Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini review: this compact soundbar has big ideas

Introduction

Got a massive TV? Lucky you – great big pictures, and no shortage of equally massive soundbars ready to give you a nice audio boost. What if your TV is what passes for ‘small’ these days, though – less than, say, 55in? Those massive soundbars look a bit daft underneath it, jutting out beyond both sides of the screen. Bluesound reckons it has the solution.

The original hero of hi-res audio streaming, and an established soundbar force to be reckoned with, has delivered a new small soundbar ready to give a big serving of spatial audio without dominating your room or making your TV look like a scale model. It’s called Pulse Cinema Mini…

Design & build: take your medicine

There’s a lot to be said for a soundbar that doesn’t look like every other soundbar. It doesn’t take much for a soundbar to make a visual statement, either – the Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini manages to look individual simply by having nice rounded ends to its cabinet. It looks a bit like a lozenge or a pill (a big one, admittedly, but you take my point).

It’s really nicely built and finished, too, and the acoustic cloth that covers the top and front planes of the soundbar is immaculately applied. Black-on-black is a bit of a tedious finish, it’s true, even if the aluminium portion of the chassis is nicely tactile, but the alternative is something Bluesound is calling ‘tan’ (which is a sort of browny-pink colour) on white metal, which undermines the whole ‘understated and minimal’ vibe more than a little.

Spending this sort of money on a soundbar quite often gets you something so large that it looks overgrown accompanying a TV of less than 65in – but the Pulse Cinema Mini is a relatively compact 850x74x140mm, which means it’s less wide than the 48in OLED TV I have in my front room. It doesn’t foul the bottom of the screen, and the relative lack of shiny plastic accents means it doesn’t reflect light from the TV either.

The Pulse Cinema Mini is fitted with accelerometers, so it knows if it’s sitting on a flat surface or mounted on the wall, and will adjust its audio output accordingly. Bluesound even supplies a little wall-bracket in the packaging, along with an HDMI cable.

Features: the virtue of virtual

The Pulse Cinema Mini is compatible with Dolby Atmos spatial audio content, so is ready to spread sound far and wide to make sure you get your money’s worth. Unlike quite a few similarly priced alternatives, though, it relies on some full-on digital signal processing to produce virtualised height effects from its 2.1-channel configuration.

It has six physical drivers to produce sound, with reinforcement offered by a couple of passive bass radiators. There are two 21mm tweeters, each driven by 38 watts of Class D power, a couple of 45mm midrange drivers (also receiving 38 watts of power each) – there is one of each at either end of the bar, angled outwards in an effort to create some sonic width. The pair of 102mm bass drivers, which take 65 watts each, are positioned on the top of the bar along with the passive radiators. An all-in total of 282 watts should really be more than enough to allow the Bluesound to fill most regular-size rooms with sound.

All this power can be used on audio content received in quite a few different ways. There’s dual-band Wi-Fi on board and further wireless connectivity available in the shape of Bluetooth 5.2 with aptX Adaptive codec compatibility. The Pulse Cinema Mini is a transmitter as well as a receiver, which makes late-night listening a bit more convenient than it otherwise would be. The Pulse Cinema Mini can also connect wirelessly to the company’s Pulse Sub+ subwoofer.

The physical connections are all in a little recess at the bottom rear of the soundbar. The Ethernet socket and HDMI eARC are likely to be the most commonly used. You also get a USB-A slot, a Toslink input, a pair of stereo RCA analogue inputs and a pre-out for a (non-Bluesound) subwoofer.

All incoming digital information is dealt with by a 24bit/192kHz DAC chipset that’s also good with DSD content up to DSD256 resolution. All major file formats are catered for, and where the multichannel stuff is concerned the Pulse Cinema Mini can handle Dolby Digital/Plus, Dolby True HD, Dolby Atmos and LPCM. Don’t look for any DTS compatibility, though, because there isn’t any.  

Interface: incomplete control

Bluesound doesn’t supply a remote control with the Pulse Cinema Mini, which seems a bit weird. Yes, the BluOS control app is one of the best around – but when you’re maybe playing music through your soundbar you don’t want to be opening up an app every time you want to skip a track.

