Guest Uberpilot Posted September 26, 2008 Report Share Posted September 26, 2008 Anyone have an opninion of what is the best Snell speaker made?Is the AIIIi the best version of the A?Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speaker dave Posted March 11, 2009 Report Share Posted March 11, 2009 Anyone have an opninion of what is the best Snell speaker made?Is the AIIIi the best version of the A?ChrisThese have always been my favorites.David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve F Posted March 12, 2009 Report Share Posted March 12, 2009 "These have always been my favorites.David"What are these....I don't know enough about Snell history to identify them by this pic. Specs? Price? Time frame?I always liked the ones with the semi-bulging round woofer sections on the cabinet..the XA 90's. These actually used two Boston Acoustics-built 2 1/2" cone mids and a Boston Acoustics-built 1" aluminum dome tweeter along with a couple of out-sourced 10" woofers (I forget whose). This was during the time when Boston had some of the best, tightest-tolerance driver manufacturing in the industry. BA's president was largely "hands off" when it came to meddling in Snell's design process, so Snell's head engineer--an incredibly talented, creative individual--came up with a truly superb loudspeaker that used BA's seemingly humble mids and tweets. It was quite a speaker.I'd like to know more about the one that's pictured here, however.Steve F. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speaker dave Posted March 12, 2009 Report Share Posted March 12, 2009 It was quite a speaker.I'd like to know more about the one that's pictured here, however.Steve F.Hey Steve, People will think I put you up to that response. Thanks for the kind words though.The speakers are the XA Reference circa 2002? The replacement for the previous generation Type A.XA, same as with the XA90 and XA75, stood for eXpanding Array, an attempt to get very constant vertical directivity with an array that (going down in frequency) had a length that expanded directly in proportion to wavelength. The cabinets were double walled with a damping goo between layers. Drivers were a nice combination of Audax and SEAS. The mids and tweeters were mounted in a tight cluster on a 5/8 thick aluminum NC machined plate. The crossover was handwired on 1/2" thick fiberglass board with the usual production adjustment of each individual crossover. (A tradition that Peter Snell started. Not cost effective but gave great consistency.) They were Stereophile Class A rated 6 or 7 years back.This is a protoype pair we made for CES out of some pre-embargo Brazillian Rosewood that our supplier found. There were some subtle changes between the prototype pair and subsequent production, so these couldn't be sold. I had to give them a good home. Regards,David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bikdav Posted March 20, 2009 Report Share Posted March 20, 2009 Anyone have an opninion of what is the best Snell speaker made?Is the AIIIi the best version of the A?Chris That's a good question. Personally, I was mainly impressed with the first three versions of the Type C (the ones that had a 10 inch woofer). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lt_texan Posted April 13, 2009 Report Share Posted April 13, 2009 Why the Snell Type 1's of course! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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