REPRODUCED FROM HI-FICHOICE
power. Paper isn’t particularly fashionable as a cone m aterial,buta speakerdesignerofgreatexperience whom I know and trust – not connected to Acoustic Energy – told m e it’s stil a greatm aterialfora drive unitcone,being light,stif and natural sounding. High frequencies are dispensed by a 25m m fabric dom e tweeter.Although AcousticEnergyisfam ousforitsm etal and – m ore recently – carbon dom e high-frequency units, fabric is a fine compromise. Potentialy such a tweeter can sound very sm ooth,and mates nicely, tonaly, with paper m id/bas drivers.The cros overdoes itsstuf at2.9kHz. The cabinet features AE’s favoured rear-firing slot-shaped bas reflex port; al the com pany’s speakers now use thisand itm akesitspresence feltles than conventionalround portsand you can push it closer to a boundary without is ue. The cabinet is 15m m high-density fibreboard;HDF is m ore expensive than the M DF used bym ost speakerm akers,butdue to itsgreater rigidity,Acoustic Energy hasused les ofit.Like every speakercabinetin the world,itproducesitsowncolourations, but M at Spandl’s view is that they’re quite euphonicand agreeable onesal the same. Even with the volum e realywound up,it holdson tightand doesn’tlose the plot The end result is a sm al, ported two-way design with a claimed frequencyresponse of51Hzto 26kHz (-3dB)and 120W RM S powerhandling. By the standards of the aforem entioned budgetboxes ofthe Eighties and Nineties,these are quite staggering num bers – and show how farspeakerdesign has progres ed,at leaston paper.The cabinetalso looks very neat,especialy in its satin white finish;satin blackand walnutvinylwrap are also available.In the flesh,itfeels m arkedly swisher than those golden oldies too, with the m agneticaly atached grilesadding to the sense of sophistication.
Litle wonder Asthe costofliving spiralsoutofcontrol, N ick Tate triesthishighlycapable, cost-conscioussm alspeakeroutforsize
point–doing agood cheap speakeris way harder than doing a good m id-priceorevenhigh-end one.Thisis because,with abudgetbox,everylast penny hasto be counted,and indeed pinched. Ifyou’re a designercreating a £2,600 standm ount,you don’thave to justify everylast‘dolarand cent’spentin the finished product, and a £26,000 speaker designer can splurge m oney around with gay abandon. Yet here, everything has to be as good as it posibly can – because everything countsin sm alam ounts! O ne key design aim for the AE100 2 was to m ake it reasonably sensitive, and the quoted 87dB shows thatthis has just about been achieved. The 130m m paperconed m id/bas unitis as large as can be cram m ed into a speakerthat’sjust165m m wide;m any rivalsuse 110m m units,which are les eficient and les good at handling
Whatever happened to the bargain basement standmount? Back in the m id-Eighties you could buy a pair of W harfedale Diam onds for £80, while a decade orso laterM is ion 760swould set you back £130. W hen you take the relativechangeinvalueofm oneyoverthe years into acount, that price now translates to roughly £260 – the costof the AE100 2 you see before you. Designer M at Spandl aludes to this, noting: “W e can’t do anything decent below this price point”.Put sim ply,the com prom ises needed to sel a budget speakeranycheaperthan thisin 2022 are such thatAcoustic Energy wouldn’twant to putthe com pany’snam e to it.And this is, of course, a Chinese-m anufactured product,where costs to produce are stil lowerthan in the W est. Forgive al thisslide-rule twiddling,butit does ilustrate just how tight things are when designing and seling entry-level speakers.This brings m e on to the next
08 MUSICATHOME+
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