After an inspiring visit with the planar magnetic technologies speaker innovator at CES, RS editorial director Jeremy Glowacki followed up with Wisdom Audio president Mark Glazier to find out what it was like being the only in-wall speaker manufacturer in the specialty highperformance audio suites of the Venetian Towers this past January.
How’d the Venetian work out for you?
It worked very well for us last year
Mark Glazier, Wisdom Audio and this year. All of our Sage Series speakers offer extremely high performance while also supporting in-wall, onwall, or freestanding applications. We demonstrated our L150i reference in-wall model. Many people commented that they were surprised, even shocked, that the best sound they heard at the show came from an in-wall system.
Briefly explain why planar magnetic technologies are used in your loudspeakers.
This technology enjoys specific technical and subjective advantages over more traditional designs. We are leveraging these benefits in our recently introduced Sage Series to create architectural speaker systems that yield performance that is comparable to the finest freestanding systems available while uniquely addressing common custom installation problems.
What challenges do you face when trying to educate dealers about your Sage product line, specifically, and planar magnetics, generally.
In addition to our proprietary planar magnetic transducers, our systems
Wisdom Audio’s Sage L150i speakers have aluminum frames and back boxes, are bi-amplified, utilize an electronic crossover and incorporate Audyssey MultEQ XT room correction. Dealers have reacted positively to our application of these technologies, as they have been waiting for a genuine high-performance in-wall speaker solution. Once dealers grasp the benefits of the entire high-end system approach we have chosen, the advantages of the unique planar magnetic drivers used in the Sage Series are better appreciated.
How do you address the dealer business opportunity of selling the Sage Series, especially in our current economy?
The Sage Series was specifically developed to address the significant gap between highperformance video and currently available inwall and on-wall speaker solutions. Sage Series models allow a dealer to address a need for those customers that demand both a high-performance speaker solution and a “discreet” installation. If the customer wants to have it all, we allow a dealer the opportunity to make a sale that they otherwise cannot make—that is new business.
