Home theater surround-sound setups use five speakers to emulate the movie-hall experience — a pair front and back, and one speaker in the center. But if you can't wire and hang such a system, there is a workaround: Single-enclosure sound bars for mounting under flat-panel TV screens. Definitive Technology showed off its $1,099 Mythos SSA50 array, which will go on sale in February. Inside its 46-inch-wide aluminum enclosure, the SSA50 employs psychoacoustic tricks, like filtering the sounds meant for the rear speakers to mimic the way the mind expects to hear sounds from behind. The phase of the sound waves from the left and right drivers is shifted to reduce perceived crosstalk, for better separation of the channels.

The effect is to fool listeners into thinking the sound is coming from all around. Some single-enclosure models rely on bouncing sound off of walls, but if the arrangement of your entertainment center makes this difficult, the SSA50 could do the trick.

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