52 MAY 2004 SOUND & VISION www.soundandvisionmag.com
PHOTOS BY TONY CORDOZA
TEST REPORT
DANIE L KUMIN
H
igh-tech wonders like the DVD
and Dolby Digital get much of
the credit, but the home theater
revolution owes just as much to
a more mundane development:
compact, affordable subwoofer/
satellite speaker systems. Indeed, sub/sat
arrays with six, seven, and even eight
speakers are now the home theater standard, found in “normal” homes as often as
in those of over-the-top A/V enthusiasts.
Boston’s Atlantic Technology can probably take as much credit as any manufacturer for furthering this trend. From its inception 15 years ago, all of its speaker systems have been sub/sat arrays. As home
theater sound has evolved, Atlantic Tech’s
offerings have grown ever more sophisticated. Case in point is its new System
4200, a THX Select-certified suite of compact satellites and a not-so-compact subwoofer. THX certification is a sort of Good
Housekeeping seal that guarantees the system has dispersion characteristics considered by Lucasfilm to be optimum for home
theater playback.
The 4200 array is clearly descended
from previous Atlantic Technology speakers, but its manufacturer claims several important distinctions for it beyond the new
slanted-back cabinets. First, the drivers are
said to be the same ones used in Atlantic
Tech’s $17,000 flagship System 8200.
Second, the System 4200 features
C.O.R.E. (Custom Optimized Room Enhanced) technology to make it unusually
adaptable to system conditions and room
acoustics. The three front speakers have
both a Boundary Compensation switch (to
smooth out the sound if they’re installed
close to a wall or a big TV screen) and a
three-position treble adjustment. The surround speakers can be switched between
dipole and bipole operation via toggles un-
der the metal-screen grilles, which attach
to curiously strong magnets in the four corners. Niftoid!
The metal grilles on all the satellites are
also a dramatic visual improvement over
the boring black knit on many previous Atlantic Technology speakers. But the most
obvious innovation is the removable decorative side panels, which bring cellphone
fashion thinking to home theater. With the
front speakers and subwoofer, you can
choose between gloss black, maple, or
matte silver. Snapping panels in place was
a cinch, and they looked great.
I set up the system as usual: front L/R
speakers on stands, the center speaker on
top of my TV, and the surrounds (set in
their dipole mode, initially) on high, sidewall shelves. Though the 642 SB subwoofer has a 12-inch driver, it’s barely smaller
than my everyday 15-incher. I placed it in
the best location in my room, which is to
Atlantic Technology
System 4200 Home Theater Speakers
54 MAY 2004 SOUND & VISION www.soundandvisionmag.com
the left and slightly behind the front left
speaker.
The 4200 LR front speakers are true satellites, not intended for use without a subwoofer, so I began with plain stereo, but
with the subwoofer hooked up, too. What I
initially heard was a “close,” dry sound
with a hint of male-voice chestiness — that
gave me a chance to start trying out those
C.O.R.E. controls.
A bit of experimentation told me that the
4200 LRs are sensitive to vertical placement. I adjusted the stands so that their
tweeters were about even with my seated
ear height and switched on the Boundary
Compensation switches, since they stood
only 18 inches to either side of my TV. The
midrange became more open and relaxed,
while the treble added significant air and
life to the mix. And that touch of “hoo”
caused by reflections from the screen disappeared almost entirely.
The Atlantic Tech system punched out
multichannel music with finesse and impressive impact. The DVD-Audio mix of
Donald Fagen’s Kamakiriad solo album is
an amazingly pristine production in both
its recording and performance (almost antiseptic), and the System 4200 showed its
virtues to a tee: preternatural clarity — especially noticeable on drums and guitars
— and huge dynamic range.
The System 4200 also proved to be one
of those speaker systems that sounds better
the louder you play it. I found myself listening to Fagen’s “Snowbound” repeatedly
at ever-increasing volumes, reaching a level that audibly sweated the front-speaker
trio some 10 dB above THX reference level — and that’s loud.
One advantage of a system that’s properly designed as a sub/sat layout from the
ground up is that you don’t have to fuss
with crossover and level settings. I set the
642 SB subwoofer’s Lowpass switch to
Bypass, skipping its onboard crossover in
favor of my preamp/processor’s, which I
set to 80 Hz. After I balanced levels, the
system sounded perfectly integrated. The
languid, but incredibly solid bass on “Snowbound” was deliciously rich and punchy,
yet with the superb definition and “quickness” that only an excellent sub and an expertly matched sub/sat system can achieve.
The Fagen DVD also provided perfect
test material for comparing the 4200 SR’s
bipole and dipole modes. The verdict: bipole wins. I still prefer dipole surrounds for
movie sound and naturalistically recorded
music, but with mixes that put discrete material in the surround channels — like a
hand-percussion shaker in the right rear —
bipole clearly sounded better.
With this musical introduction, I expected nothing short of great movie sound
from the System 4200, and I wasn’t disappointed. Playback was about as seamlessly
integrated, solidly spatial, and colorful and
dynamic as I could want.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a first-rate 5.1-channel production
with just about every surround sound virtue. Through the sequence of the flying car
catching up to the train, I was struck by
how little the timbre of the engine’s poppop-popping changed as it swooped from
channel to channel and position to position. The quidditch match a bit later might
as well have been designed as a home theater demo: the whizzing balls and brooms,
crashes and impacts were all spectacularly
present and three-dimensional. And in the
PLUS
Outstanding multichannel performance.
Impressive bass, full-range dynamics.
