Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Stemming from the foundation of Kondo Audio Note of Japan, Peter Qvortrup's Audio Note UK is, for many, a custodian of the definitive audio heritage. The debut of each Audio Note piece sparks obsession among adherents—ardor that outstrips mere fandom.

My first high-end purchase, in the mid-1990s, was from none other than Spin Doctor Michael Trei, who at the time was a dealer for Audio Note UK. (His partner in that venture was another Stereophile columnist, Herb Reichert.) The component was the Audio Note M2 Preamplifier. That exceptional piece was so dynamic and revealing that rolling its single 6SN7 tube provided a deep lesson in tonal color. The M2 showed how a great new old stock tube can impact everything from soundstage dimensions and music delivery speed to tonal transparency.

In 2023, I reviewed the Audio Note Meishu 300B Tonmeister Phono integrated amplifier. I was gobsmacked, buzzed, then sad because I was too poor to buy it. "The Tonmeister," I wrote, "together with the Audio Note SUT I auditioned it with, took what I hear from my vinyl collection and made it better, portraying each performance as a singular, unique event occurring at a particular time and place, its secrets revealed."

Then last year I reviewed the Audio Note TT-One Deluxe Turntable for AnalogPlanet, writing, "for those of you who crave the raw, unadulterated humanity of music and for whom perfectly relayed vinyl playback is a language understood more in the heart than the head, the Audio Note TT-One Deluxe is sweet surrender—a revelation."

Now I come, bank account relatively secure, senses alert, emotions reined in—well, mostly reined in—ready to audition the Audio Note UK AN-E/SPx Ltd. Field Coil loudspeaker ($65,000/pair).

But before we get to that, a question. Specifically, I sent Andy Grove, Audio Note's head of R&D, an email asking, Why does Audio Note UK make not one, not two, but 18 versions of its classic speaker, the AN-E? And that's just the AN-E. Audio Note also offers the AN-J, AN-K, AX-One, AX-Two, and AZ-Two Deluxe lines, each with its own variations. Why so many?

"It's to allow a high degree of granularity in refinement of materials such as cables, etc.," he wrote back.

Grove and Audio Note consultant Andy Whittle were the principal designers of the AN-E/SPx Ltd.

Before getting to all those variations, what makes an Audio Note speaker an AN-E? They share a 1" tweeter and an 8" mid/woofer. They all have an enclosure that's roughly 31" high, 14" wide, and 11" deep (footnote 1), with a rear port. Enclosures are made from veneered Baltic Birch, except for the least expensive models, which use MDF.

Now, what about the variations? Voice coils can have copper or silver wire, and crossovers can have any of several capacitor types. Magnetic materials can vary. For example, the Level 1 AN-E/D has standard paper cones, standard ferrite magnets, and copper voice coils. The D is the only AN-E that uses an MDF/chipboard cabinet. Its specified sensitivity is 94dB, and it costs $6034/pair. The Level 3 AN-E/SPe HE Signature has silver voice coils and AN-SPe cabling, achieves 97.5dB sensitivity, and costs $24,136/pair. The Level 2 AN-E Lexus Signature, which had an external crossover, cost $12,000/pair when Art Dudley reviewed it in 2008; today's equivalent speaker is the AN-E/LX HE Signature. It has silver voice coils, "high-efficiency" hemp drivers, copper-foil capacitors made in-house, and AN-Lexus LX cabling. It costs $22,251.03/pair. Yes, the three cents are real.

The most expensive AN-E is another field-coil speaker, the AN-E-SOOTTO Ltd., at $395,000/pair. It is the only Level 6 Audio Note speaker. It has Audio Note's top pure-silver Litz cable, with 168 strands.

Every variation, the designers say, affects the sound.

