AR surround

The difference in sound quality, detail, etc was night and day when I upgraded from a Dynaco Stereo 80 to the Stereo 400. Eventually, I did blow a tweeter but I don't know how it happened. Perhaps 200 watts per channel was too big of an amp. Perhaps the fuses I was using were too big. Perhaps the low impedance speakers were difficult for the big Dynaco amp. Perhaps the AR tweeter of that era simply did not have adequate power handling capacity. There are just so many variables. That equipment eventually went to my cousin. After a number of years, the tweeter in the other speaker blew.

Here is the answer straight from Audyssey: Audyssey MultEQ detects absolute phase for each speaker. Some speakers are designed with intentional phase reversals in the drivers in order to address crossover problems. Audyssey MultEQ will detect and report an error. The best course of action is to simply check the wiring and press "Skip" if it is correct. So this wiring anomaly is not all that uncommon with certain speakers.

As many of you know, I have AR9's as front speakers and AR90's as surround speakers in my 7.1 audio system. It has been documented in this forum, by DavidR for one, that the LMR, UMR and tweeter in the AR90 are wired out-of-phase with the woofers. Until today, I did not think that this internal wiring of the AR90 made a difference. However, I recently acquired a new Marantz AVR which includes Audyssey automatic setup. When I ran the first test, Audyssey detected that the AR90's were out-of-phase with all of the other speakers and stated that I should swap the polarity of the AR90's wiring. I did the wire swap on both AR90's, reran the test, and Audyssey indicated that there were no phase problems. I find this quite bizarre because when playing the "phase test" of a calibration disc specifically made for a 7.1 audio system, the AR9 and AR90 speakers clearly sounded in-phase compared to each other without swapping the speaker wires to the 90's. Now I'm wondering if I've opened up a can of worms for those of us using AR90's with other speaker models in the same audio system.

I've never thought of the classic AR's as "rock" speakers and didn't realize that they had a model advertised as such. I always thought of products like the (brutal) Marantz Imperial 7 as "rock" speakers. The AR12...I thought it was just an updated version of the AR5 and not a rock n roll speaker?

Magnificent!

Are the AR8's quite rare? I haven't seen much written about them here.

Can you imagine trying to recap all of these speakers? Talk about a nightmare!

They went for $3100.

Thanks for trying out these drivers, David. It is all very helpful. I have several spare OEM tweeters and two OEM midranges. I wonder how long these will hold up.

So sad. Robert was always willing to help with information and advice. RIP ra.ra.

This is what I eventually did. (see attached) Others have use more expensive poly caps, but I settled on the Daytons and I am very happy with them. Whatever you do, DO NOT put a Solen MKP capacitor in series with the UMR. You will get noise and harsh sound. I recommend using NPE's on the UMR of the AR90. Good luck!

I just fired up my pair of A60's after several years. I had recapped them with NPE's from Parts Express. My recommendation would be to stay with the stock Unicons that were supplied with these speakers as long as possible as they definitely sounded smoother before the recapping. Perhaps the old caps made them sound duller, but that was the way I preferred them.

Thanks ar_pro. As some of you may recall, I am a surround-sound enthusiast. I am also using a Parasound A52+ to drive the center (AR915), surrounds (AR90) and rears (Boston A70). This amp also has XLR inputs and produces 255 wpc into 4 ohms with all five channels driven. In two-channel mode, it puts out 350 wpc into 4 ohms. Thus, listening to quadraphonic and 5.1 recordings, such as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, is a true showcase of the capability of the AR9 / AR90 / AR915 combination. Frank: Why do we have to wait until you organize your house? Guy's don't give a hoot about that stuff. 😗

Thanks, David. It converts to AB at a specified output.

I have just acquired a Parasound A21 to drive the AR9s. It puts out 400 wpc into 4 ohms. It is a class A / AB design that offers the benefits of class A performance at lower power levels. It's the biggest amp I've ever used to drive these speakers. The whole new signal path (Oppo 205 with ESS Sabre DAC outputted via balanced XLR cables into the preamp with XLRs into the A21) has resulted in noticeably improved sound over what I had before...a Lexicon RV8. And that was pretty darn good until the unit failed. Listening to what I use as reference recordings, the music sounds a bit more open, the highs are cleaner, and the sound stage is a bit wider and deeper. I can't really say if all this is due to the bigger amp or the purer signal chain. Perhaps a tad of all these upgrades.