-Fi is a brand-agnostic Wi-Fi music standard that supports multi-room and multi-speaker setups. It’s similar to Apple’s AirPlay, but it’s compatible with both iOS and Android devices and is almost entirely app-driven. It can work with any speakers that support Play-Fi regardless of the manufacturer, unlike brand-specific Wi-Fi audio standards like Sonos or Bose SoundTouch. It’s useful, but not nearly as easy or direct to configure and use as Bluetooth.

Movie Performance
The W Studio uses Definitive Technology’s virtual 7.1-channel surround sound audio processing to make movies sound immersive and room-filling, and the soundbar works well together with the subwoofer to give loud scenes the sort of boom they need. In the Tyrannosaurus rex scene in Jurassic Park, the subwoofer boomed with the dinosaur’s footsteps, and the soundbar clearly presented both the whispered dialog and the textured, steady rain. A soundbar can’t produce distinct, directional audio even with processing tricks, but the W Studio put out a large enough sound field to make the test room at least seem like it was caught in a rainstorm during a dinosaur attack.

It also brought out every crackle of foliage, grind of rock, and creak of rope against the muggy quiet of the jungle in Platoon, and when the flutes kicked in alongside explosions and gunshots, they were appropriately cutting. The exploding map box didn’t send the subwoofer into a rumbling frenzy, but it was sudden, loud, and jarring. The dialog sat clearly against the rest of the soundtrack, and it (along with some of the sound effects) could easily be boosted further by increasing the center channel.

Music Performance
The W Studio sounds roundly excellent when playing music, bringing rich and textured sound out of most tracks and handling deep low end with aplomb. It handled the bass synth notes and kick drum hits of our bass test track, The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” at maximum volume without a hint of distortion.

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” sounds full and creepy on the W Studio with the constant, gloomy bass line reverberating with a subtle strength thanks to the subwoofer. The deep notes filled the room admirably, without overshadowing the finer textures in the other instruments or Cave’s voice, leaving enough room for the keyboard plinks and occasional drum hit to punch through the mix.

The Crystal Method and The Heavy’s “Play For Real” found some nice depth through the W Studio, with the different distorted, aggressive guitar riffs and electronic squeaks finding their own identity in the mix. Strangely, Kelvin Swaby’s vocals didn’t stand up well against the mix, and his high, tenor voice fell into the background, overshadowed by the instruments. His voice losing its signature Bootsy Collins-like edge and its ability to cut through instrument tracks is the only blemish on the W Studio’s sound performance.

The Definitive Technology W Studio is a generally fantastic-sounding soundbar. It looks gorgeous, is solidly built, and has several useful features. It’s also $1,300, and that’s a hard price to get over no matter how good the soundbar is. It also lacks Bluetooth, so if you want to play music from your smartphone or tablet you need to use the more complicated Play-Fi connection over Wi-Fi. If you’ve got the budget, the W Studio is our top choice for a two-piece sound system. If you don’t have the budget, though, you can get a solid, full-featured performer for a fraction of the cost. Consider instead the one-piece Zvox SoundBase 570 ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , a Bluetooth-equipped Editors’ Choice sound system that sounds excellent for its price range and looks both attractive and unobtrusive.