Today, Yamaha introduced a new flagship in its YSP “sound projector” faux-surround bars. The YSP-4000 is a follow-up to the YSP-1100, with a similar setup: 40 individual “beam” drivers that have individual amps, and two midbass speakers. The YSP-4000′s main upgrade seems to be HDMI pass-throughs, and analogue/720p/1080i upscaling to wonderful 1080p.

No word on who makes the upscaler, but I notice that their new flagship receiver uses a not so great scaler by the usually high-end Anchorbay.

But back to audio. Those speakers all coordinated by a DSP, and by tweaking delay and volume, convincingly eliciting sweeping surround audio that seems to come from all 360 degrees, and then some. There are “seven Cinema DSP programs (three movie, three music and one sports)” and “Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby Pro Logic II and DTS Neo:6,” all of which are selectable via the remote and on screen display or LCD. The YSP-4000 is iPod and XM ready and goes for $US1800.