Voice control is less than fully satisfactory, too. You’ll need to integrate ‘BluOS voice control’ into Amazon Alexa Skills, and then you’ll need an Alexa device near enough to hear you when you ask it to talk to Blue Voice. It’s an inelegant method of controlling your soundbar.

Happily, BluOS is a great interface and completely fit for purpose. As well as dealing with the headline controls, it’s also where you can include the Pulse Cinema Mini in a multi-room or wider multi-channel system, integrate your favourite internet radio and music streaming services, define a couple of presets, and plenty more besides. The Bluesound is compatible with AirPlay 2, the ‘Connect’ versions of Qobuz, Spotify and TIDAL, it’s Roon Ready – and it even works with Spotify Lossless. Throughout any of the numerous operations you might use it for, the BluOS app is stable, easy to navigate, and reliable in operation.

There are also a few touch-controls, woken by a proximity sensor, on the top of the chassis. These cover play/pause and volume, plus they give access to the couple of presets you’ve defined in the app. 

Performance: small(ish) is beautiful

If it’s a coherent, tightly knit and very together sound you want from your Dolby Atmos soundtracks, the Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini could be the very soundbar for you. Because what it lacks in out-and-out scale, it more than makes up for in sonic unity.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret‘s Dolby Atmos soundtrack streamed from Apple TV strongly makes the Bluesound’s case. The soundstage it creates is not the largest, but it’s really well-defined and properly controlled – and even though it’s on the snug side, there’s more than enough space for plenty of detail to be revealed and put into proper context. At its most expansive the presentation escapes the physical confines of the cabinet in every direction – not as decisively as some other soundbars can manage, it’s true, but nevertheless there’s appreciable height and width to the sound even if you never quite feel like you’re inside it.

The fact that the Pulse Cinema Mini can dig deep into the frequency range, hit good and hard while it’s down there, and extracts plenty of detail while it’s at it doesn’t do any harm at all. The midrange projects well, so a dialogue-heavy soundtrack like this one is always distinct with voices – and this is from a soundbar that has no dedicated centre channel. At the top of the frequency range the Bluesound isn’t quite as forceful as it is at the opposite end – but there’s a fair amount of bite and shine to treble sounds, as well as the same impressive detail levels as are apparent at every other stage. And throughout the frequency range there’s a common tonality – it’s quite neutral and natural, and the fact that it applies at every stage goes even further to creating that sense of unity and togetherness the Pulse Cinema Mini is so adept at.

Switch to a stream of F1: The Movie from the same platform and the Bluesound is able to demonstrate very impressive dynamic headroom. The endless fluctuations in volume, attack and intensity in this film are tracked faithfully – and the distance between the few quiet,  contemplative moments and the numerous shriekingly loud scenes is considerable when it’s described by this soundbar. The same film also lets the Pulse Cinema Mini move effects around with real positivity – again, they may not travel as far as they do when heard on some alternative designs, but they are steered with proper confidence and coherence.

Switch to music, either two-channel or Atmos-mixed, and the broad impression is the same. The Bluesound is tonally convincing, expresses rhythms pretty well thanks to its low-frequency control, and prioritises singularity of presentation over sheer scale. All of which is, as far as it goes, very likeable indeed. Whether or not you feel it goes quite far enough is a different matter… 

Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini verdict

No, the Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini is not perfect. It looks expensive when lined up against its most obvious rivals, it has definite issues when it comes to putting the ‘spatial’ into spatial audio, and it could really do with a remote control. But where it’s good – especially where the dynamism and unity of its sound are concerned, not to mention its wider functionality thanks to its class-leading control app – it’s a match for any soundbar out there at anything like the price.

If you aren’t trying to fill a huge space with sound, if you have a more modestly sized television, and if you value clarity over size, it’s something you definitely need to hear. 

Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini technical specifications

Connectivity	HDMI eARC, RCA analogue, Toslink, USB-A
Streaming support	AirPlay 2, Qobuz Connect, Roon Ready, Spotify Connect, TIDAL Connect, Bluetooth 5.2 w/aptX Adaptive
Format support	Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, LPCM
Dimensions	850x74x140mm, 5.2kg