Innovative corner-mount sub solves the "ugly black box" dilemma-finally!

The reason behind our corner subwoofer was really the result our customers’ desire for great bass without seeing the subwoofer in their room (the “big black box” syndrome).

So we came up with the idea of a corner-mounted sub solution. We wonder why we didn’t think of it before. There are lots of things in favor of corner-mounting, but two in particular: the room gain you get from three intersecting reinforcing boundaries, and most especially, the certainty of placement. With a conventional box sub, the manufacturer is never sure exactly where the end user is going to place the unit. A box sub placed near a corner will sound quite different than the same sub placed halfway down the wall and two feet out into the room. There is no way for a box sub’s built-in EQ to reliably compensate for wildly differing room placements, and even if it could, a black 17” cube still looks like a black 17” cube—ugly.

Our 10e CSB takes advantage of the fact that we know where it’s going to go. It’s going in the corner, and the EQ is specifically adjusted for that location. We take advantage of low bass room gain, and we EQ out any tendency towards mid-bass bloom. While every single corner in every single room may not be absolutely identical, the variations in room-imposed frequency response are lessened by an order of magnitude by the certainty of corner placement.

Once we decided on a corner-mounted sub, we still had to execute the details correctly. First off, we decided on a sealed acoustic suspension design. We like the superb transient and low group delay characteristics afforded by a correctly executed acoustic suspension design. Many people have called our subs “fast” or “detailed” or “musical”. To us, we feel listeners are simply reacting to the sound of a good sealed sub, and the advantages that design can deliver.

The six-sided cross section of the enclosure makes for a wonderfully strong, naturally non-resonant cabinet. The 10” driver has an unusually long excursion, vented voice coil and polepiece, and really terrific power handling. It’s a down-firing design, which we feel is very practical in this application, as it eliminates any need for a grille. The cabinet comes finished in an attractive satin black paint, but it can easily be re-painted to blend right in with any décor. If there were a big cloth or metal grille, the unit’s repaintable “stealth” factor would be seriously compromised.

We’re also sticklers by nature over the smallest acoustic details. Since the woofer is down-firing, we wanted to make sure we eliminated any possibility of audible “cavity resonance” between the woofer and the floor. After much measuring and listening, we added a precise amount of foam absorption to the cabinet in the area just outside the woofer. This absorption cures any slight audibility of resonance that could occur between the woofer and the floor in the 200-300Hz region. Even though the sub will be crossed over ELECTRICALLY lower than this (probably between 60-100Hz, depending on the receiver/processor’s x-over choices), there could still be some ACOUSTIC artifacts from the woofer-to-floor cavity. That’s why we built a small, heavily-damped chamber around the driver. Now the sub produces solid low bass without any extraneous upper-band overtones, and it’s totally independent of whether or not the floor is hardwood or thick pile carpeting. This is subtle stuff, but it’s the way we approach things. We want you to be completely satisfied with the sound.

We have also incorporated our exclusive Clear Filter Design (CFT ™), which introduces a small reciprocal filter to counteract any inherent resonance introduced by the enclosure itself. We employ this on all of our subwoofers, regardless of price, and it’s another reason that people say our subs are clean and articulate.

Two quick notes about the amplifier’s 180-watt power rating. One, Atlantic Technology doesn’t play the 'inflated power' game. We could have called this a “350-watt” amp if we were less scrupulous, but it’s just not something we’re interested in wasting our time on. Second, because our sub benefits from a reinforced output as a result of its three-boundary (wall-wall-floor) corner placement, the 180-watt amp is really equivalent to a much higher rated amplifier used in a conventional two-boundary (wall-floor) setting.

“Blows away our old subwoofer for sheer power; also provides a tighter, more controlled bass that we weren’t hearing before. 97 [out of 100]” — HDTV Etc. Magazine