Enlarge

Rejoice, audiophiles! Now that you’ve purchased an audiophile Ethernet cable, audiophile SD card, and audiophile valve headphone amp, there’s finally a speaker worthy of your high-res, high-def audio pipeline: LG’s new 4K soundbar, the SJ9.

I can see from your perplexed countenance that you too thought “4K” referred to display resolution—specifically 4096×2160 or 3840×2160—but clearly we were wrong. To be honest, I’m relieved. Instead of agonising over which audio solution to pair with my new 4K TV, I’ll just get a 4K soundbar. They obviously work in perfect harmony.

But joking aside, have you worked out how LG managed to slap a “4K Sound” sticker on a soundbar? It has nothing to do with display resolution, and it’s only tangentially connected to audio resolution. Basically, the SJ9 is capable of playing 24-bit/96kHz lossless audio files—and the total bitrate of that audio stream is… over 4,000 kilobits per second! Presumably someone at LG realised that “4000K sound” would’ve looked a bit weird on the box, so they rounded it down to a nice and neat 4K.