Theatrus Speakers
Theatrus Cinema Installation Speakers
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Home Theater has been growing ever since the invention of the 5.1 surround sound format which was introduced in 1990 by KODAK and Optical Radiation Corporation. Blasting into the market with releases like the classic Days of Thunder and The Doors (film), this new trend was here to stay! In recent years with the development of Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and Auro 3D, the demand for high-quality multi-channel speaker systems has constantly been raising the bar. Speakers and subwoofers are being pushed to the limits, creating a demand for a speaker with higher SPL's, detailed dynamics, better dialog clarity, and high power functioning internal components.
Not too long ago in 2014, the first ever Dolby Atmos enabled Home Theater AV Receivers were unveiled to the world, sparking the next best trend in Home Theater - Fully immersive 3D surround sound! At Aperion, we had been monitoring this very closely and shortly after in 2016 we knew what needed to be done - Create a speaker that would solve all of the above problems that traditional home audio, or pro audio speakers were not capable of. Breaking away from the traditional design framework, the Theatrus speaker combines a new driver layout, new woofer and tweeter materials, and enhanced crossover tuning and network, allowing placement of speakers behind a projector cinema screen. Theatrus not only excels in home theater applications, but also provides honest, detailed, accurate, and true reproduction for mixing and mastering recorded music. After 5 years of unremitting efforts, we unveil a new generation of cinema installation speakers - Theatrus! |
Air Motion Tweeter
| What makes the Theatrus AMT Tweeter so unique? In the current market there are basically two classifications of tweeter units, high sensitivity compression proaudio tweeters which easily have more than 100 dB sensitivity, or HiFi AV tweeters which mostly have a sensitivity of 92 dB or below. While proaudio style tweeters can handle louder sound pressures, they are known to easily cause fatigue and normally don't portray as much detail as the HiFi AV tweeter. These factors led us to shy away from a proaudio compression driver and continue the search for the perfect tweeter for our new Theatrus series. After some time of research and development and testing many tweeter styles trying to meet the requirements for our Theatrus Speakers, we hit a wall and development shortly stopped. We began to design the AMT style tweeter in 2018 as part of our Super Tweeter family. While an AMT design is nothing new to the industry, there are a small amount of companies who've mastered the engineering and manufacturing process and the Aperion team has been working with and mastered the process of the core material back in 2008. The Aperion AMT tweeter can achieve 103 dB sensitivity, and frequency response of up to 40 kHz, which we found to be perfect for both larger and medium sized home theater rooms. Knowing that this tweeter would operate at a higher SPL, we also added a protection circuit to help keep the tweeter safe. After a successful launch of the Dual Firing AMT Ribbon Super Tweeter in 2020, we knew this was the perfect technology to solve the issues at hand, high SPL, dynamically detailed high-frequencies with no distortion. |
Softdome Midrange
As more consumers pursue a truly Hi-Fi Home Theater, the performance demand for higher SPL's and detailed dynamics are setting a higher bar. This can be a cruel challenge for any speaker driver unit, especially for the tweeter. What's the best way to protect the tweeter? In addition to the AMT protective circuit, the Theatrus speaker also needs one last piece to the puzzle - the Midrange driver that can handle the same high sensitivity as its counterparts. The midrange is so crucial to provide even more detail to the sound field, so after designing and testing various 2" and 3" soft dome midrange drivers, the Theatrus speaker sounded best using the 2" driver. Our high end soft-dome midrange unit features a large, low distortion 50mm voice coil, which exceeds the normal size of this type of drive unit. It's wide pole structure and special damping coating significantly reduce the medium frequency segmentation vibration. This soft-dome midrange driver utilizes about a quarter of its rated power, so with very low distortion at high volumes it produces superior directivity and a wide, realistic stereo field with ease!
Curv™ Woofer
| Traditionally, producing a larger woofer cone that could achieve high sensitivity and detailed sound quality was difficult to do, even using the standard materials like aluminum, kevlar, woven-fiberglass. The Theaterus line features a new Curv material from Germany Propex Fabrics. The properties of this new Curv material are lightweight, yet rigged and stiff, maintain a high temperature resistance without any water absorption, and the most important in crating a driver unit - this matieral has a high Young's Modulus and internal damping. The Curv material does not require any glue or resins to set the shape like a traditional carbon-fiber or kevlar woofer. In fact most of the the time the glue or resin deteriorates the sound quality during construction, which is unfortunate because even carbon-fiber and kevlar materials have excellent properties for driver construction. Theatrus' Curv Woofers fuse the best values of internal speed of sound transmission, and internal damping which is difficult to achieve with other woofer types. This is exactly what the Theatrus line needed, high sensitivity and excellent sound quality. |
Adjustment
With the growth of the home theater and private cinema market, a projector screen is the optimal choice to replicate the experience of the big movie theaters. Projector screens also pose potential acoustical issues due to screen size and material and whether they're acoustically transparent or not. This can require unique solutions and workarounds regarding speaker placement and positioning, especially while working with multiple rows of seating in larger rooms. The new Theatrus Speakers adapts to these listening conditions by replicating the type of speaker to be used in a professional listening studio. Each Theatrus speaker has a focused sound stage to accommodate listening distances both long, or short, allowing a uniform sound stage throughout the room. The Theatrus speaker is able to be mounted On-Wall or In-wall, which naturally will also have an affect on the acoustic response. If mounting in the wall, the bass response was reduced by about -6 dB, which is not acceptable for professional performance. To address this issue, the Theatrus speaker went through many design adjustments to perfect the crossover network. This ultimately needed two settings: Baffle-Wall (In-Wall) or Free-Field (On-Wall). Along with the bass adjustment, we also included a high frequency adjustment to compensate the high frequency when the speaker is placed behind a projection screen. These subtle yet effective customizations allow Theatrus to perform at it's optimal level in various configurations.
After five years of research and development, the first generation of the Theatrus speaker line was launched into production by the end of 2021. Looking forward to 2022 and bringing continuous listening pleasure to your homes! Happy New Year!
Key Features
