Altec BIAS 550

ALTEC's attempt to crash into the home market, a few years short of Altec's gradual goodbye.
A huge effort built like a professional monitor with features galore, the list price must have been... quite discouraging.

BIAS means Built In Amplification System btw.

The BIAS 550 is, naturally, an active loudspeaker system : five Class AAB amplifier power each transducer, each designed to meet the other - 700W per channel in pentamplification, with a maximum of .05% of distortion per amplifier.

The drivers themselves are carbon fiber for the bass and mid and polyimide diamond-coated for the high-mid and tweeter domes - rigid, lightweight and costly.
Polyimide is a thermoset plastic coated with a vapor-deposited 4µ layer of titanium.

The upper mid dome which covers the 1,5Khz...4,5Khz region has a 2" voice coil, double damper spider and bigga strontium magnet.

Adding to this is the active equalization : plus or minus 6dB for each amplifier/transducer changed either off the BIAS 550 itself or.. with an IR remote !

The enclosure itself is in fact four in one : each bass, sub-bass driver and filter/amplifier is enclosed in its own A.C.R.S. (Acoustical Cabinet Resonance Suppression) sub-cabinet.
Each cabinet is separated from the others with big damping foam rubber bars and all sub-enclosures are sealed acoustic suspensions.

The high/mid vertical array is condensed into another cabinet which can also swivel around 15° for better positioning - Kenwood (and others) had tried that in the late 1970s with the LS-1900.


All in all a big 400kg wow which however didn't help Altec staying afloat, let alone keep the competition with the once in-house JBL men.

I have no idea how many of the BIAS 550 were produced - probably a model "made to order" ?