Steve F
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I was head of Home Audio product development at BA during this time period (1992-2003).
We did not custom design or custom tool the terminal cup, straps or knurled nuts for any of our speakers. We used strictly off-the-shelf parts for these kinds of things. We tooled/custom-designed things like tweeter faceplates, feet, grille frames, front/rear baffles (for the CR bookshelf speakers), etc., but we didn't waste money on custom terminal/connector parts. The VR-M uses garden-variety terminal parts, straps and knobs.
I don't remember for sure, but I bet the VR-M50/60 uses the exact same parts as the VR-M80/90 floorstanding speakers and the VR-MC center speaker. I wouldn't be surprised if they are the same parts as the VR-20, 30, 40 floorstanding speakers also. You may want to widen your search.
As far as a "BA parts dept" is concerned, the MA-based BA has been gone since 2012. Not sure to what degree--if any--BA speakers are supported by the factory any longer.
--Steve F.
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JKent--The MicroStatics overhang the 4x by a fraction. I should know--I used this exact combo at college. Whatever the specs say, they're wrong. I used them in person--for real--and I remember thinking, "Why didn't Micro Acoustics do a little better marketing and make sure these fit properly on all AR speakers?"
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I probably WANTED them to be 2ax’s!
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Dan C -- I got my dad a set of VR-40's in 1997, a few years before I left BA in 2003. Dad was a true audiophile and he loved them. Dad died very unexpectedly in 1998 and I gave the speakers to my older cousin, also a huge audiophile and ardent jazz musician (tenor sax) like myself (drums). My cousin just replaced them last year (2022) after 24 years. He loved them, but his wife didn't want floorstanding speakers any more.
The midrange is in its own internal chamber and really doesn't go much lower than about 350Hz because of the restricted air volume in its internal chamber. If you have the woofers low-passed at 100Hz by the Rotel's setting, you're going to have a response gap between 100-400Hz.
IMO, bi-amping and bi-wiring is snake-oil, if you still have to go through the speaker's internal crossover (which you do). Only if you can access the drivers directly and independently and use an active external crossover are you really "bi" or "tri"-amping your speakers.
Just drive them full-range with your good electronics and don't let your mind "trick" yourself into hearing things that aren't real.
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Those do not seem to be KLH-6s. The aspect ratio is wrong. They look like 2ax’s. If you enlarge the image, the logo appears to be brass with red lettering, although it’s tough to see for sure. Also, the logo seems too long to be the AR-5.
I’d assume the image was flipped horizontally by mistake, to explain the logo on the wrong side.
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AR was founded in 1954, not 1952. The few places that say "1952" (I think Wikipedia, an old Cambridge Sound catalog, maybe a few others) are in error.
1954 is the correct date. This is how things get distorted over time. Inexact "facts" are stated and repeated until the real facts are obscured forever.
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To the best of my knowledge, there was no such thing from Boston Acoustics as a "CR8c." Definitely not while I was there, and I was there for the transition of the CRx series to the CRx5 series. Are you sure you're not looking at the serial number label and perhaps the 'c' is part of the s/n string? If "CR8c" is an actual model number, my suspicion would be that it's a knock-off made somewhere else. As I said, not from when I was at BA and I was there for the entire life of the CR8.
Oh, BTW, to answer TWB's question above--the CR6 had the small Tonegen hard dome tweeter. The next-gen entry-level CR's--the "x5's" had a BA-built 3/4" Kortec dome. Much better tweeter.
Steve F.
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It is not quite accurate to simply say that the 3a Improved used the same 3a drivers, a Euro-styled cabinet and switches instead of pots and that was it for differences between it and the original 3a. The 'slightly changed crossover' was supposed to deliver a flatter power response than the U.S. 3a. I have a 3a Improved ad that says that and I will endeavor to dig it out.
In any event, the differences weren't that great and the U.S. arm of AR decided against marketing it here, since the ADD's (11's and 10π's) were due at pretty much the same time. One of my "Steve F Letters to AR" in the library covers this and AR's response to me.
Steve F.
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Answering the "what is a fair price" question is always difficult. If you really wanted something, it was difficult to find and you found it in good shape, then whatever it was is worth almost any price, right?
If I remember, the VR40's were $1400/pair and the VR12 was $400. So that's $1800 new "list." BA wasn't really discounted very much and generally was not available at the time via mail-order for cheaper pricing. So as a regular retail customer buying these speakers new through an authorized BA dealer, you could expect to pay the full $1800.
