Origin Acoustics launched the AcoustaScape Landscape Audio brand to expand its landscape-speaker customer base.
The first AcoustaScape product is a retail-packaged AS41 system consisting of four landscape speakers and a subwoofer. To expand Origin’s landscape-market sales, the system is priced at a suggested $1,700, well below the $5,000 opening price point for Origin’s Seasons-series landscape-speaker systems. Also to expand the potential customer base, the system isn’t a 70-volt system like Origin’s other landscape systems but an 8-ohm system that can be driven by the second-zone output of an audio/video receiver, CEO Jeremy Burkhardt told TWICE. The speakers can also be daisychained to simplify installation.
Also to stoke demand, the system comes in retail packaging that A/V specialists and systems integrators can place on the sales floor or showroom floor to pique consumer interest. The company’s 70-volt speakers are not shipped in retail packaging. “The landscape category needs to be seen by consumers,” Burkhardt said.
Though the system could be installed by a DIYer, it’s not intended primarily as a DIY system, nor is it intended to expand Origin’s dealer base to high-volume retailers catering to the DIY crowd, Burkhardt said. The company sells through A/V specialists and systems integrators.
The system is designed to be efficient at 90dB to cover medium-size outdoor environments with wide-dispersion sound from four speakers staked into the ground around the perimeter of a yard. The four 4-inch two-way satellite speakers are complemented by an included in-ground 8-inch subwoofer. Foliage can hide the speakers from view. The system can be expanded to up to eight speakers to cover a 2,500-square-foot area.
“AcoustaScape Landscape Audio is a turnkey solution for simplified in-ground performance audio,” said Burkhardt.
Origin’s first products were unveiled at the 2014 CEDIA Expo.
