The AR-5

[Horswispr]

Anyone have any thoughts on th AR-5? How did it differ from the AR 2ax? My parents had AR 2axs and I liked them. They were a bit warmer and rounder than my Dynaco A-25s. The Dynacos were perhaps a bit more neutral. Where does the AR-5 fit in? Thanks.--Horse

[Steve F]

Here is a re-print of an entry on the AR-5's history that I posted in June of 2005:

"The AR-5 was one of the later “classic” series original AR speakers. It filled in the spot between the top-of-the-line AR-3a and the half-as-expensive AR-2ax.

The 3a had a list price of $250.00 ea. in oiled walnut; the 2ax was $128 ea. in oiled walnut; the 5 was $175 ea.

From a chronological standpoint, the original 2ax was introduced in 1964, with its older-style cloth surround 10” woofer, the 3 ½” midrange and an 8-ohm version of the “fried egg” 1 3/8” dome tweeter from the AR-3. Crossovers were 2000 and 7500Hz, price was $128 ea.

At the end of 1967, the 3a superseded the 3 (although the 3 continued to be available). The 3a introduced the new 1½” dome midrange and ¾” dome tweeter, replacing the larger dome units of the AR-3.

The AR-5 followed in 1968/69. It used 8-ohm versions of the 3a’s 1½” and ¾” dome drivers and a brand new 10” woofer with a foam surround—the industry’s first. The 5 received excellent reviews from all the major magazines and was hailed as a superb speaker, with just slightly less deep bass than the 3a. In fact, many critics of the 3a were considerably “kinder” to the 5, saying that its less heavy bass actually contributed to a more pleasing overall tonal balance, without the tendency towards “thickness” that the 3a sometimes exhibited.

Note that at the time of the 5’s introduction, the 2ax was still the “old” 2ax. In 1970, AR introduced the “new” 2ax that used the 8-ohm ¾” tweeter from the 5, and its new foam-surround 10” woofer. The 3½” midrange stayed the same as in older 2ax’s, but the crossovers were lowered from 2000 and 7500Hz to 1400 and 5000Hz respectively. In spite of the extensive improvements and upgrades, the 2ax’s price also remained unchanged at $128 ea.

The AR-5 never enjoyed anywhere near the sales success of many other AR speakers, in spite of its acoustic excellence. The second to the top of the line often struggles from a sales standpoint in virtually any market or industry. In AR’s case, the second-banana syndrome was repeated with the LST/2 and AR-90, neither one of which was the sales and publicity champ that the LST and 9 were."

Steve F.

[Steve F]

You will also find this thread interesting:

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/dc/dcbo...ing_type=search

[dynaco_dan]

Hi Steve;

I had a copy of AR's letter to, Consumers Union, of which I was a member for about 40 years.

I believe that, Roy F Allison, wrote it.

It was, IMHO, the usual soft spoken AR style letter, classy.

The other company, with it's then, new style speaker dispersion characteristics, not only did't particularly like what they read, they also sued CU and won.

CU lost, because of the way some of the wording in their report was written, a small, but, important legal issue.

[charger3834]

Which company was that Vern ? From your "new style dispersion" comment I would say that could be Bose. Don't be affraid to let it all hang out Vern. I'm sure whatever company it was has better things to do than come after Brad and Vern.

[tysontom]

>Which company was that Vern ? From your "new style

>dispersion" comment I would say that could be Bose. Don't

>be affraid to let it all hang out Vern. I'm sure whatever

>company it was has better things to do than come after Brad

>and Vern.

That other company would be Bose, who sued CU for disparagement in criticizing the direct/reflecting 901. The magazine stated that the speaker created an unstable image, and that some instruments (such as pianos) appeared to move across the room, or something to that effect. Bose (probably especially Dr. Amar Bose, who vigorously defended his design) jumped on CU, but a later appeal overturned the initial verdict, so Bose did lose on appeal. I don't believe that any company (in the history of the non-profit *Consumer Reports* magazine) has successfully sued and won a case against CU.

This lawsuit against CU was similar to later cases against the non-profit "public trust," and the court saw the Bost case as meritless, just as it did in lawsuits filed against CU by Suzuki and Sharper Image. The courts apparently saw that CU had no commercial ax to grind, but was simply stating its findings unselfishly while practicing freedom-of-speech.

--Tom Tyson

[charger3834]

The review must have been pretty bad if they pursued litigation.

