CES 2010

Atlantic Technology was showing a near finished prototype of its H-PAS speaker, first seen in early form at CEDIA. H-PAS stands for Hybrid Pressure Acceleration System, a fancy name for what is claimed to be a breakthrough in bass loading. It combines several speaker technologies, including bass reflex, inverse horn, and transmission line. The system is purely passive;there is no subwoofer hidden in the box and the only drivers in the design are the two 5.25" woofers and soft dome tweeter seen in the photo (which does not do the gloss black design justice).

The result was impressive, even in the non-ideal, too-large demo room (over 70,000 square feet) and the listeners in the room seemed as impressed as I was with the result. Neither price nor shipping date was announced, but my guess is affordable but not cheap, and sometime in mid-year.