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Mythos® XTR®-SSA5 Press Brief The perfect surround bar for ultra-thin TVs Overview – The Definitive Mythos XTR-SSA5 is the first high performance single-enclosure surround speaker whose depth matches that of today’s ultra-thin TVs. It is a mere 1-5/8 inches deep when mounted on a wall, shallower than many ultra-thin TVs when they are wall-mounted with their factory sanctioned mounting hardware. Beyond its utility and clean modern styling the XTR-SSA5 stands out due to its uncompromising sound quality equivalent to full-size speakers. The Thinner the TV, the Worse the Sound Ultra-shallow TVs are the hottest category in TVs today. Consumers love their space-saving qualities and elegant design. But it comes at a high cost—significantly poorer sound quality. The speakers in these ultra-thin TVs are tiny and poorly placed (usually on the bottom or on the back of the set not even facing the listener). The result is sound that is barely good enough for news broadcasts but far from what is acceptable for sports, movies and action/adventure programming. Imagine the letdown when a movie buff returns home after seeing an audio/visual blockbuster movie in a Dolby Digital cinema and turns on his/her TV to watch a DVD with cheap 2-inch speakers providing the sound! “The sound and music are 50% of In order to equal the total high impact sight and sound the entertainment in a movie” experience that high definition digital sources are capable of George Lucas delivering, a great TV deserves a great component audio system. And the only component surround bar style loudspeaker that can deliver clarity, dynamic impact and life-like realism while matching the slim styling of new generation TVs is the XTR-SSA5. Mythos XTR-SSA5: The Perfectly Thin Surround Solution Many consumers have strong objections to using hard wired rear channel speakers due to decorating concerns, space limitations, hassle of hiding wires and countless other objections. Many of these people have either opted out of owning surround systems or have placed their rear speakers in the front of the room. SSA is a means to serve listeners who might otherwise be turned off by a traditional approach to surround sound. For those who want all the thrills of five-channel surround sound without the need for separate rear speakers, Definitive Technology has the solution: the XTR-SSA5. The SSA5 incorporates Spatial Array, a patented technology that optimizes the spatial presentation of five channels to create the illusion that you are surrounded by five separate high performance speakers. Enjoying a superb sounding audiophilegrade surround experience has never been more convenient. Simply connect an SSA5 to any multichannel receiver and powered subwoofer to enjoy enveloping surround sound without the bother of running wires and finding locations for rear speakers.
Spatial Array Technology Spatial Array technology uses complex directional cues to completely free the sound from the box and convince your ears and brain that you are surrounded by great sounding Definitive loudspeakers. Since Spatial Array does not depend on bouncing sound off walls, it works in virtually any room and setup configuration. With the SSA5, you’ll get big, lifelike three-dimensional imaging from all multi-channel sources. Spatial Array uses two techniques to fool your ear/brain listening mechanism. The first is inter-aural crosstalk cancellation that eliminates crosstalk signals (sounds from the Left channel reaching the Right ear and Right channel reaching the Left ear). By doing so the directional cues based on time arrival that are on the recording are perfectly preserved, thereby freeing the image from the box. The second technique is HRTF: Head Related Transfer Function. One of the ways a listener perceives a sound originating behind the listener (besides time arrival) is by the change in spectral balance of the sound caused by the shape and orientation of the human ear. Spatial Array applies a filter to the rear channels that mimics the effect of the head transfer function, thereby providing additional behind-thelistener directional cues. The combination of these two techniques frees the images from the enclosure and envelope the listener in a totally immersive spatial sphere of life-like sound. XTDD Mid/Woofer Technology The secret to the XTR-SSA5’s extraordinary performance is Definitive’s patent-pending XTDD technology Aluminum dome mid/woofer driver. The cone’s dome shape allows the voice coil and other parts to be tucked underneath the dome thereby reducing the back-end depth of the driver. Using state-ofthe-art computer modeling and decades of speaker design experience, Definitive engineers eliminated every iota of wasted space, optimized every part and maximized the moving surface area of a dynamic driver to shrink it down to an impossibly compact dimension without giving up high performance audio fidelity. The XTDD driver has the kind of dynamic punch, wide frequency range and broad dispersion that flat vibrating membrane panel-type and other thin speakers simply cannot match. Every part in this remarkable driver was custom designed from the ground up; nothing is “off the shelf.” The dome shaped diaphragm is black anodized Aluminum formed into a Catenary geometry. Catenary is the shape formed when a uniform material is suspended from two fixed points (as in the illustration at right). At each point in a catenary structure, opposing tension and compression forces are balanced making the structure stable and strong. A catenary shape maximizes the stiffness of the dome without resorting to using more material that would add mass. The XTR diver’s dome is a portion of a catenary arch and by nature resists the flexing and torsion that would reduce output and distort the sound. The voice coil winding is Copper-clad Aluminum wire. Copper is an excellent signal conductor but is heavy. Aluminum is low-mass but is not a good a signal conductor; by cladding AL wire with Copper, Definitive engineers got the best characteristics of both materials. The coil is wound around a polyimide
voice coil former. Polyimide materials were made famous by their use in space suits and the Apollo Lunar Module. It is stable to 400 °C, allowing the XTDD driver to play loudly without failure.
