CES 2010

Atlantic Technology—Small Speaker But Big Bass

John Atkinson  |  Jan 14, 2010

"So what you think our new AT1 loudspeaker will cost?" Atlantic Technology's Peter Tribeman had just finished his dem of a fairly small two-way tower that, driven by Parasound Halo JC 2 preamplifier and Halo A21 power amplifier, was producing prodigious amounts of low frequencies in a fairly large room.

"I have no idea," I responded, "but if it's less than $2500/pair, you'll have a hit on your hands."

"We're aiming at at $1999/pair!" said Peter.

The AT1 uses two 5.5" woofers, tuned to 63Hz, but loads them with an alignment developed by Phil Clements, called "HPAS," which extends the low-frequency cut-off to 31.5Hz, and –3dB at 28Hz. HPAS is neither sealed-box, nor reflex, nor transmission-line, but incorporates aspects of all three to resemble a"controlled explosion" at low frequencies, explained Peter, leaving me none the wiser.

But hearing is believing, and based on what I heard at CES, at $2k/pair, the Atlantic Technology AT1, which will start shipping in the spring, will indeed be a winner.

COMMENTS
GEORGE's picture
Submitted by GEORGE (not verified) on January 25, 2010 - 2:53pm

Trying to get room filling bass with small drivers never ever works well. It's against all rules of physics, no matter how much hocus pocus is in there. Bose markets the same dopey concept, all notes in, one note out! Useless. you can't use mid range drivers to move air for bass notes, not if you are indeed looking for some natural real sounding results. Cone excursions are way to large, producing way too much distortion, unless you want that. Not that there is anything right with that.

Dr. Miller's picture
Submitted by Dr. Miller (not verified) on February 13, 2010 - 1:12am

George obviously didn't hear the demo at CEDIA either.... H-PAS is a different animal!

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