Klipsch Touts Power Output in Premium Dolby Atmos Sound Bar Launch

Klipsch bowed two premium Dolby Atmos sound bars Thursday. The flagship $1,499 system includes a 54-inch, 1200-watt sound bar matched with a pair of wireless surround speakers and a 12-inch wireless subwoofer, “unheard of in this category,” said Mark Casavant, senior vice president-global brand and business development, on an embargoed call last week. The sound bar and surrounds in the 5.1.4-channel system have upfiring speakers for Atmos. Casavant compared the wood-enclosed Cinema 1200 and Cinema 800 sound bars to “general plastic sound bars” on the market, saying the Klipsch models are “premium, high-fidelity loudspeakers that just happen to be in a sound bar form factor.” They use the company’s design philosophy of horn-loaded high-, mid- and low-frequency drivers to deliver high-efficiency, low-distortion flat frequency response with controlled directivity, he said. Senior Product Manager Michael Buratto referenced Klipsch’s position in professional cinema sound systems, emphasizing bass reproduction below 50 Hz “where all the boom happens” in movies. The Cinema 1200 “sounds twice as loud” as competing systems at 30 Hz, he said. Both sound bars have built-in universal Wi-Fi for multiroom streaming and work with Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Spotify Connect. Other features include HDCP 2.3 for 8K HDR video passthrough, dialog enhancement modes and Bluetooth 5.0. Surround speakers ($279 each) are options with the $879 800-watt Cinema 800, a 3.1-channel 48-inch sound bar with three high-frequency, four mid-range drivers and a 10-inch subwoofer. Klipsch also announced a Cinema 600 sound bar with Dolby Audio at $499.