[Guest SherwoodFool]

Hi,

I have owned all of the speakers you describe. The point with all acoutic suspension was good bass. IMHO,IF you could not hear it, then don't buy it. AR3's defined bass in 2cubic foot enclosures, but also that dome tweeter gave great disperesion. I couldn't tell the difference between AR-3a's & AR-5's, but I could differentiate 2ax's. At the time stable amps at 4 ohms were a problem & expensive. Therefore I got 5's & Dyna amps. Maybe this is nostalgia, but I consider 5's better than AR-3a's, especially operationally.

Regards,

Russ

[ar_pro]

The trick was to find an appropriate amplifier for the 3a.

When the AR-3 was introduced, the majority of amps used vacuum tubes, and stability wasn't much of an issue. By the time the 3a came around, many enthusiasts were in the midst of switching to solid-state, and the AR-3a could be an amp-killer - more than one Dyna ST120 went up in smoke!

McIntosh amplifiers were consistantly excellent matches, but at the high end of the price range. The Crown DC300 was another fine mate, at a more moderate price. And of course, AR's integrated amplifier was built with the 3a in mind.

[Horswispr]

Thanks for all the comments! And I did check that other thread. Interesting stuff. Based on what I've read, I'll keep AR-5s on my list of speakers to consider working on at some point.

--Colin

[tysontom]

>The review must have been pretty bad if they pursued

>litigation.

Brad, no the Bose 901 review wasn't really bad, but CU found that although the Bose 901 was very spacious and reverberant sounding, especially when compared to conventional-design speakers, it had trouble reproducing individual instruments. CU noted that the speaker had impressive bass for a speaker with such small drivers. It said that a violin appeared to be "ten-feet wide" and a piano seem to stretch "from wall to wall." Although they didn't rate the 901, they said had it been a part of the ratings, it would have fallen between the high- and medium-accuracy ratings. I believe that these last statements annoyed Bose tremendously, and they decided to try to put a muzzle on the non-profit *Consumer's Union.* They sued the publication and won, but the lawsuit was overturned on appeal, and as I mentioned previously, I don't believe that any company has succeeded in winning a lawsuit against the publication.

Overall, this rating probably had little impact on the success of the 901, which has had sales far exceeding that of any other speaker anywhere near its price point. Although Bose never published sales numbers, I suspect that the company has sold at least five-times as many 901s as AR sold the similar-priced AR-3as, to give it perspective, but Bose also has kept that speaker (in many iterations) in continuous production since 1968!

--Tom Tyson

[soundminded]

A great deal has been written about this speaker, much of it inaccurate or misinformed, the result of lack of understanding of its principles or just prejudice. Having owned an original pair since 1970 which are still in excellent condition and having owned many other speaker systems as well, I'm in a position to make some objective comments about it which I think are in reasonable perspective.

Bose 901 represented a radical break with other designs. There was nothing like it before or since. It has many ingenious and highly innovative design features which solve problems other manufacturers haven't even begun to address. First of all, to those who are not familiar with it, it was sold as a complete speaker "system" consisting of two mirror image pentagonal enclosures about 1 to 1 1/2 cubic feet, each containing 9 4" full range CTS drivers rated at 30 watts each. It was a true acoustic suspension design. 8 drivers are aimed on angled panels on the back intended to bounce their sound off the wall behind it, a ninth identical driver faces forward. An active equalizer is inserted in the amplifier chain. This is not a "fix" it is an integral component of the design. The system was built to the highest standards of parts and workmanship for consumer electronics and was a direct competitor with AR3a. It cost $476. An optional pair of steel pedistals cost about another $70. A pair of AR3as at that time cost $500.

Among its innovations were the use of the "Direct/Reflecting" principle which bounced most of the sound off the back walls, pushing the system resonant freqeuncy above 180 hz where Bose said its associated phase shift was no longer audible, providing complimentary equalization below resonance by taking advantage of the linear falloff of acoustic suspension speakers, the use of 9 full range drivers to eliminate individual driver resonances because each unit's secondary resonances are overwhelmed by the response of the other 8, and elimination of standing waves inside the enclosure by having no sides parallel to any of the speaker baffle boards.

The system's sound was characterized by a very wide and stable stereo image. Contrary to consumer reports, moving left or right in the room left the apparant source more firmly fixed, not lest fixed than with conventional speakers. The speaker for a while was the bass champion of home audio speakers, slightly outperforming both AR3a and JBL Ranger Paragon D44000 in its ability to reach 23 hz but at about 10% distortion. To do this, the speaker required enormous power, far more than most audiophiles of the day could afford. I drove mine with an AR amplifier.

