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climactic sequence, the extravagant de-
mands of “big-sound” impacts and colli-
sions were met with surprising realism.
In my standard checks for center-speak-
er performance, the 4200 C was a near per-
fect 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 aim-
ing 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 posi-
tion. 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 7,500-
cubic-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