All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
As we mentioned in a CES preview piece last week, manufacturers are desperate to provide consumers with way to get surround sound without stringing wires throughout their living rooms. Just about every home theater manufacturer offers a horizontal wall-mounted speaker slab that sits under your television to provide simulated surround sound from the front wall.
Polk Audio's take on this, the SurroundBar ($1000), splits a 5.1-channel surround signal between seven cones and three dome tweeters, plus a powered subwoofer unit that can be located anywhere in the room.
In order to trick your ears into hearing surround sound, the system delays the signal to these speakers by varying degrees. Unlike other systems, which bounce the sound off of walls in order to create the surround effect, these work in any space. Polk demonstrated this by mounting the speaker in an open area, where attendees gathered to watch scenes from House of Flying Daggers.
The unit sounded pretty good, with a perceptible degree of spatial separation, but I can't say I was fooled into thinking the sound was coming from all around me. Nothing can replace true surround, as a Polk spokesperson admitted, but folks who want an easy way to add one wall-mounted speaker in the front of the room could find it to be an acceptable alternative.