$600 strikes me as a reasonable price, especially if they are in good shape, no major cabinet scratches or torn grille cloth. They are really nice speakers.
BTW, the VR12 was the industry's very first 3-way center channel speaker with a vertically-aligned mid and tweeter. I was proud of that one.
Steve F.
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Those are good receivers. I suspect you'll be fine.
Will you be using a subwoofer? One thing to remember (and people forget this all the time) is if you are using a sub in a home theater system, it is the sub that is handling the demanding low-frequency information. You'll probably be high-passing the VR40's and VR12 at 80Hz or so, and in that region, your receiver will not be asked to put out the high current that a full-range signal (20-20k) would demand. We never had any issues with VR40's + VR12 in a good system with good equipment.
As to how the 40's compare to the Aperions, I've never heard them, so I can't comment. The 40 + 12 combo is quite excellent, however.
Steve F.
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I was at BA when the VR towers were done. In fact, I was in charge of the project. The VR40's impedance in the heart of the midrange was around 2.7 ohms. Two 8-ohm woofers paralleled (4 ohms) crossing over to a 4-ohm midrange unit. Add in a little resistance for the crossover and the Ω sweep was around 2.7 at 500Hz. Good luck to your average AV cheapo receiver. Not a chance in a million above the most modest of volumes. We called it "8 ohms." Everyone did that kind of thing.
But with a good amp, the VR40 was one heck of a terrific speaker. For smoothness and uncolored musical accuracy, I'd put it up against anything three times its price.
The crossovers were 400 and 3300Hz.
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This is a much better article, far more relevant, IIDSSM.
https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/most-influential-speakers
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I subscribe to Stereophile and have for decades. Although the $25,000 speaker and $30,000 amp reviews are indeed irrelevant, they do, in fact, review 'normal-priced' equipment every month. As a matter of fact, normal-priced reviews outnumber the esoteric stuff. In this issue, they review a $500 pair of JBL floorstanders. Can't get more down-to-earth than that.
The thing I like about the magazine is that their instrumented printed measurements and graphs of speakers under review are quite good. They show a FR in a 30˚ window of on-tweeter axis (a very useful, relevant measurement), they show port contribution, they show room response, step response, all kinds of very solid info. Editorial like Dudley's is inane, but like any magazine or paper or on-line pub, you, as the reader, are free to simply pick and choose what you want to read and what you find interesting. Dudley gets so much wrong about acoustic suspension that it's not even worth my time to list it all and rebut it.
But the instrumented tests of normal-priced loudspeakers are great and it's the only audio mag I subscribe to.
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"Lots of people tell me they got rid of their vintage gear and bought a little Bose system that "sounds just as good." Then I invite them to listen to their favorite music through my AR=91s and they're left speechless ?"
We had a friend and his wife over from out of state. She's a classical concert pianist and teacher. My friend and I were listening to jazz trio recording in my 1st floor "music room." The French doors were closed, but you could still hear in the rest of the house. My wife and his wife were in the kitchen, talking.
All of a sudden, the door bursts open. It's my friend's wife. "Where is that piano? Who's playing? What......?"
AR9's, powered by 400 distortion-free Parasound 2250 watts per side.
Me, smiling. JKent is about, oh, 100% correct. People just don't know how absolutely stunning truly great audio is. Stunning. Jaw-dropping.
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What did Mark Twain say? "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." We're certainly glad that's the case here!
This is quite the august group, without question. The amount of collective technical, historical and anecdotal knowledge about AR is extraordinary, in my view. And quite unlike most other social platforms, even when there is the rare disagreement, they're generally handled in a most agreeable fashion, with no bridges being permanently burned.
I've been here for 17 years and have enjoyed every minute. If I live another 17 years, I plan on continuing to visit every day.
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When I was at BA, our head transducer engineer had previously been at AR and he was one of the lead system engineers for these Classic models. He did a lot of work on the 30. He did say that they were a bear to ship because of the unusual cabinet shape, the way all the panels sloped in and down. A lot of early shipping damage before they got the packaging straightened out.
I only heard them briefly, during a tour of the AR plant when it was at 330 Turnpike St in Canton MA, just before they left for CA. They sounded clean and detailed, but I wasn't using my own "test" material and I couldn't form a definite opinion.
