Atlantic Raises New Flagship In-Wall
By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 4/28/2008 9:30:00 AM
Norwood, Mass. — Atlantic Technology upgraded its flagship THX Ultra2-certified in-wall speaker with the three-way IWTS-30, due in May at a suggested $1,250 each.
The home theater speaker features a rotating/pivoting tweeter-midrange baffle, which optimizes performance whether the speaker is mounted horizontally or vertically, and three acoustic controls, which tailor performance to different installation challenges. One switch adjusts tweeter level for rooms that are acoustically bright or dull. The location switch raises or lowers the mid-treble frequency band to tailor performance for mounting behind a perforated video screen. And a boundary compensation switch adjusts lower-midrange output to compensate for placement near a ceiling or side wall.
An optional back box retails for a suggested $175 each, and a separate grille/frame assembly costs $75.
The speaker features a single 8-inch woofer, two 3.5-inch midrange drivers and a 1-inch low-resonance tweeter for wide off-axis listening. The tweeter is flanked on each side by a midrange driver, all mounted in a separate sealed enclosure that can be rotated 90 degrees. The rotating baffle maintains a vertical orientation to the tweeter-midrange array whether the speaker is mounted horizontally or vertically. The three-driver group can also be tilted up to 8 degrees toward the listening position to compensate for less-than-ideal positioning.
The speaker’s predecessor, the IWTS-20, featured only one acoustic control, lacked pivoting tweeter-midrange baffle, and required installers to unscrew, remove, rotate and rescrew the tweeter-midrange baffle to maintain the driver array’s vertical orientation.
The IWTS-20 was on the market for eight years, but the company felt that it could finally improve on its performance because of advances in driver and crossover technology, said CEO Peter Tribeman. He called it “the best sounding in-wall we've ever made.”
