One of Polk's most interesting offerings at this year's CES is the Wireless Surround F/X, a tidy one-box solution to surround sound whose name doesn't quite do it justice. Designed to be placed on the floor or a table or shelf behind the listener, the Wireless Surround F/X's four 2.5-inch and 5.25-inch woofer, project rear and surround sound information up into the room, where it reflects from room surfaces to create a huge back-of-the-room-filling sound field. Polk claims that the Wireless Surround F/X generates a "convincing discrete left, right, rear and back surround stage," and while I might not go quite that far, I was still quite impressed with the demo in Polk's suite. The sound is nice and diffuse without exhibiting the sort of hollowness or phase weirdness you might expect from a solution of this sort.
Connecting the Wireless Surround F/X couldn't be simpler: just plug it into a power main, and connect the included transceiver to the surround channel outputs of your A/V receiver or processor. It doesn't get much more plug-and-play than that.
The Wireless Surround F/X should be available starting in the second quarter for suggested retail price of $399.95.
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