I always wondered about the low end--with two 10" woofers, did this have 90-like bass? I have reason to doubt it. The AR3 Limited came out in the same timeframe as the Classics and the 3 was a very "audiophile-ish" speaker with a 12" woofer and a MTM array with 3" dome mids and a dome tweeter. It had that off-standing metal screen grill that made it look like an electrostatic speaker.
Anyway, true to its early-90's timeframe, the Limited 3 was a 'lean' sounding speaker in the audiophile tradition, not a gutsy, powerful-sounding speaker like the 3a, 11 or 9/90.
Can anyone give me a real, accurate assessment of the Classic 30's sound character?
Steve F.
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Thank you for the kind words. Except for those 2nd-gen CRs (which were in development when I was still there although not completed), I was involved with all the others.
The Recepter was a really great radio. We had big arguments over that one, for many reasons. I voiced it, but at the last minute, the President came in and added 2 dB to the EQ below 100Hz. Now it's a little bass-heavy, in my opinion. Nonetheless, I have three of them scattered around the house.
The very first production run will lose 20-30 seconds per month on the clock and after 6 months, the clock will be a few minutes slow. Annoying. It was because there was an inefficient circuit design that pulled a hair too much voltage from the timing circuit in order to power some other part of the radio. Starved for voltage, the clock runs just a tad slow. It was corrected on the second run. That's "inside info" you'll never hear anywhere else, that's for sure!
The Micro90x sub-sat family was the best-selling (from a $ standpoint) family of products in the company's history. I was incredibly proud of those, although the President never wanted to do them and never really enjoyed their success.
I really liked the VR-M series. I own 50's and 60's. The VR-M90 remains one of my all-time favorite floorstanding speakers ever. We were going to do a "VR-M100" at $4000/pr--would've been killer!--but 2-ch stereo was dying as HT was taking over, so we never did it.
Steve F.
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I was the new product development manager for the VR Series when I was at BA from 1992-2003. I supervised the engineering and did all the voicing on the speakers.
I do not remember the two 7" drivers being much different, if at all. The "woofer-only" lower driver may have had a larger dustcap just to distinguish it visually. The dustcap would only affect the upper-end of that driver's response around 1.5-2kHz or so, which wouldn't make any difference in that driver, since it was rolled off around 800Hz.
Both woofers handle the bass and the system is a conventional dual-woofer ported system. It's just that the lower woofer is rolled off with a choke above 800Hz, so you don't have the two 7" drivers interfering with each other in the midrange. "2 1/2-way" means two woofers, only one of them going up into the midrange, and then a tweeter. It was not a BA-exclusive design. Several AR TSW's in the 80's, like the TSW410, were 2 1/2-ways. Currently, the Paradigm Prestige 75-85-95 are 2 1/2-ways. Pretty well-known design approach.
BA moved from Lynnfield to Peabody in 1996. The VRs came out in late 1994 and were discontinued in 1997 or 8.
Great speakers, all of them. The 40 is truly great, but the 30 was quite excellent as well. 40-50 solid watts/ch is enough in a normal-sized room as long as you don't want heavy-metal at ear-splitting levels. They're closer to 4 ohms, regardless of what the specs may say.
Steve F.
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Let's inject a little logic and math into this discussion. Take 13560 (the speed of sound in inches/sec at sea level) and divide that by the piston diameter of the driver. That will give you the frequency at which the driver starts to become objectionably directional (when the diameter exceeds the frequency being played).
13560/11 (the piston diameter of a 12-inch woofer, minus the 1/2" surround on each side) = 1233Hz. A 12-in woofer is "good" to 1200. 1200! So an AR-3 crossing over at 1000Hz is just fine, no sweat. That is why the Large Advent with a 10/12-in woofer crossing over at 1000 always sounded fine, from a directivity standpoint. (I'm not talking tonal balance or anything like that, I'm talking directivity.)
Will the dispersion improve if the driver is crossed over lower than its upper limit? Of course, but things are not as bad as they seem.
13560/4.25 (the piston diameter of a 5 1/4-in driver = 3190 Hz.
A 1-in tweeter is good to 13,560, obviously, while a 3/4-in dome is good past 18kHz.
Here's an interesting one--a 10-in driver (9-in piston) is directional at 1506Hz (13560/9 = 1506). So the AR-2, 2a, and 'old' 2ax were all "wrong" because they took a 10-in woofer up to 2000Hz, way past the point where it becomes directional. So does everyone here on the Forum criticize these speakers for being objectionably beamy in the midrange? Do we hear constant complaining from everyone about, "I just can't stand the way my 2a's beam that midrange. It's horrible! These are horrible speakers!"