The speaker's sound in terms of accuracy was fairly competative for its day but IMO it suffered at least two fatal flaws. It had no high end. As I see it, the inertia of the 4" cones made high frequency reproduction nearly impossible and the front hemispheric dispersion of a 4 inch driver for what little of the top octave came out is very poor. It also has in many installations a serious upper bass/lower midrange rise of about 5 to 10 db. While it may have been judged less timbrally accurate than AR3a, it was more accurate than many other speakers of equal or greater price in its day. IMO, its popularity stemmed from its ability to reproduce music which did not sound like it was coming out of a box and its LF capability.

About 3 years ago, I began experimenting with this speaker by extending its treble and revoicing it. I am very pleased and encouraged by the results so far. I've reported on it elsewhere on this board. A second series or version had the drivers identical to the original but the equalization curves were different although the one curve Bose considered optimally flat was kept. In the mid 1970s the detailed design underwent a radical change going to a ported design in an injection molded plastic enclosure with drivers made by Bose themselves. This made the efficiency far greater at the loss of the lowest octave of bass. The price also substantially increased. At this point it was targeted at a wider consumer market and no longer could make any pretense as a serious high end effort. Still, its sales were more successful than ever.

Both examination of the construction and parts and the fact that in discussing sealing an air leak with Bose's service department about 2 or 3 years ago, they offered me a trade in for their latest version at a %50 discount IMO speaks loudly to their customer support and confidence in their products. I declined their offer preferring instead to continue experimenting with the origional versaion.

[Steve F]

The 901’s sales plummeted once the AM-5 was introduced in 1987. As a matter of fact, people internally at Bose complained that they were becoming the "AM-5" company, so strong were its sales and so great was its influence on the public’s perception of Bose. When Bose first started to run their "Trade-in" promos on the AM-5 in 1988-89 (a brilliant marketing campaign that let the dealer give $100 off the fair-traded $750 AM-5 system cost if a customer brought in their old speakers), the AM-5 garnered a whopping 33% share of speaker sales. That’s not 33% of BOSE’S speaker sales during the Trade-in Promo period; rather, that was 33% of the ENTIRE U.S. HI-FI SPEAKER INDUSTRY’S speaker sales during the Bose Trade-in promo period!

Certainly, the AM-5 propelled Bose to the next level in sales and public perception. Before that, they had been merely a successful hi-fi company. After the AM-5, they became a public icon, making that most rare transition from hi-fidelity company known only to enthusiasts and industry insiders to widely-known company, period. Virtually no other hi-fi company—not AR, Advent, KLH, none of them—has ever made that big transition. Hats off to Bose.

When the Wave Radio came out in 1993, that sealed the deal. The Radio’s sales dwarfed even the AM-5’s (and all its successors’ sales, like the AM-7, -10, -15, etc.), and then people there complained that they had become the "Radio" company! Such problems—problems that any other hi fi company would love to have. Now the noise-canceling headphones are a runaway success. Another great product that bridges the gap between hi fi and "regular" markets. When all you high-powered Forum members travel for business, how many of the Bose headphones do you see at the airport? QUITE a few, that’s for sure.

Bose’s sales are estimated at around $1 billion/year. Not Panasonic-Sony territory, but not too bad, either! AR’s best years in the ‘70’s were around $40-50 million, at most.

It was interesting—as the 901’s sales declined through the ‘80’s, Bose, in an effort to prop up the ‘901’ name internally, announced that any future top-of-the-line Bose product would be named the "901." Whatever form that future product took, whether it was a direct-reflecting speaker or something totally different, if it was the best that Bose could offer, it would be called the 901. They still have the 901 speaker, so apparently they haven’t yet found a reason to name some new-fangled thing the "901." But it will be interesting to watch.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re quite a company.

Steve F.

[soundminded]

One fact about Bose is that it is a privately owned company, it is not publically traded on the stock exchange. This of course has many advantages including the freedom to not have to respond to shareholders during temporary setbacks while new products are being tested, and rolled out. I tried a pair of noise cancelling headphones and I was very impressed. They seemed quite effective, in fact far more effective than a couple of their competitors models I tried. Were I in the market for a pair due to the need to commute on public transportation, I'd definitely consider them. I was much less impressed by their audio products although my neighbor has used one of their packaged systems at his kid's birthday party and they were also very well suited for that use. Perhaps the success of this company as a private venture is one reason why so many people have so many bad things to say about it...they are just plain jealous.