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To be at the movies and yet also in your pajamas and bunny slippers is the ultimate hi-tech entertainment experience for movie buffs everywhere. Home theater surround sound, however, can be cumbersome to wire and hang. The way around that is to single-enclose sound bars for mounting under flat panel TV screens. Proud as a peacock to be among the first, Definitive Technology displayed its best at CES, the Mythos SSA50, which is slated to go on sale next month.

Emulating the movie-hall experience, the SSA50 employs some psycho-acoustic sleight of hand by filtering sounds meant for the rear speaker to mimic the way the mind expects to hear sounds from behind. Perceived cross walk for better separation of the channel is achieved by shifting the phase of the sound waves from the left to the right drivers. Surround sound audio from a single speaker is one of the biggest up and coming trends in the home-audio market and Definitive Technology achieves it artfully through the utilization of nine drivers which create a faux-surround sound effect. It sounds as if there are rear speakers when indeed, there are none. Listeners are fooled into thinking that the sound is coming from all around them.

The technology is not new, and the Mythos SSA50 soundbar will have to compete with similar products like the Yamaha YSP-4000 and the Philips HTS-8100. Still, with the hefty list price of $1,100, will there be any buyers?

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