Best AR speaker series

[Supercooper188]

All you pros put your thinking caps on---What do you all think was the best series of speakers that AR ever made? Was it the "Truth in Listening", was it "High Tech","TSW", "High Res" or some other one? Let me hear from everyone.

[soundminded]

Okay, I'll go first. But I'm going to change the question a little. Rather than think about a "series" I'm going to look at their best two efforts. Everything below the best and most expensive effort in a series is a compromise to cut costs. Where you cut and whether the compromises are acceptable is a matter of choice. AR's two best loudspeaker efforts IMO were LST and AR9. Each made substantial improvements to the technology represented by AR3a. LST recognized the inadequacy of single mid and high frequency drivers to provide adequate dispersion and in what was for that time a typically bold step for AR, they broke with the previous philosophy of using a single driver for each frequency range and found that the real advantages outweighed the theoretical disadvantages. The result was possibly the most open clearest and overally best sounding speaker AR ever produced (AR9 included.) You also didn't have to sit directly on axis to get the full benefit of the performance built into those drivers. AR9 Addressed several other problems successfully. One was of course providing deeper more accurate and powerful bass and better coupling it into the acoustics of typical listening rooms. They also addressed the problem of coupling the lowest 3 octaves with the octaves directly above without the typical phase cancellation problems. They further addressed the dificulty of matching the widely differing capabilities and characteristics of the 12" woofer with the dome midrange by adding an intermediary coupling driver improving the performance of the other drivers as well in the ranges they handled best. It's too bad that they didn't incorporate the best ideas of LST in the AR9 model. The result would have been ever superior although of course the cost would have been a lot higher. It leaves people who like to daydream about building newer innovative designs and those who actually try them something to think about.