classic 30 users, could you please post your impression here?

[Guest touchzen]

And anyone knows why such a huge speaker only goes down to 38hz?

thanks.

[Steve F]

My first-hand experience with the 1992-era Classic line is relatively limited. I heard them at the AR factory in Canton MA during a Boston Audio Society plant tour, and I heard them again at the Jan 1993 CES. They struck me as clean, detailed, and natural.

The few reviews I've read tended to confirm the fact that they were very good speakers. As I mentioned in another post, AR did have trouble with shipping damage early on, due to their unusual cabinet angles and the speakers' extreme weight.

As far as the 30's LF rating of 38Hz, bear in mind that trying to specify the exact LF limit with any real degree of accuracy is a chancy undertaking at best. Measurement conditions, environmental variances, etc. all contribute to this being a relatively inexact science.

Remember also, that LF specs are as much Marketing fancy as Engineering reality. Certainly, for the plastic-box mass-merchant products, "20-20kHz" is normal fare. But even at "legitimate" speaker companies, a lot of "fudging" and competitive spec comparisons take place before the ink is ever committed to the page. This is simply the way the real world works.

A true, bonafide 38Hz is pretty darned good LF response, especially for a sealed system that only rolls off at 12dB/oct below system resonance. It may very well be that there is simply less exaggeration in the 30's spec than is the case with other speakers.

I have never had the opportunity to do an A-B between the Classic 30 and AR's other well-known dual 10-inch floorstanders, the 90 and 810. I suspect the 30 is in the same general ballpark as those two--which is nothing to sneeze at.

Steve F.

[Guest touchzen]

thank you very much for the infomation!