"bassy" AR 3a?

[mrsimontibbs]

Hello all. I have a pair of AR 3a from a thrift store that I refoamed the woofers on several years ago. They sound great, especially the clarity of instruments, but the big woofer seems to overpower the mids and tweeters so that they sound a little dead or, as my girlfriend says, "underwater," especially compared with the ADS L500 speakers in my office, which are very bright. This is with the AR mid/hi pots turned up (which are working). Right now, I'm powering both AR and ADS with a small Pioneer SX-580.

My concern is: not having heard another pair of AR 3a, do they normally sound this way, or is something amiss? They're about 6" from the wall in a long living room with hardwood floors. Should I adjust the placement? Try a higher-powered receiver?

They're the best speakers I've owned and I only paid $5 for them! Crazy, I know. I plan to hold on to them indefinitely and want to get the best performance.

Thanks!

TED

[davidro]

My non-restored AR-3a don't sound as though the bass overshadows the mid and high at all. Provided all drivers are original you might need to clean the pots if they all make sound.

[Carlspeak]

Hello all. I have a pair of AR 3a from a thrift store that I refoamed the woofers on several years ago. They sound great, especially the clarity of instruments, but the big woofer seems to overpower the mids and tweeters so that they sound a little dead or, as my girlfriend says, "underwater," especially compared with the ADS L500 speakers in my office, which are very bright. This is with the AR mid/hi pots turned up (which are working). Right now, I'm powering both AR and ADS with a small Pioneer SX-580.

My concern is: not having heard another pair of AR 3a, do they normally sound this way, or is something amiss? They're about 6" from the wall in a long living room with hardwood floors. Should I adjust the placement? Try a higher-powered receiver?

They're the best speakers I've owned and I only paid $5 for them! Crazy, I know. I plan to hold on to them indefinitely and want to get the best performance.

Thanks!

TED

The symtoms you describe are typical of 3a's with bad pots, resulting in NO sound coming out of the mids and tweeters. You can check this using the toilet paper tube test. A paper towel tube will work just as well. Turn up the pot knobs all the way and place the tube to your ear and close to the mid or tweeter you want to check and listen for any sound. The tube simply isolates the sound from the woofer sound.

[soundminded]

Hello all. I have a pair of AR 3a from a thrift store that I refoamed the woofers on several years ago. They sound great, especially the clarity of instruments, but the big woofer seems to overpower the mids and tweeters so that they sound a little dead or, as my girlfriend says, "underwater," especially compared with the ADS L500 speakers in my office, which are very bright. This is with the AR mid/hi pots turned up (which are working). Right now, I'm powering both AR and ADS with a small Pioneer SX-580.

My concern is: not having heard another pair of AR 3a, do they normally sound this way, or is something amiss? They're about 6" from the wall in a long living room with hardwood floors. Should I adjust the placement? Try a higher-powered receiver?

They're the best speakers I've owned and I only paid $5 for them! Crazy, I know. I plan to hold on to them indefinitely and want to get the best performance.

Thanks!

TED

If the capacitors have not been replaced, that should be done. Virtually all of the original capacitors installed by the factory for these speakers are well past their use by date. As was stated previously the pots should be checked and cleaned if necessary.

AR3a and other speakers by AR of this era are voiced differently from modern speakers. Modern speakers by comparison are far brighter sounding. This is impressive to many at first but are not accurate and their shrillness can cause "listener fatigue" at times. The use of a graphic equalizer to help revoice this speaker is a step I strongly recommend. It turned AR2ax from a mediocre speaker into an outstanding performer for me. AR3a is known to have a rolled off high end response. This is easily remedied with an equalizer. If you don't have one handy try using the bass and treble controls to adjust tonal balance.

AR3a and its variants require not only a lot of power but must be stable with loads of 4 ohms and below. AR's suggested 25 RMS wpc minimum is not sufficient for most listeners. Home theater receivers that are 100 wpc are not suitable either not only because their power bandwidth often extends only to 50 hz but because they are unstable with loads under 6 ohms. AR3a will likely cause them to shut down to protect themselves. A higher power amplifier all other things being equal will not alter the spectral balance however.

[genek]

Are they on the floor or on something? In addition to checking your drivers and crossover, I'd avoid putting them directly on the floor.

