FS5 Front Stage Loudspeaker // 50"

Home theater sound has come a long way in the past 20 years. Back then, it was common to use full-sized speakers for the three front Left-Center-Right (LCR) channels. This is still an excellent choice for some rooms. However, for the decor-conscious or for secondary rooms, multi-speaker setups such as these are less desirable. The Atlantic Technology FS5 Front Stage Loudspeaker was designed for just these applications.

The FS5 is a true, no-excuses high-fidelity loudspeaker system that contains all three front channel LCR speakers in a single enclosure. Its sleek, trim cabinet is sized and proportioned to look perfect when used with thin-panel LED/LCD TVs with screen sizes from 50 inches and up. The FS5 can be wall-mounted, placed on a shelf or used with Atlantic’s special Shelf-2405, which provides a shelf attached directly to the flat screen TV itself.

Sound waves emanate out from a woofer or tweeter just like ripples in a pond emanate away from the spot where you tossed in the pebble. But if you put something in the water near that spot—like the leg of a pier—when those ripples hit the obstruction, they’ll break up into many smaller waves and the smoothness of the original wave is gone. That’s exactly what happens when a speaker sends out its sound into a nearby obstruction—like the frame of a typical grille. The sound hits that frame—like water ripples hitting a post—and the sound breaks up, smearing the clarity of the original signal.

The drivers of the FS5 are mounted in a dense resonant-free mounting plate that fits into a reciprocal cutout in the grille frame. The result is that the drivers “see” a smooth local acoustic environment, so none of their sound diffracts off the blunt inner surface of the grille frame, the way it does on a conventional speaker. Instead of multiple “ripples” interfering with each other, the FS5’s sound is always clear and unfettered, for maximum clarity.