Indianapolis – Dana Innovations is expanding its selection of 70-volt Sonance Landscape series (SLS) that do double duty as in-door commercial speakers, as well as adding a new 8-ohm outdoor audio system reaching a more accessible price point.
Both systems are targeted to ship by the end of the year.
The company is also upgrading its iPort-brand LaunchPort inductive-charging and magnetic-mounting systems for iPads with the launch of a new AP.3 Sleeve that contours to fit The new iPad as well as the iPad 2.
The Sonance brand will also demonstrate its new Invisible-series speakers installed behind various materials, including wallpaper, wood veneer, 8-inch venetian plaster and level-5 drywall.
The company also said it plans to display more new products than ever before and develop more new niches but wouldn’t disclose all of them until the show opens.
In 70-volt landscape speakers, the company is expanding its selection and renaming them the SLS series because of the speakers’ value in outdoor residential installations as well as in the in-door areas of bars and restaurants, said marketing director Simon Wehr.
The SLS series previously consisted of a 3.5-inch two-way satellite, 6-inch two-way satellite, two underground subwoofers, and a sub that can be built into a planter.
The satellites and subterranean subs have been used in in-door commercial installations, with installers spreading out multiple left- and right-channel satellites over a large area and angling them down in a way that doesn’t create overly loud audio hot spots or dead zones, said Wehr. The subterranean subs have been mounted between exposed rafters and beams in ceilings and spread out to even out bass response across a large area.
With the SLS series’ new High Output system, Sonance will deliver evenly distributed sound more easily and in much larger bars and restaurants as well as in resorts and also in large residential estates, where homeowners could achieve high SPLs with even coverage and greater control of sound spilling into adjacent yards, Wehr said.
The SLS High Output speakers consist of the high-SPL two-way 6.5-inch LS87SAT satellites and 15-inch dual-voice-coil LS15SUB, which can be installed underground as well as between ceiling rafters. Instead of installing multiple left and right satellites throughout a commercial facility to even out sound, SLS satellites would be installed in multiple clusters, with two left spotlight-design speakers in the same cluster on one side of a room and two right spotlight-design speakers in a cluster on the right side to spread out sound more evenly to eliminate hot spots and dead zones. Each cluster would be paired with an SLS subwoofer that would be ceiling-mounted somewhere between them.
The SLS satellites deliver higher SPLs as well better control of dispersion in large commercial venues than the other SLS speakers, making it possible to more easily eliminate hot spots and dead zones, Wehr noted.
The suggested retail of four high-output satellites, a sub and a Crown CDi2000 amplifier would be $9,050.
For smaller and more affordable residential landscape installations, Sonance is launching its first 8-ohm satellite and subwoofer outdoor audio solution, dubbed SonArray by Sonance. The system can be driven by a regular A/V receiver to reproduce music in outdoor spaces up to 2,000 square feet, delivering more even dispersion than outdoor cabinet speakers or rock speakers, Wehr noted. Rocks are out of favor with landscape architects because they don’t precisely match their designs, he added.
SonArray is a complete speaker system consisting of eight 3.5-inch two-way satellites and an 8-inch dual-voice-coil subterranean subwoofer that, combined, present an 8-ohm load to an amplifier. The suggested retail is $2,500.
The SonArray satellites would be spread out evenly from 6 to 8 feet apart in L-R-L-R array. The subterranean sub features canopy-covered pipe that juts up through the ground to deliver bass to listeners.
To power the system, installers run a four-core cable from the receiver, daisy chain the satellites in left-right configuration, and run both channels into the dual-voice-coil subwoofer.
The price point is much lower than the opening price of an eight-speaker 70-volt SLS system, with underground sub costing about $8,000, including stand-alone amplifier, before installation, though SLS systems are scalable to add more speakers and add higher power amplification.
Under Dana’s iPort brand, the company is showing its new inductive charging and magnetic wall-mount kit for iPads, the AP.3. It accommodates the dimensions of the iPad 2 and the new iPad, whereas the current AP.2 holds the iPad 2. The AP.2 and AP.3 consist of a $199 surface-mount wall station or table-mount base station, plus a $149 contour-to-fit iPad sleeve.
The company is also considering offering inductive-charging modules on an OEM basis to other suppliers to create their own inductive-charging products for iPads or for other touchscreen control products
For the AP.2, the company is showing two new commercial-install options, one with security tether and one with sleeve to accommodate a Square credit-card reader.
In demonstrating Sonance’s Invisible speaker series in a working display, Dana said it wants to underscore the speakers’ flexible installation process, greater efficiency and higher performance compared to competing invisible series, which are designed to disappear by becoming a physical part of a wall.
The Invisible speakers, shown for the first time last year, are said to deliver full fidelity even when covered by up to 0.11 inches of topping compound, wallpaper, plaster or level-5 drywall to disappear into a wall. Slight variances in the depth of topping or other materials covering the invisible speakers won’t affect sound quality in the way that it affects the sound quality of similar speakers from other companies, the company contended.