The AN-E/SPx Ltd. Field Coil
What makes it very different from the other AN-E speakers is the use of field-coil drivers. The SPx Ltd. combines a 1" silk-dome field-coil tweeter and an 8" hemp-pulp field-coil mid/bass driver, both with silver voice coils. The woofer basket is manufactured from cast Zamak, with a reinforcement ring of 6082 aluminum alloy. Cabinet construction is from Baltic birch plywood. Six veneer options are available, and the cabinets can be custom painted in RAL colors. That rear-firing port is 2¼" wide and extends nearly 11" into the cabinet. It's stationed near the bottom of the cabinet, below a pair of handsome Audio Note posts at the cabinet's lower boundary. Internal cabling is 99.99% pure silver Litz. The umbilical cable from PSU to the speaker is AN-Lexus copper Litz. Sensitivity is rated at 97dB with a nominal impedance of 6 ohms. Damping, internal bracing, and crossover information is proprietary.

The drivers' silver voice coils are mated with Audio Note electromagnets that utilize a soft iron called Telar 57. "The poles are Telar 57 in this model," Grove wrote. "The top plate is Armco pure iron, and the casting is fully ferritized SG iron, made at a foundry in Britain's Black Country, which has a long history of metalworking."

All magnets, drivers, transformers, crossover resistors, copper chokes, and PSUs are made in Audio Note's UK factory and shipped to Austria for final assembly. "These components are extremely tightly matched, by our Austrian speaker-building team, to the other elements in the crossover, which in turn is matched to its partnering crossover in the other speaker in the stereo pair," Audio Note representative Martin Grennall told me in an email. "These are then matched to the drive units. This matching process, which all our K, J, and E models go through regardless of the Level, is crucial."

A field-coil speaker needs an external power supply; the ones provided with the AN-E/SPx Ltd. are modest, standing 11½" wide, 10½" deep, and 4" high. They're not heavy. There are two supplies in each box, one for each driver, powered from individual windings on a common transformer.

The AN-E/SPx Ltd. may be Level 5, but it's still, in a sense, entry-level, with room to grow. "We decided to make the entry-level AN-E/SPx Ltd. as unobtrusive as possible," explained Grove, "hence the internal crossover and small PSU. I am working on larger upgrade PSUs now, and they will follow when time allows.

"In order to make something stable and convenient, we decided to develop an active power supply," Grove wrote in a white paper. "It's based on an in-house mains transformer and stabilizer circuitry developed from the filament supplies used in the M3 to M10 preamps. The DC operating point is locked down tightly, yet, when transitioning into the audio band, the output impedance rises slightly, to avoid an unnatural grip. In a practical sense, they are quiet, compact, and cool running as well."

The AN-E/SPx Ltd.'s internal crossover network is largely consistent with that of prior designs, I was told, though it uses a hand-wound resistor, crafted on a phenolic former to mitigate resonances that sensitive field-coil drivers could expose. Copper inductors and custom-made polyester capacitors are used.

"The drivers are substantially bigger and heavier than even the alnico versions, and this required modifications to the cabinet, the tweeter faceplate, and the woofer basket." This, too, is from the white paper. "With regard to sound quality, the tweeter faceplate is the most interesting and was very time consuming to get right. We entirely redesigned the faceplate mounting surface so [that] it is much more firmly coupled to the magnet-body metalwork and uses a cork gasket to aid with damping. Additionally, after numerous trials with aluminum and various plastic materials, we arrived at a nonmagnetic steel alloy over which a powder coat is applied."

Finished in Palisander, which is also called Brazilian rosewood, my review pair of AN-E/SPx Ltd. speakers are the most gorgeously veneered speakers to ever grace my Greenwich Village crib. There's gloss, and then there's GLOSS. The speakers shine like mirrors, reflecting the contents of my listening room so as to almost disappear—visually. Sonic stealth may be discussed later.

At Audio Note UK's Austrian factory, eight layers of polyurethane lacquer are applied with intermediate sandings then presanded four times before getting a high-gloss polish, followed by a quality check. Finishing time from the start of production until completion is two months or longer per speaker, depending on the veneer used.

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Footnote 1: "Roughly," because the dimensions are specified in millimeters: 790mm × 360mm × 270mm.