Nope. Not a peep.
Ponder that.
Steve F.
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To avoid Thread Creep, I would agree with Aadams’ basic premise, that all things being equal, it’s generally advantageous to have a heavy, low-resonance woofer restricted to operating as low as possible, below 200-300Hz, max. “All things being equal.” We’ll let that rather vague qualification stand alone, in all its unspecified glory. (BTW, later 3a's--from around the foam/ceramic days, as opposed to cloth/Alnico days--had a crossover of 525Hz, not 575Hz. I think there was a woofer choke change then too.)
As to the letter from Allison, I have seen this letter many times and it always struck me as strangely off-target.
The 3a’s—or any AR speaker’s—goal was to reproduce the electrical input signal as accurately as possible. The goal of the 3a was not to replicate the spectral balance of any arbitrary symphonic hall or night club. Imparting a sense of the performance venue—if it is to be done at all—is the job of the recording engineer, not the loudspeaker. AR did not and should not have had any requirement for its speakers to impose the tonal characteristics of any particular performance space upon the playback process in a domestic living room. That entire concept is fallacious on its face.
The response of the 3a may well have been uniform in a living room from 250 to 2500Hz, but its response in the succeeding octaves fell off precipitously.
I reject “C” on its face as being flat-out untrue. AR’s own curves—like yours above—clearly show the mid level as being 2-3 dB below the woofer and the tweeter level being some 5 dB below the mid. So, the tweeter is about 7 dB below the woofer. Yes, yes, I know that these are “individual driver curves,” not an integrated system curve, but AR had the honesty to put the individual driver curves onto this graph in a real-life level relationship to the other drivers. This is a very accurate graph of how the 3a sounds. Why the heck do people think it’s a little “reticent” or “thick”? Because it sounds exactly as AR very honestly and accurately represents it to sound on this graph. They also say—quite honestly—on the 3a Technical Sheet that the amplifier’s treble control must be advanced to 2:00 o’clock for flat response. That’s about 5dB, exactly what I said the 3a needs for a treble boost and exactly how much more on-axis output the 10π/11’s tweeter has vs. the 3a’s.
The 3a was a bit dull and its woofer level was a bit too high in relation to the other drivers. However, it had a whole bunch or other attributes that were really great, so if you could tolerate a down-sloping response tilt, it was a great speaker: unsurpassed bass from a 25” enclosure, super-wide dispersion, very low overall distortion and very smooth (albeit down-sloping) response. Far more good than bad. Far more. I’ll take it over almost anything in its size/price class and it has those classic looks too.
But it’s not perfect.
Steve F.
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What if some contrarian wise-*ss was to offer the opinion that it was all the tweeter? The AR-11 used the exact same midrange and woofer at the later 3a's, yet the 11 was never accused of sounding "thick and heavy." Indeed, the 11 is considered by most to be an exceptionally neutral, well-balanced speaker.
That contrarian wise-*ss would say that perceived "heaviness" is primarily a function of spectral balance--the overall balance of lows-to-mids-to-highs, the general shape and slope of the FR curve. The 3a's slope is downward; the 11's is far more flat.
Funny thing--when the treble control on your system is advanced to around 2:00 (say about 5dB more) when playing a 3a, its so-called "heaviness" miraculously disappears. Coincidentally, the 11 has about 5 dB more treble output from its tweeter than the 3a had from its. More treble output and the lower-midrange heaviness goes away.
Spectral balance.
(BTW, that's what the LST had over the 3a, too--and the LST used identical drivers and x-o topology as the 3a. It's a matter of spectral balance. The LST had none of the lower-mid heaviness that the 3a was accused of.)
Steve F.
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I worked at Bose for a few years back in the early ‘90’s. Even then, in the beginning of the Home Theater era, Bose could see the writing on the wall for the 901. Stereo 2-channel was on the way out. The 901—complicated enough for the average Joe with its need to integrate the EQ through the tape rec loop in the system—was now a near-impossibility to use with home theater.
Bose marketing/sales brass wanted to discontinue the 901 then, but Amar forbade it. There were two things that were bandied about re the 901: First, there was going to be a totally self-powered version (with the EQ’d amps in the pedestal stands, removing the need for the little outboard EQ box). This could be run directly off any line-level equipment and side-step the receiver completely. There were prototypes, but obviously, it never made it into production.
