ENCLAVE AUDIO CINEHOME PRO brings us to the Enclave AudioCineHome PRO, a 5.1-channel wireless home theater system that fully eliminates the need to run speaker cables to the rear surroundsor any speakers and does so with superb reliability. It does offer substantial build and sound quality, and is the first WiSA-wireless powered home theater system to achieve THX certification. Enclave may be an unfamiliar name, though some readers will recall Sound&Vision’s 2016 review of the company’sCineHomeHD WiSA system (see soundandvision.com). That model was replaced last year by two redesigned systems, the CineHome PRO and the CineHome II.
The key differences beside THX certification in the PRO are the height of the thin, column-style satellite speakers and the system’s total number of drivers (23.6 inches vs. 15.75 inches; 14 drivers total vs. 12), the driver size for the powered sub (10-inch vs. 8-inch), and the design of the surrounds (bipoles in the CineHome II). Both systems are tagged on Enclave’s website as the “CineHub” edition, a reference to the small, 7 x 1.6 x 5.1-inch (W xHxD) black box that serves as the system’s brain and connection point for source components. TheCineHub has three inputs on it: an eARC/ ARC-enabledHDMI port, a Toslink optical, and an analog stereo mini-jack. There’s also Bluetooth for streaming music from your smartphone. TheCineHome PRO’s speakers are solid and offer a modern design in mae black with brushed silver top or end caps (metal on the LCRs, plastic on the surrounds).
The front LCR cabinets are made of MDF, while the rear surrounds are a high-density molded plastic; both materials emied a nonresonant, confidence-inducing thunk on a knuckle-rap test. Each of the nearly two-feet-tall front-channel LCRs has a pair of 3-inch paper-composite midwoofer drivers surrounding a 1-inch cloth dome tweeter in a classicD’Appolito array; there’s also a pair of forwardfacing ports to improve the bass response. The surrounds are shorter at about 16 inches and feature a single matching midwoofer and tweeter, along with a single port. Each speaker contains its own built-in class-D amplifiers, with no power rating specified. But a key advantage of any multi-driver powered speaker is that engineers are able to use digital crossovers and processing to fine-tune the sound in a way that’s not possible when designing conventional passive speakers for which the amplifier match is unknown.
The subwoofer uses a 10-inch paper-composite cone supported by a hidden downfiring port. Each speaker in the system requires a connection to 110-volt AC power. And that’s it the audio signals are handled using WiSA wireless communication. WiSAstands for Wireless Speaker & Audio, an association of hardware manufacturers embracing the same wireless communication standard that allows an audio link of up to 24-bit/96kHz resolution with near-zero latency across as many as seven channels plus the ability to support up to 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos. The system generates its own wireless network in the 5 GHz band to avoid interference from traditional household Wi-Fi.
SURROUNDS : 3 in paper-composite cone midwoofer, 1 in cloth dome tweeter; 3.4 x 16.1 x 5.3 in (WxHxD); 5 lb
SUBWOOFER : 10-in paper-composite cone woofer; 12 x 18.8 x 14.4 in (WxHxD); 27 lb
CINEHUB : 7 x 1.6 x 5.1 in (WxHxD); 0.9 lb
CONNECTIONS : (CineHub):HDMI eARC/ARC, optical digital, stereo analog mini-jack; Bluetooth 5.0
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