When I reviewed Acoustic Energy's tiny AE1 minimonitor nearly four years ago (in Vol.11 No.9), I was mightily impressed. Enough so, in fact, that I concluded that review with the rather sweeping statement that the AE1 "redefines the art of miniature speaker design." Four years is a long time in the loudspeaker art, however, and I was interested in hearing how the AE1 stood up to more recent designs. I was also interested to find whether my tastes had changed. The speaker may or may not have changed, but had I? Were…
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JA wrote a Follow-up on Acoustic Energy AE1 in July 1992 (Vol.15 No.7):
Sidebar: 1992 Measurements
Fig.1 shows the AE1's electrical impedance magnitude and phase. The tuning of the twin ports lies at 53Hz, while the overall load will be kind to amplifiers, only dropping momentarily to 8 ohms in the lower midrange and remaining above 10 ohms for nearly all the audio band. This little speaker should be particularly well-suited to classic tube amplifiers, both due to its lack of a need for current and to the significantly smaller modification of its frequency response caused by the interaction between its load and the amplifier's source impedance. The…
The AE1's impulse response (fig.7) is dominated by the ultrasonic—ie, inaudible—tweeter ringing. The step response (fig.8) is also obscured by the ringing from the tweeter, but suggests that both drive-units are connected in inverted acoustic polarity, this confirmed by looking at the step responses of the individual units (fig.9). This graph also shows that the tweeter's output leads that of the woofer by about 250µs.
Fig.7 Acoustic Energy AE1, on-axis impulse response at 50" (5ms time window, 30kHz bandwidth).
Fig.8 Acoustic Energy AE1, on-axis step response…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-way, reflex-loaded loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" magnesium alloy-dome tweeter, 4.5" woofer with a 3.5" anodized-aluminum cone. Crossover frequency: 3kHz (3rd- & 4th-order Butterworth slopes). Frequency response: 80Hz-17kHz -1.5dB, 70Hz-22kHz -3dB, 55Hz-30kHz -4dB. Harmonic Distortion: less than 0.1% 2nd harmonic, less than 0.02% 3rd harmonic, both at 98dB at 0.5m (frequency not specified). Power compression factor: less than 1dB at minimum impedance (200Hz) with an increase of 16dB (1W:40W ratio); frequency response within -0.5dB at 40W ref.…
ROSANNE CASH: Rules of Travel
Capitol CDP 8 37757 (CD). 2003. John Leventhal, prod., eng. AAD. TT: 39:07
Performance *****
Sonics ****
Capitol CDP 8 37757 (CD). 2003. John Leventhal, prod., eng. AAD. TT: 39:07
Performance *****
Sonics ****
When we last heard from Rosanne Cash, she was busy sifting through the rubble of her marriage to Rodney Crowell. Her final two albums for Columbia, Interiors (1990) and The Wheel (1993), often called "chick records" by those who lack the sense or the ears to know better, were the yin and the yang of that severe breakup. While the dark, self-produced Interiors was obviously a cathartic exercise for Cash—few records have its magnitude of audible…
The inspiration for this project came from Stereophile's Gretchen Grogan and Erich Vollmer of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Music Festivals are perhaps the healthiest aspect of classical music making, allowing ad hoc ensembles to chart the farthest reaches of the repertoire, as well as retracing the familiar ground of the great works. Why not, they thought, capture a representative selection of works performed at the 1995 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival? This would not only document some of the great performances to be heard, but also allow music lovers everywhere to participate in…
The ballet was greeted with popular and critical acclaim. As critic and composer Virgil Thomson wrote of the New York premiere in May 1945, the scoring was "plain, clean-colored, deeply imaginative...designed not only to express the moods of the story but to amplify the characteristics of the dramatis personae...it has style." Appalachian Spring received both the Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics' Circle Award in 1945.
The suite for chamber orchestra is Copland's reduction (in orchestral forces) of a condensed version of the ballet score, with all essential features…
The Venue & the Concerts: Wes Phillips
St. Francis Auditorium, the venue for these performances, is located within the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe. The structure replicates the New Mexico building at the 1913 Panama California Exposition commemorating the opening of the Panama Canal. Based on the architecture of New Mexico's Spanish missionary churches---such as the Mission Church at Acoma and the San Felipe Church---it is an awe-inspiring adobe structure. The Auditorium resembles a chapel: the ceiling soars some 30' above the pew-style seating and is supported by…
Microphones & Techniques: John Atkinson
Once the venue has been chosen---in the case of this disc, that was preordained---there is no quality-changing decision in all of recording that is more fundamental than that of what microphones to use. Not only does every microphone have its own sonic signature, but the combination of its pickup pattern and how the engineer chooses to exploit that pattern drastically affects the stereo image and the perceived quality of the hall reverberation.
For Stereophile's previous live recording project---Concert, featuring Canadian pianist…
Why should that be so? Assume that the two mikes are placed one above the other with their axes at a 90 degrees angle to one another. Also assume that each has the perfect cardioid response of producing a voltage output proportional to (1+cosinex degrees), where x is the angle between the direction of the soundsource and the microphone's main forward axis. A soundsource 45 degrees to the side of the soundstage centerline (x = 0 degrees) will produce an output level of (1+cos0 degrees) = (1+1) = 2V from the left-hand mike. However, rather than the desired zero output from the right-hand…