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Paul Hales, AV industry veteran and founder of Pro Audio Technology (a.k.a. PRO), today announced the launch of a speaker company specializing in bringing “large-scale sound to residential and commercial installations where aesthetics and compact size are paramount.”

Theory Audio Design will make its formal debut at CEDIA Expo 2018, which opens next week in San Diego, and expects to begin shipping its first products in early 2019.

“PRO continues to thrive and is a leading brand in elite home theater and distributed audio systems around the world,” Hales said. “With Theory, my goal was to bring the thrilling sound for which my products are known to a broader audience, and that is exactly what we’ve done. I cannot wait to show off these ground-breaking products at CEDIA.”

The company’s initial lineup comprises three in-wall and four slender on-wall speakers, featuring dual 5-, 6-, and 8-inch woofers, stand-alone subwoofers with 12- and 15-inch drivers, three soundbars designed to pair with 65-, 75- and 85-inch TVs, and two “amplified loudspeaker controllers.”

Borrowing engineering and “professional-grade componentry” from sister company Pro Audio Technology, the heart of Theory Audio Design speakers is a 1.4-inch aluminum-diaphragm compression driver and proprietary waveguide, said to achieve 110 dB SPL with a 1-watt input, and reflex-loaded carbon-fiber woofers said to deliver between 95 and 100 dB SPL per watt.

The on-wall speakers will be offered in black or white and boast 3.6-inch-deep custom aluminum enclosures featuring rounded edges, machined aluminum accents, and a selection of decorative trim options to suit any décor. Trim options include carbon fiber, white, gray, or black gloss, natural and black aluminum, brushed stainless steel, and matte pewter.

Designed for quick and easy installation, Theory’s on-wall speakers and soundbars incorporate a T-slot mounting system to accommodate a variety of mounting brackets, including those with Z-Clips, yokes, and ball mounts.

At the core of every system is an “amplified loudspeaker controller” that combines a 96-kHz/24-bit DSP processing engine and fan-less multichannel power amplifier in a compact chassis. Two versions will be available: the eight-channel ALC-1508B and nine-channel ALC-1809B, offering two and three 300-watt subwoofer channels, respectively, plus six bridgeable 100-watt channels.

The processor in both controllers offers a number of features, including multichannel bass management, 80 user-programmable parametric EQ filters (10 per channel), intelligent power limiting, adjustable gain and delay, and built-in signals for system diagnosis and calibration.

The ALC-1508B and ALC-1809B also incorporate an 8x8 matrix mixer, mic input, all-channel priority ducking/paging, four stereo plus mono-sum inputs, bass and treble controls, and up to 75msecs delay per channel for optimizing large outdoor distributed-audio systems. The system allows voice-activated devices to page any or all of the audio zones. When Alexa speaks, for example, currently playing audio is reduced in volume, or “ducked,” allowing Alexa to be heard throughout a distributed speaker network.

For more information, visit theoryaudiodesign.com.