New Acoustic Research? (1 Viewer)

[jim.vaccaro]

As the proud owner of six Acoustic Research Hi-Res series speakers, I'm curious to know what the "new" AR speaker line is like. Looking at specs and pricing, the new speaker line seems to be similar to the old.

Does anyone have any experience with the new speaker line? Thanks.

 

[Wayne Ernst]

I've come across threads on these speakers in other forums. Actually, the new speakers are quite different. The 3-way model has a domed mid-range in it. Overall, they look quite impressive - from the pictures I've seen.

I doubt if I'll have any local dealers that will carry them as would be the case for most people, so I'm assuming that mail-order would be about the only option to try 'n buy these speakers. I'm sure after the AR brand gets "re"-established, we'll start to see some local vendors carrying them.

 

[jim.vaccaro]

Yeah, they look great...but if I wanted speakers that just looked good and did nothing else, I'd buy Bose What I care about is how they sound.

 

[RichardH]

BTW, the Acoustic Research info can be found through the Audiovox web site.

 

[LanceJ]

This site? Is there another page with the new ones (i.e. the model with the dome midrange) bacause these have been there quite awhile already.

IMO Audiovox needs to build a dedicated site for these speakers if they want to strengthen Acoustic Research's image because the present one looks generic and......well, cheap. :frowning:

And what are they going to do with Advent, one of my favorite classic speaker brands? To me their previous owner, Recoton, ruined the Advent name with incredibly cheesy products and their habit of slapping the Advent name on all kinds of other cheap plasticky crap.

Here's some good shots of what made Advent so well-known during the 70s and all the way up to the mid 80s (the last few years they were sold they used a 1" parabolic dome tweeter instead of the "fried egg" version pictured here): the Large Advent. It was so popular that when Advent was still owned by a company who cared (International Jensen) that an anniversary version w/numbered plates was sold in limited quantities in 1994. I know, because when I sold HT gear which included Advent, I helped to sell our last pair of these exact speakers!

 

[jim.vaccaro]

IMO, the last good Advent speaker was the Legacy II.

 

[LanceJ]

IIRC the Legacy II was the second successor to the Large Advent, with the same driver complement-dome tweeter & 10" woofer in a sealed enclosure-but in a much more contemporary cabinet. We didn't sell those for some reason :frowning: but instead had the Laureate and the Heritage, both slender towers with the same pretty styling-with real wood -but equipped with dual woofers (also sealed). All these speakers looked almost like furniture & both men and women liked them. The Laureate with its two 6.5" woofers were probably our best selling Advents. The Heritage with its dual eight inchers sold well too but it was pretty large for most customers & needed to be paired with a powerful receiver to drive them decently.

It looks like not many people are aware Advent finally built a three way speaker in 1984(?) after years of only 2-ways, which I think was Henry Kloss' favorite design. The first 3-way had a cool trapezoidal (viewed from the top) enclosure which was also quite shallow, sort of reminescent of Infinity's futuristic designs that reduced diffraction waves, but it still used solid wood end caps/side pieces like the rest of Advent's speakers of the time i.e. that nice furniture look again. Same parabolic dome tweeter as the Large/Legacy, but with an upgraded 10" woofer. The midrange was the eye-catcher though: it was a much larger version of that "fried egg" tweeter, 5" across and made of dense polypropylene* (I still have a brochure for this speaker). The Maestro, as it was later called, was redesigned after a few years to look just like the Legacy, only taller (if anyone has seen what a Baby Advent looks like-I owned a pair for 14 years!-just mentally enlarge it about 3X and you've basically got a Legacy).

Mermories.............

* looked like a smooth gray donut with a matching gray ping-pong ball sitting in the center

 

[jim.vaccaro]

Actually, I didn't know Advent ever made a 3 way speaker. Interesting.

I think what the new AR needs to do is get somebody like Crutchfield to start carrying them...word of mouth would spread fast if they were good speakers.

 

[LanceJ]

Yep.

Though to make them stand out from all the other large speakers out there, I think they ought to go back to their roots and come out with a line of sealed (acoustic suspension) models. But make them more efficient than the originals-since so many people now are used to bass-reflex speakers, an original AR's very low efficiency rating and huge appetite for power would be a major turn-off. We have subwoofers now for people who need the extreme low end reproduced, so personally I don't think we need speakers with 87dB SPL ratings and impedances that can drop down to the low threes(!) requiring the use of a huge receiver or a separate power amp.

BTW: I'm not one of those people that thinks sealed and bass reflex speakers sound the same, because IMO most GOOD sealed designs have richer/deeper bass than ported speakers of equivalent size and only lack-relatively speaking-a little bit of a ported design's low-end "punchiness". But I can't sugarcoat the fact that sealed designs do need more power to sound their best.

For people who didn't grow up with speakers like these like I did......On this page you can read the specs for the Ultimate Power Sponge , the massive AR9 (it's 15 watt minimum wattage spec made me giggle).

On this page are a pair of another popular model of sealed speakers, the Boston Acoustics floorstanding A100 (about one third down the page, on the right). IIRC their wide-but-shallow cabinet was supposed to help propagate the higher frequencies to the listener in a specific manner.

 

[jim.vaccaro]

Yeah, I agree that acoustic suspension speakers have tighter, more accurate bass to my ears. It's been the price and power that have kept me away from them....well, not totally true-I own a pair of AR Sequels and they're acoustic suspension