Sonance Adds Low Profile Speakers

DENVER – Sonance has a few things to see and a few things it hopes you don't see.

Installers will be able to see Sonance's first on-ceiling speakers for MDU installs and the brand's first Symphony Series in-wall LCR for horizontal or vertical mounting. Installers will hardly see any of the 25 speakers in the new Visual Performance Series, which features a low-profile, more opaque grille and a "micro-flange" that's only 0.2-inches-wide.

Sonance hopes you'll barely see the first woofers in their recently shipped high-end Architectural Series, which feature a flange-less, or trim-less, design combined with grilles that don't protrude from the wall.

The company hopes you don't see its next-generation flange-less and grille-less Sound Advance-brand speakers, which add cone woofers for the first time to a flat-panel planar driver to extend bass. The planar tweeter/midrange and the cone woofer are covered by a primed, flat radiating surface that butts up against drywall and disappears after mudding and sanding to look like part of the wall.

The Sonance on-ceiling speaker is a low-profile surface-mount coaxial two-way speaker with 5.25-inch woofer and 1-inch tweeter mounted in a dome-shaped baffle with paintable aluminum grille and paintable ABS plastic frame. The enclosure is 10.75 inches by 10.75 inches by 2.5 inches.

Also visible at the show is the Sonance Symphony series S623 LCR, a two-way horizontal model that fits between 16-inch-on-center studs and visually and sonically matches other custom-install speakers in the series. It features two 6.5-inch woofers, 1-inch tweeter, 135-watt maximum power handling, three-position tweeter-level adjustment and removable IR plug for use with IR receivers.

And the company's first speakers in the Sonance Visual Performance Series consisting of in-ceiling and in-wall speakers for multi-room audio as well as home theater applications. All Visual Performance speakers feature a micro-flange design with only 0.2 inches of trim and a low-profile, more opaque grille to provide a modern, clean appearance that won't conflict with a room's interior design, Crawford said. The new grille also cuts install time because it can be painted to color-match any surface in one step, whereas traditional flanged speakers require separate painting of the grille and flange.

Visual Performance pricing falls between the brand's near-invisible, high-end Architectural Series speakers, which top out at about $3,500 a pair, and traditional Sonance speakers products. The series' four home theater speakers, which use coaxial midrange/tweeter combos, include the horizontal or vertical LCR1, incorporating one coax speaker and two woofers; also, the SUR1 bipole surround, incorporating two woofers and a pair of offset-firing coaxial tweeter/midranges. Larger four-woofer versions of the two speakers are also available.

For a barely visible look, Sonance is expanding its Architectural Series with its first-in-wall woofers. The trio of 8-inch models in rectangular, round and square grilles mount completely flush with the wall, without flanges or trim pieces, to maintain an interior designer's vision for a room without cluttering up the wall, the company said.