The voice coil/former assembly is coupled to the Aluminum dome via a fiber dome/coil coupler rather than the more common direct voice coil-to-dome method. The cone coupler has multiple advantages over the standard connection method. First, the dome is now driven over a much greater surface area than would be the case in a standard knife-edge connection. That means more cone support and a far stronger glue bond for better mechanical reliability. It also serves to suppress standing wave resonance on the dome for lower distortion and more true-to-life sound. To extend and strengthen the bass response of such an impossibly thin speaker the XTDD drivers are pressure coupled to four dome low-bass radiators that vibrate in sympathy with the active drivers. The center-mounted tweeter is the same hyper-definition Pure Aluminum Dome Tweeter found in Definitive’s award-winning state-of-the-art Mythos ST SuperTower®. The total effect is the kind of clarity, dynamic range and extended response that one would expect from a premium-priced normally-sized speaker. Aircraft-Grade Aluminum Enclosure Saves Space and Improves Performance Another secret to the XTR-SSA5’s astounding thin profile and superior performance is its aluminum cabinet. By specially shaping the enclosure and incorporating stiffening ribs and channels, we’ve made the space-efficient Aluminum extrusion ultra-rigid and resonance-free. The magnets of the XTDD drivers protrude through the rear wall of the enclosure to further minimize depth. A thermally conductive gasket seals the enclosure/magnet interface and transfers heat from the driver’s rare earth magnet to the enclosure, making the whole enclosure a giant heat dissipater! And everyone knows that a cool driver is a happy, reliable driver.
Is It Thin Enough? With TV manufacturers advertising TVs with 1.2-inch and even less than 1-inch depth one might wonder if the XTR-SSA5 is shallow enough to look good next to these impossibly thin TVs. The answer is a resounding YES. First, the advertised depth of a TV is the depth without the hardware necessary to mount the TV on a wall. For example the leading brand of LED TVs is advertised as being 1.2 inches deep. But the wall mount hardware brings the installed depth to 1.75-inches, .13-inches deeper than the XTR-SSA5 installed on wall. Should TVs get even thinner (and they probably will) the XTR-SSA5’s design is up to the challenge. The XTR-SSA5 is bow shaped with knife-edge sides. The sides are less than an inch from the wall so even if TVs get shallower; the XTR-SSA5 will be up to the task. Ultimate Placement Versatility The XTR-SSA5 comes supplied with everything you need to use place it wherever you want to use it. The XTR-SSA5 can be mounted directly to the wall using the key-hole slots on the back of the enclosure and well-anchored screws. If you choose the speaker can be wall mounted using the supplied mounting bracket that allows either vertical or horizontal orientation with a total installed on-wall depth of only 4.2cm. Two types of adjustable support feet are supplied in cases where the user places the XTR-SSA5 on a shelf in front of or below the TV. The SSA5 comes with clever adjustable feet that can raise the speaker over the TV’s protruding shelf stand (left image). It can also be placed on a shelf below the TV and angled up towards your ears via the supplied shelf supports (right image). This compact package of innovative brilliance has it all—drop-dead gorgeous styling, ultimate placement versatility and big speaker sound quality. Specifications Dimensions: (mounted on wall without bracket) 45" L x 1-5/8" D x 5-1/4" H Driver complement: 10 each 3-1⁄2" (90mm) XTDD dome mid/bass drivers, 3 each 1" (25mm) Pure Aluminum Dome Tweeters Frequency response: (overall on wall) 60Hz – 30kHz Sensitivity: 90dB Impedance: 8 Ohms nominal
