Wall-mounted big sound

Manila, Philippines -  People are moving up — quite literally. After a day’s work, more of us make a beeline for towering residential buildings that, ironically, promise smaller living space. Such is modern life.

For the new urban pace and paradigm, appliances and gadgets are getting smaller, smarter — better. Even as TV screens are bigger, they have become thinner and offer sharper definition. However, the casualty of all this compression has been sound. TV manufacturers have yet to provide commensurate performance for the theater-quality behemoths they put out.

Of course, traditional, big-baffled speaker systems have been around for quite some time. Churning out processed, filtered sounds from a whole range of audio receivers, they make the aural experience up to snuff.

But there’s the rub as well. These high-performance systems are usually stout in build — an interior decorator’s worst nightmare when imagining a welcoming haven in a condominium union. When space is a premium, it behooves us to choose wisely or suffer in cramped confinement.

Manoj Budhrani offers relief for the confounded audiophile. His company Powertrip imports and distributes a number of quality home theater and hi-fi brands for more discriminating clients. Among those brands is Definitive Technology, which has seemingly solved the sonic quandary of size as might.

The WD Red line features NASware technology designed to improve reliability and system performance, reduce customer downtime, and simplify the integration process.

Its Mythos XTR loudspeakers certainly punch above their weight class. Measuring a measly one and a half inches deep (two and a half for the XTR-20BP), each speaker array delivers performance that will shame many of those full-sized baffles. Purposefully intended to give voice to today’s insanely thin TVs, the Mythos XTRs will hook up to any receiver system, and hangs nicely on the wall — flanking your flat screen.

Definitive Technology, a US brand which has been engineering and building home audio and home theater loudspeakers since 1990, is able to serve up performance from its small-footprint speakers through its XTDD technology driver — which enabled engineers to optimize space use and maximize the “moving surface area of a dynamic driver” without having to give up the quality and, well, chutzpah. The brand contends that this sort of performance from small arrays is previously unheard of.

During an exclusive demo for NetWorks, three XTR-50s (left, right, and center) were hooked up to a 1,500-watt SuperCube 6000 subwoofer, and a couple of XTR-20BPs for surround effect. The result was a rich, room-filling, and compelling experience that translated to optimum movie viewing and concert appreciation. Budhrani says the “secret sauce” is in the aluminum dome low-bass radiators that give clarity, dynamic range, and accuracy in the XTR-50 (also available in the 40 and 60).

Per-piece pricing is as follows for the system: XTR-20BP (P14,450), SuperCube 6000 (P53,900), XTR-50 (P34,950), while a top-shelf XTR-60 costs P44,950.

Another thing that sets Definite Technology speakers apart is that customers are afforded the latitude to assemble their own system that is space (and budget) appropriate. “Whether as a 5.1 or 7.1 system, ours are standalone speakers designed to work with our customers’ existing receivers,” explains Budhrani. “You can pick whatever you want, or our dealers can pick for you depending on your need and want to ensure you have a big smile on your face.”

And, quite possibly, your ears, too.

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Definitive Technology is available at Audio Excellence, Sheridan St., Mandaluyong City (746-0598); Audible Illusions, Timog Avenue, Quezon City (374-3620, 738-1384); and Architectural Audio, Greenbelt 5, Makati City (621-5173). For more information, visit www.powertrip.com.ph.