PSB Shows Distinctive In-Wall Speakers At CEDIA EXPO '99

PSB Speakers, Canadian maker of high-performance speaker systems acclaimed by owners and reviewers around the world, is showing its full line of CustomSound in-wall speakers. The innovative line of in-walls focuses both top-level engineering and unprecedented attention on the needs of installers and builders, from whom it has been receiving a warm reception. According to PSB International President Darryl Pomicter, the CustomSound designs go well beyond the expected for in-wall speakers. ""You expect great acoustic design from Paul Barton,"" Pomicter says, ""and you certainly get it in these speakers. But they also go beyond that. Typical in-wall designs expect construction in the real world to be nicely 'plumb, square, and true.' It's not. Our new speakers come out of an understanding of the tolerances and irregularities of construction. The people who install them and build around them are going to appreciate them as much as listeners will."" ""In-walls started out,"" Paul Barton says, ""as a cut-a-hole-in-the-wall-and-hopeí phenomenon, just like the hole-in-the-car-pane1 process. New -construction was an afterthought. lt usually required different, additional bracketry and added expense, as did rework situations. Our speakers are designed with real-world installation needs just as high on the list of priorities as excellent sound."" ""All provide our Split-Ring backframe and Slide-On mounting bars, to allow accurate, efficient, and secure full-perimeter clamping on both new construction and retrofit installations. These speakers offer tremendous flexibility, and they come with niceties like elongated mounting holes that make it easy to true-up an installation. They have the same quality and contractor's orientation as electrical fixtures."" PSB's in-walls are high-end models, with 6-1/2-inch polypropylene-cone, rubber-surround woofers, and l-inch aluminum-dome swivel tweeters. All of them include the Split-Ringô backframe and Slide-Onô mounting bars. And all have front-mounted heavy-duty EQ switches with high and low positions, to tailor high and mid frequencies. (This can be especially useful for combining them with a separate subwoofer.) The top-of-the-line model, mounted on a removable baffle, is a design that is completely new to in-wall speakers. It uses two 6 &1/2-inch woofers, one of which is coupled coaxially with a 1-inch tweeter, in a sophisticated 2-1/2-way design that operates one woofer only at low frequencies and uses the other in the midrange as well. This allows a standard size baffle, just slightly longer or wider than for the usual small woofer/tweeter combination, to produce lower and louder bass output than an 8-inch driver. PSB is also offering another baffle-mounted system, which pairs a 6.5-inch woofer/midrange and a l-inch tweeter on a same-size removable rectangular baffle. Two other models--one a round-mount, the other a square-mount design that use the same combination of 6-1/2-inch woofer and 1-inch coaxial swivel tweeter-round out a useful range of choices. ""Besides their distinctive, PSB sound and installability,"" Barton says, ""all these models have really useful setup flexibility. The swivel feature on the *tweeter...makes-, it easy for' the listener to increase the range of preferred locations for the speakers, and the front-mounted two-position crossover switch makes it possible to adjust the speakers to the room."" CustomSound models, all of which are presently shipping, have suggested retail prices ranging from $200 to $350 each.

For more information, contact Robert Brown at 781 784-8586.