[bitbandit]

Hello all. I have a pair of AR 3a from a thrift store that I refoamed the woofers on several years ago. They sound great, especially the clarity of instruments, but the big woofer seems to overpower the mids and tweeters so that they sound a little dead or, as my girlfriend says, "underwater," especially compared with the ADS L500 speakers in my office, which are very bright. This is with the AR mid/hi pots turned up (which are working). Right now, I'm powering both AR and ADS with a small Pioneer SX-580.

My concern is: not having heard another pair of AR 3a, do they normally sound this way, or is something amiss? They're about 6" from the wall in a long living room with hardwood floors. Should I adjust the placement? Try a higher-powered receiver?

They're the best speakers I've owned and I only paid $5 for them! Crazy, I know. I plan to hold on to them indefinitely and want to get the best performance.

Thanks!

TED

I have a bass "problem" with my AR3a improveds but only in one room, and only when they are placed in particular locations within that room. This just happens to be the best position for them visually! Moving them just a foot or so closer together resolves the problem. It appears to be some sort of room resonance in my case, perhaps you have something similar going on? As others have said, check the drivers are all working, and if so, try moving the speakers around a bit and see whether it helps with the problem.

When mine are in the "wrong" place, the bass is certainly an eye opener (and an ear popper too) and can be a bit startling. There is no peak as you would expect with a room resonance, it is just that everything from about 200Hz downwards is extremely (too) loud. As I say - moving the speakers a bit resolves the problem completely, so in my case it is definitely a room issue.

Hope this helps.

[soundminded]

"the big woofer seems to overpower the mids and tweeters so that they sound a little dead or, as my girlfriend says, "underwater," especially compared with the ADS L500 speakers in my office, which are very bright."

Here's a "quintessential" modern speaker in what for some would be the high price range. Then again for others, $20,000 for a pair of loudspeakers hardly seems like lunch money...especially if you are a bank president who just received a multi-million dollar bonus even though you drove your bank broke by buying CMOs and CDSs and needed a bailout from Uncle Sam just to stay in business.

http://www.revelspeakers.com/ProductDetails.aspx?prdid=2

This is a highly regarded speaker in the modern press. Revel is JBL's high end entry into the audiophile market although their K-2 which strikes me as a modern version of the 1950s corner horn the Hartsfield with a piezo tweeter extending to 40 khz is a whopping $50,000 a pair.

If you ignore the verbiage and can read graphs, they tell a very different story.

http://www.revelspeakers.com/ProductDetails.aspx?prdid=2

The bass shown in graph 1 starts to fall off at 100 hz. by 20 hz it's down 10 db from its 1khz level and around 13 db from its 100 hz peak. If you look at chart 3 you'll see that THD is less than 1% at 50 hz where the measurement stops but FR falls sharply below that frequency while the graph suggests that THD is rising very rapidly. If that trend continues in the lowest octave, THD will be so high at the lowest musical notes that it will be mostly doubling. This means that unlike AR1 and its successors which are at 5% at 30hz it probably cannot be equalized to flatten and extend its FR downward by much.

At the other end of the chart FR is down 15 db 60 degrees off axis at 15 khz. This compares with 5 db for AR3a. Again this cannot be equalized because boosting treble to compensate for the falloff would make on axis response unbearably shrill.

IMO this speaker on paper at least looks like a real stinkeroo. It would probably perform best in very dead rooms on axis with little or no musical content in the lowest octave. This is what the market likes.

As a footnote, this speaker is a successor to Floyd Toole's design which incorporated a rear firing tweeter which surely improved HF dispersion. The bass still had (3) 8" drivers and I think the system is ported. Response at LF does not look typical for an AS design. The "knee" in the FR at around 35 hz suggests to me that the three woofers are not tuned to the same frequency. I'm surprised more ported designs don't use this technique.

[oldarnut]

AR3's or AR3a's sounded "dead" compared to other speakers since the day they were introduced. Most all other speaker systems sound much brighter than the AR's. Nearly any listener would say this after listening to AR's compared to other brands. This doesn't mean the AR's are not accurate. When reproducing nearly any sound in a typical listening room in your house, the realism of the AR's is often startling.

