Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

All things being equal, this would correlate with a rather laid-back balance. But, as can be seen from fig.4, which shows the Aegis One's lateral dispersion, the speaker is much more directional at the top of the woofer's passband than it is at the bottom of the tweeter region. In moderate-size rooms, this will tend to compensate for the lack of on-axis energy in the same region. However, as I did find the speaker somewhat laid-back, it obviously doesn't compensate entirely. And note how directional the 1" tweeter is above 9kHz. Although the Acoustic Energy has good HF extension on-axis, the lack of in-room energy in the top audio octave will make it sound rather mellow in all but very small rooms, as I found in my auditioning.

Fig.4 Acoustic Energy Aegis One, lateral response family at 50", normalized to response on tweeter axis, from back to front: differences in response 90 degrees-5 degrees off-axis, reference response, differences in response 5 degrees-90 degrees off-axis.

n the vertical plane (fig.5), the crossover topology gives rise to large suckouts between 1 and 4kHz for listeners sitting well above or below the tweeter axis. But the balance doesn't change significantly over quite a wide (±10 degree) angle, meaning that the Aegis One should be relatively unfussy regarding stand height. Fig.6 shows the speaker's spatially averaged response in my listening room. This is an impressively flat in-room balance, though the prematurely rolled-off extreme highs make their presence known. The bass also rolls off a little early compared, for example, with the PSB Alpha that I reviewed in April.

Fig.5 Acoustic Energy Aegis One, vertical response family at 50", from back to front: differences in response 45 degrees-5 degrees above axis, reference response, differences in response 5 degrees-45 degrees below axis.

Fig.6 Acoustic Energy Aegis One, spatially averaged, 1/3-octave, free-field response in JA's listening room.