Polk’s SurroundBar50 For Tidy Surround Sound August 13, 2007

Read more Gizmodo UK , HDTV , Hi-fi , Home Cinema , Home Entertainment , Movies

Quality audio maker, Polk Audio has joined the growing number of companies creating single speaker surround solutions.

The SurroundBar50 is 51ins wide and designed to sit in front of, or beneath, bigger HDTVs. The company has created new drivers and crossover design, combined with a larger enclosure, to greatly improve the bass performance over the original SurroundBar. The company says it can now deliver low-end grunt to rule out the need for a separate subwoofer in smaller rooms. The surround trickery is performed by the company’s SDA (Stereo Dimensional Array) technology, which is based on how the ear processes sound so there’s no need for bouncing audio off walls. Well, that’s the claim anyway.

This is what’s inside the giant slinky:

“The SurroundBar50 is composed of a single 51 x 4.5 x 5.1in extruded aluminum enclosure housing nine mid/bass drivers with Neodymium magnets, three dome tweeters, and a four-PC board crossover with over 60 components.”

It comes in titanium or black and when it launches in the US first in October, it will cost around £600.

Still, you might want to also check out recently announced rival offerings from Denon and Philips if you plan on heading down the ‘clutter-free’ pseudo surround route.-Martin Lynch

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