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Acoustic Suspension Speakers Question

transmaster said:
AR-7's are good to, 8 inch woofer and the AR dome tweeter. very nice bookself speakers. I had a set at one time My brother has them now and I want them back. NHT had a whole series of nice bookself speakers of this design as well. Now Hear This was founded by one of the engineers for AR in fact. Another outfit that made nice acoustic suspension speakers is Warfedale. The W-20, and W-35. My W-35 are very nice 3-ways and are constructed to fit in the corners of a room. My set of W-35's sound good and have solid good looking cabinets. The problem with old Warfedales is getting speakers for them, if needed, the BIC drivers for them are long gone.
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actually, the 7's have a Roy Allison designed Cone with a bullet shaped dustcap. one of my favorite tweets, used on the AR6,7,8,17,18,25 and later variants.

you might enjoy the AR93 and 94, the both are more or less an AR7/18 in concept, but the 94 adds in a second 8" woofer in a .5 alignment (rolled off above ~300hz), while the 93 adds a high pass filter to the 8" midwoof, and has TWO side firing 8's crossed over in the 200hz range.

newer AS speakers I'd look for are AR rock Partners (late 80's), the last iteration of the AR7 concept

AR Holographic Imaging M1-M4.5, although the M4 & M4.5 are reinforced by essentially a second woofer in a bandpass config in their tower.

AR Classic series--early 90's very rare, very high quality

AR 303 series-- basically an early 90's reinterpretation of the AR3a/AR5 and other "classic era" AR's with more modern voicing, and modern materials

NHT zero and super zero

martin speakers USA still makes AS speakers.

http://www.martinspeakersusa.com/Products.html
 
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Speaking strictly on what I currently own.

Mach One (4024a and 4029)
Optimus 5b
Nova 7b
Allison CD7
AR3a
Advent1
Infinity RS4000

Each has it's relative merits. While, to me, A.S. design tend to be tighter, some B.R. systems (better systems) can be fairly tight as well.

Passive systems are a nice compromise in that you can get almost as tight a sound to A.S., with sensitivity closer to B.R. designs. I have a couple passive systems...

RTR G200
Optimus T110

Nice thing, also, about these "tower" systems is they often put the drivers at ear level. They also utilize a smaller footprint. Often they have a higher WAF too.
 
My Radio Shack Nova 8's are clones of the KLH 5's and really have a great sound, very much in the AR 3 class. They don't suffer from foam rot. My original AR 4x speakers, purchased in the 60's, are still working, although another family member still has them.

Cambridge Soundworks has the model 6 which is acoustic suspension with an 8 inch woofer.
 
theebadone said:
The vintage infinities are acoustic suspension speakers and most sound great. The RS-4B has 2, 8 inch woofers and absolutely rocks.
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This is what I was going to add. It's one of the reasons I love the vintage Infinity sound: acoustic suspension sealed box design matched with EMIT tweeters :music::music::music:.

To the OP: spend some time cruising around the Infinity Classics website and you're bound to find a couple of models that fit your criteria.
 
I too prefer the Accoustic Suspension Principle. But in looking for good new speakers recently the ones I liked are all ported. As it turns out it the ones I bought use one 7" Direct coupled woofer in a rather large rear ported cabinet for bass. It seams to do a fine job. My Energy Pro-22's only used one 7" rear ported woofer too, and in the right room sounded great. The pro-22's are very room and placement dependant. I think thats one of the benifets of Accoustic suspension is their easier to get right.
 
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I use my KLH Model 5's with my Fisher 500C but a good ported speaker can sound great. My solid state system uses a pair of B&W Nautilus 805's powered by a McIntosh MC2105 amp and I'm using a C29 for a preamp. I'm still amazed at the bass that comes from those speakers. As pointed out room placement is important.
 
I really appreciate everyones input on this thread. It seems that there are so many decent speakers out there that it really difficult to make a choice. I guess that is why we constantly try different stuff. Everytime you find something better you let the lesser one go, if you can that is. The market is not very hot for resale right not or at least it seems that way, but that is another subject. Anyway, what I am getting from this thread is to stick to the vintage speakers more than the newer ones, ofcourse there are exceptions. I have always wanted to try some classic infinities though.:yes:
 
Try Cambridge Soundworks. The model six sounds quite nice and they had a Tower speaker with two 8" that was real nice!
 
sonix said:
I really appreciate everyones input on this thread. It seems that there are so many decent speakers out there that it really difficult to make a choice. I guess that is why we constantly try different stuff. Everytime you find something better you let the lesser one go, if you can that is. The market is not very hot for resale right not or at least it seems that way, but that is another subject. Anyway, what I am getting from this thread is to stick to the vintage speakers more than the newer ones, ofcourse there are exceptions. I have always wanted to try some classic infinities though.:yes:
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well, the reason there aren't many modern A.S. suggestions is because they don't really exist any more. even Acoustic Research moved into the world of bass reflex and bandpass alignments in the early 90's (with the Holographic Imaging M5 & 6, and then in the HO series).

if you want a "modern" acoustic suspension system in a tower, look for some NHT 3.3's

http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1293nht/
 
I have a pair of Energy RC-30 2 1/2 way towers and find the bass to be blotted. The RC-LCR 3 way/5 Driver Speaker I use for center channel has a much more pleasing sound for music with nearly the same bass extesion. It's also more expensive. I wish I bought 3 of them. I heard Energy's C-9 2 1/2 way towers too and loved them!

IT seems a speaker's sound Quality is determined more by how well engineered the speaker is, than It's basic design. There are examples of every design that sound great, and examples that sound not so great, or worse.
 
charles 1973 said:
I have a pair of Energy RC-30 2 1/2 way towers and find the bass to be blotted. The RC-LCR 3 way/5 Driver Speaker I use for center channel has a much more pleasing sound for music with nearly the same bass extesion. It's also more expensive. I wish I bought 3 of them. I heard Energy's C-9 2 1/2 way towers too and loved them!

IT seems a speaker's sound Quality is determined more by how well engineered the speaker is, than It's basic design. There are examples of every design that sound great, and examples that sound not so great, or worse.
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I agree.
 
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