The second option for the 901 was this: Amar was amenable to discontinuing the actual 901 Direct Reflecting 9-driver speaker that we all know, but he wanted any replacement (whether it was a standalone speaker, a powered speaker, a complete system, whatever) to be a) daring, envelope-pushing and TOTL, and b ) called the “901.” In other words, any new top-of-the-line Bose product had to be called the “901” if the original 901 speaker was discontinued.
Alas, nothing worthy came along and so the original 901 speaker soldiered on, way past its relevance in the marketplace. In the last few years, retailers had stopped carrying it and it was available only from Bose directly, IIRC.
Anyway, that’s some inside info on the 901 that you may find interesting.
Steve F.
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First of all, if you’re going to insult me and say that my opinion is equal to a container of s***, then at least spell it correctly: crock, not croc. There, that’s better. Now I feel properly admonished.
I agree completely with this, however. Completely, totally, 100%. You could also replace the term “hi-fi dealership’ and replace it with ‘loudspeaker manufacturer’ and it would be equally true.
What a croc! A
hi-fi dealershiploudspeaker manufacturer is not an altruistic endeavor to enlighten the would-be customer. It is a business,…the dealers would "push" a product that sold well with the right amount of incentive, and incidentally, KLH, EPI, Advent and many others gave the dealers this incentive to keep favor with them.
There is an important concept here that needs to be fleshed out—the vague implication in this passage that since KLH, EPI and Advent gave dealers incentives to “keep favor with them” that it somehow meant that KLH, EPI and Advent didn’t make worthy, credible products.
That’s untrue—their products were quite worthy and credible. I’m not talking about personal taste, per se, but there is no question that they endeavored to design and build good speakers.
Here’s the point: A company can and should be good at both engineering/design and sales/marketing. If the industry norm behavior at that time was offering spiffs and kickback and high commissions, then so be it. AR should have followed suit. Or suffer at retail. AR chose to suffer at retail. Did they do a lot of business anyway for a nice stretch of time? Sure! But they could have and should have done even more business, for a longer period of time. That’s my point.
Now to the Sound Rooms. See above: A
hi-fi dealershiploudspeaker manufacturer is not an altruistic endeavor to enlighten the would-be customer. It is a business.Why do you think AR had these rooms, with their nice low-key, no-pressure, no sales atmosphere? To “enlighten the customer?” No. To impress the customer. To get the customer to think to themselves (and spread the word to others) that “AR was such a nice company, they have these really cool sound rooms, I heard these great speakers there, the people were so nice, they patiently and calmly answered so many questions, I felt really comfortable, etc, etc.”
To what end? Altruism? No, so the customer would seek out and buy AR speakers—regardless of whether or not the customer got a good demo at a store. The AR Sound Room was a device to increase AR’s sales—not to enlighten would-be customers. Because, as Tom said, “A loudspeaker manufacturer is not an altruistic endeavor.”
As far as not criticizing any individuals who have passed away, that’s an unusual way of looking at things, in my view. Are we not to evaluate and criticize a deceased past president who plunged us into recession or a coach who made the wrong call in a 1955 game or a general who blundered in a famous Civil War battle? Does the fact that the individual is no longer alive render them immune to criticism? Not in my book. My criticism of AR’s marketing stands, as my opinion, even though those AR individuals have passed away. And my criticism of AR’s marketing in no way diminishes my virtually boundless admiration for their product excellence and superb customer service.
Steve F.
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I'll reiterate what I said in my post above. This applies to the rental program and is borne out by everyone's retail experiences stated above:
"Remember, AR wouldn’t have needed those AR Sound Rooms [or rental programs] so people could hear “how they really sounded” if their basic marketing policies were decent enough so dealers supported them and demo'ed their speakers properly. Think about that for a moment."
Good sales and marketing programs are just as necessary to overall business success as having a great product.
They may have been "customer-centric," but the dealer was their 'customer' also. Astonishing that otherwise intelligent people like Villchur, Allison and Landeau could be so incompetent when it came to sales and marketing. With just a little effort, AR could have maintained its market dominance for several more years and could have provided Advent and EPI with some real retail showroom competition in the 1970's. Instead, AR surrendered the retail showroom front without a fight, and retreated to the safety of mail-order discount and military PX. AR couldn't duke it out with Advent on the Tweeter Etc showroom floor, partly because their (AR's) dealer policies were so ill-suited.
Steve F.
Steve Feinstein has passed away.
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