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A new acoustical design technology that promises to get deep, powerful bass from tiny drivers got its first public audition this morning in a suite at Atlanta’s Ellis Hotel, just before the start of the 2009 CEDIA Expo.  The new technology is going to be used in upcoming speakers from Atlantic Technology and Outlaw Audio, and in speakers from at least six other licensees, according to Atlantic Technology president Peter Tribeman (shown below).

Atlantic and licensing partner Solus/Clements call the technology H-PAS, which stands for Hybrid Pressure Acceleration System. H-PAS involves no electronics and no special driver design. It’s purely a matter of the internal construction of the speaker cabinet. It combines elements of several cabinet types, including acoustic suspension, bass reflex, inverse horn, and transmission line—which means there’s got to be some pretty fancy baffling inside the box.

Normally, the sensitivity of a speaker decreases at frequencies below the resonance of its driver. But according to Philip Clements of Solus/Clements, H-PAS increases the sensitivity below driver resonance.  Clements and Tribeman say the technology is scalable to practically any type of speaker, from computer speakers to subwoofers.

Atlantic Technology demonstrated a prototype (shown above) of a new H-PAS tower speaker using dual 4-1/2-inch drivers. On deep bass material such as organ and bass drum, the output from the tiny woofers was truly incredible. I was watching the woofers carefully, assuming that their cones would be trying to rip free from the baskets, but the cones barely seemed to be moving. To my surprise, the bass didn’t have the boomy, punchless sound typical of bandpass enclosures.

The first H-PAS speaker will be a model from Atlantic Technology that the company hopes to launch in December. Other licensees include one “super-high-end company” (as Tribeman put it) and three mainstream speaker companies.—Brent Butterworth