Bipole/dipole-selectable surrounds.
Changeable side panels.
MINUS
Big subwoofer.
Center-speaker base a little too high.
TEST REPORT
Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets could have been designed as
a home theater demo disc, and the
Atlantic Technology System 4200 met
every wizardly challenge.
4200 LR 4200 C 4200 SR 642 SB
(front L/R) (center) (surround) (subwoofer)
TWEETER 1-inch dome 1-inch dome two 1-inch domes —
MIDRANGE two 5
1
⁄4-inch cones two 51⁄4-inch cones two 41⁄2-inch cones —
WOOFER ———12-inch cone
ENCLOSURE sealed sealed sealed sealed
POWER ———300 watts
INPUTS/ gold-plated gold-plated gold-plated RCA line-level I/O;
OUTPUTS multiway binding multiway binding multiway binding level, low-pass
AND posts; Boundary posts; Boundary posts; Bipole/ controls; normal/
CONTROLS Compensation Compensation Dipole switch bypass, phase-
and treble and treble invert, and auto-
switches switches power switches
DIMENSIONS 8 x 15 x 9
7
⁄
8
181⁄2x 81⁄2x 8 11 x 123⁄8x 73⁄4 19 x 21 x 181⁄
2
(WxHxD) inches inches inches inches
WEIGHT 14 pounds 16 pounds 11 pounds 65 pounds
FINISH maple, gloss maple, gloss black or white; maple, gloss
black, or matte black, or matte metal-screen grille black, or matte
silver side panels; silver side panels; silver side panels;
metal-screen grille metal-screen grille black cloth grille
PRICE $930 a pair (plus $550 (plus side $900 a pair $920 (plus side
Total: $3,500 in side panels; $70 panels; $50 in panels; $80 in
maple, $3,600 in in maple, $105 in maple, $75 in maple, $120 in
black or silver black or silver) black or silver) black or silver)
MANUFACTURER Atlantic Technology, www.atlantictechnology.com; 617-762-6300
fast facts
climactic sequence, the extravagant demands of “big-sound” impacts and collisions were met with surprising realism.
In my standard checks for center-speaker performance, the 4200 C was a near perfect tonal match for the 4200 LRs, and its
midrange tones changed very little as I
moved off-center. Vertical positioning was
just as critical for the 4200 C as for the
4200 LRs. Fortunately, the center speaker
incorporates a tiltable base that makes aiming the tweeter easy. It’s cleverly simple
and effective, but it does raise the speaker a
couple of inches higher than optimal for
TV-top placement.
Okay, okay, I’m nit-picking. Atlantic
Technology’s System 4200 is simply an
outstanding speaker suite for medium-size
rooms. It might not be my first choice if all
I played was stereo music — but I can’t
imagine anyone seriously considering it
primarily for that. For everything else,
movies and multichannel music alike, it’s
an undeniable winner. I don’t think you
can ask for much more from so compact a
speaker system. Expensive? Yes. Worth it?
Absolutely. S&V
in the lab
All of the response curves in the graph are
weighted to reflect how sound arrives at a
listener’s ears with normal speaker placement.
The 4200 LR left/right front and 4200 C center
speakers had virtually identical on-axis response,
with curious roughness above 1 kHz. The 4200
LR had extremely uniform off-axis response,
while the 4200 C had some lobing at 30° and
wider listening angles. The Boundary-On switch
position cut output below 270 Hz by 3 dB for the
4200 C and half that amount for the 4200 LR.
The HF Energy switch cut output by 1 dB above
5 kHz when set to the Reverberant position and
boosted it by 1 dB in the Damped Room position. The 4200 SR had the classic relatively
smooth but limited bandwidth response often
seen with bipolar speakers. Measured directly
on-axis in the Dipole setting, it had a 30-dB deep
null that began at 150 Hz and extended to 8 kHz.
I measured bass limits for the 641 SB
subwoofer with it set to maximum bandwidth
and placed in the optimal corner of a 7,500cubic-foot room. In a smaller room users can
expect 2 to 3 Hz deeper extension and up to 3
dB higher sound-pressure level (SPL). The sub
had an impressively uniform power delivery
across its bandwidth, delivering 100 dB SPL or
greater at every frequency from 25 Hz on up. In
the crossover-bypass setting, its frequency
response extended to nearly 200 Hz. Because
of a malfunction in my sample, I was unable to
test the variable crossover. — Tom Nousaine
decibels
hertz
front left/right
center
surround
subwoofer
20 100 1k 10k 20
k
–15
–10
–5
0
5
10
15
Sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter with 2.8 volts of
pink-noise input)
front left/right .............................................88 dB
center ........................................................89 dB
surround ....................................................88 dB
Impedance (minimum/nominal)
front left/right.....................................4.5/8 ohms
center................................................4.5/8 ohms
surround............................................3.8/6 ohms
Bass limits (lowest frequency and maximum
SPL with limit of 10% distortion at 2 meters in a
large room)
front left/right .......................80 Hz at 86 dB SPL
center ..................................80 Hz at 84 dB SPL
surround..............................80 Hz at 73 dB SPL
subwoofer ..........................20 Hz at 79 dB SPL
103 dB average SPL from 25 to 62 Hz
105 dB maximum SPL at 62 Hz
bandwidth uniformity 98%
90 Hz to 19 kHz ±3.4 dB
90 Hz to 19 kHz ±3.7 dB
200 Hz to 15.4 kHz ±4.0 dB
29 Hz to 196 Hz ±4.7 dB
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