The AR speaker did have very decent pace'n'rhythm, as I heard when…
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As the sinewave sweep indicated, the AR-1 had good bass extension. Its 15" woofer produced solid bass with good pitch definition, allowing it to provide a full room lock with the sustained organ-pedal tones in Elgar's Dream of Gerontius (Test CD 2, Stereophile STPH004-2), or to play the subterranean synthesizer chords from James Horner's "Assault on Ryan's House" from the Patriot Games soundtrack (RCA 66051-2) with drama and pace—but not the tight-as-a-nut bass impact of the Revel Ultima Salon that I reviewed in March.
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way, floorstanding loudspeaker with powered woofer. Drive-units: one 1" (25mm) titanium-dome tweeter, two 5.25" (135mm) aluminum-alloy cone midrange drivers, one 15" (375mm) side-firing, acoustic-suspension woofer powered by an internal 500W RMS amplifier. Crossover frequencies: 100Hz active low-pass, 24dB/octave; passive high-pass at 120Hz, 12dB/octave; 2.5kHz high-pass, 12dB/octave. Frequency response: 20Hz-20kHz, ±3dB. Sensitivity: 96dB/2.83V/m. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Power handling: 350W. Woofer amplifier distortion: 0.1% THD at rated…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog source: turntable, Linn Ittok tonearm, Spectral moving-coil phono cartridge.
Digital source: Krell MD-1 CD transport, Adcom GDA-700 D/A processor.
FM source: Day-Sequerra FM Reference Classic, Rotel RH-10, Magnum Dynalab MD-108 with Model 205 Sleuth antenna amplifier, Fanfare FM-1 stereo tuners.
Preamplifiers: Krell KBL, Mark Levinson ML-7A, Duntech MX-10 head amplifier.
Power amplifiers: Bryston 7B-ST monoblocks, Mark Levinson No.331.
Loudspeakers: Revel Ultima Salon, Dynaudio Contour 3.0.
Cables: Silver Starlight 75 ohm digital…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Specified at 96dB/2.83V/m sensitivity, the Acoustic Research AR-1 did indeed go very loud with only a few amplifier watts, my B-weighted figure of 91dB(B)/2.83V/m still putting the speaker up among the most sensitive I have measured. And, as can be seen from its impedance plot (fig.1), it drops to 4 ohms or below in only two places, which would make it an easy load for an amplifier to drive—were it not for the increasingly capacitive phase angle in the lower midrange and below. This, and the dramatic rise in impedance below 100Hz, are due to the passive high-pass…
Readers are constantly telling us that downloaded audio files suck. I tend to agree with them.
This is gonna hurt a bit, so let's get it over with quick (squeamish audiophiles should probably turn the page now): What the mass market selects, audiophiles perfect. That's the golden rule. And what the mass market is on the verge of choosing as the "next big thing" are downloaded digital audio files and hard-disk-based playback and networking devices.
Whenever a great idea comes along, it creates a huge vacuum that inexorably sucks everything toward it. Nobody planned it this way,…
One of the less-glamorous speaker systems around today, these have more to offer the critical listener in terms of satisfaction than do most of the more-exotic designs.
Although you'd never know it from the boxlike external appearance, the enclosure design is quite unconventional. The front panel which mounts the mid- and upper-range drivers is curved like one side of a cylinder (fig.1). This eliminates the typical, abrupt corners at the edges of the front panels, thus minimizing the diffraction effects which cause sharp mid-range response irregularities and, hence, impaired stereo…
Larry Greenhill wrote about the Snell Type A/III in October 1984 (Vol.7 No.6):
Although audio is obsessed with new products, it's long-term market survival that determines the real classics, especially aming speakers. Witness the staying power of such "ancient" designs speakers as the Quad ESL, the Klipschorn, the Rogers LS3/5a, and the Dahlquist DQ-10.
So it is with Peter Snell's Type A loudspeaker. This hefty, multi-driver dynamic system has been updated twice since its 1976 debut, and has continued to sell in spite of significant price increases. It has always been a high-…
J. Gordon Holt wrote about the Snell Type A/III in March 1986 (Vol.9 No.3):
On the basis of the rave review accorded the A/III by Larry Greenhill in Vol.7 No.6, and following Snell's apparently now-successful struggles to stay on its feet in the wake of Peter Snell's tragic early death, we arranged to borrow a pair of them for our independent audition.
While I'm generally in agreement with Mr. Greenhill, I feel he did, not make quite enough point of their superb low-end performance, which rivals if not slightly surpasses the Infinity RS-lBs in low-end definition and detail.…
Thomas J. Norton wrote about the Type A/III in September 1987 (Vol.10 No.6):
Since my original review of the Snell C/i loudspeaker (Vol.10 No.2), I have had the opportunity to investigate its performance in the bi-amp mode and to compare it with the Snell A/III in my own listening room. The results in both cases are, I feel, useful additions to the previous report.
Except for its application with a subwoofer, bi-amping hasn't been very popular with audiophiles. Theoretically it should provide a cleaner bass response (the elimination of the passive crossover means there is now no…
Sidebar 1: Peter Snell 1946–1984
Peter Snell, president of Snell Acoustics, died Thursday, September 20, 1984 from a heart attack. He was 38 years old and lived in Merrimac, Massachusetts.
Peter Snell, born in 1946 in Bar Harbor, Maine, graduated in 1969 from Marlboro College with a BS in physics. He did graduate work at Brown University before joining EPI in 1970 as a principal engineer. There he was responsible for production and new product development. He left EPI in 1974 to devote himself to the development of the Type A loudspeaker. In 1976, he began Snell Acoustics on…