There have been many discussions about this and the need to change capacitors, etc., but the truth is, the AR3's and AR3a's sounded like this when new. When we went to a Hi-Fi store in the '60's, we always checked the tweeter/mid level controls as it sounded like they were turned off. It takes a lot of listening to get accustomed to their "laid-back" sound.

[dynaco_dan]

AR3's or AR3a's sounded "dead" compared to other speakers since the day they were introduced. Most all other speaker systems sound much brighter than the AR's. Nearly any listener would say this after listening to AR's compared to other brands. This doesn't mean the AR's are not accurate. When reproducing nearly any sound in a typical listening room in your house, the realism of the AR's is often startling.

There have been many discussions about this and the need to change capacitors, etc., but the truth is, the AR3's and AR3a's sounded like this when new. When we went to a Hi-Fi store in the '60's, we always checked the tweeter/mid level controls as it sounded like they were turned off. It takes a lot of listening to get accustomed to their "laid-back" sound.

Hi there

Back in the '60's a few friends and I would go have some listening sessions at various hifi stores here in Vancouver.

AR among other hifi speakers sounded bass heavy and treble shy.

When the salesmen would switch between speakers they would sometimes also switch on the loudness switch which boosted the lousy speakers output.

This type A -B testing always gave the lousy speaker a margin of better sound.

In reality, when we found an honest salesperson, they allowed us to listen long-term to the hifi speakers.

After a while we could listen to the un-altered hifi speakers without listener fatigue.

In the long haul, even the AR-4X's and Dynaco A-25's sounded impressive with a wall of other speakers to see but not be able to localize.

The speaker positioning, height above floor, sturdiness of supporting stand, amplifier power, your seating position, room size, furnishings and structial integrity all

need to be taken into consideration when listening.

I may have missed a few points here, but, if one was given a decent chance more hifi speakers would have been sold.

The AR-3 and AR-3A, during their day, were considered a standard by which other speakers should be compared to.

This is not to say they were the absolute best, all inclusive, just in the typical listening atmosphere primarily with jazz, organs, etc.

They both had criticisms of the human voice but had less warts than almost any other speaker system available at the time and even today.

They tend to sound bass heavy and treble shy on first listening.

When there is true deep bass you can feel it, it has on more than one occasion made me want to be sick, love it.

[oldarnut]

Exactly as you describe it. Long term listening always would lead you back to the AR's or KLH's, or Dynacos, or Advents. The Electrovoice, Klipsch, Altec Lansing, University, J.B. Lansing, Rectilinear, McIntosh, and others sounded much brighter. Listener's fatigue really makes you want to "turn off the music" after it sets in. Unless, however, you switch to one of the "dead" speakers which makes you want to "turn it up!"

[soundminded]

AR3's or AR3a's sounded "dead" compared to other speakers since the day they were introduced. Most all other speaker systems sound much brighter than the AR's. Nearly any listener would say this after listening to AR's compared to other brands. This doesn't mean the AR's are not accurate. When reproducing nearly any sound in a typical listening room in your house, the realism of the AR's is often startling.

There have been many discussions about this and the need to change capacitors, etc., but the truth is, the AR3's and AR3a's sounded like this when new. When we went to a Hi-Fi store in the '60's, we always checked the tweeter/mid level controls as it sounded like they were turned off. It takes a lot of listening to get accustomed to their "laid-back" sound.

"AR3's or AR3a's sounded "dead" compared to other speakers since the day they were introduced. Most all other speaker systems sound much brighter than the AR's."

They were. There are a number of reasons for it. The tweeter was known to have a rolloff affecting the treble. AR3 and AR3a placed on a floor exaggerated the effect of its powerful bass that augmented the obvious imbalance. Dealers deliberately sabotaged them in their demo rooms by truning down the tweeter control to persuade prospects to buy more profitable speakers. This is why it was so puzzling to me when I heard AR3 sound almost exactly like the guitar in the LvR demo and then later almost like a nickelodeon. Over 40 years later I came here and found out how it was done. Roy Allison turned up the treble control on the Dynaco PAS3x preamp.

Voicing a speaker to sound like musical instruments seems like a hopeless task. Besides variations in the listening room acoustics there are variations in program material balance. Most dealer show rooms were large and dead making brighter speakers sound better. variations in phonograph cartridges matter too, many having a peak of as much as 5 db in the 15 khz range. This compensates for HF rolloff of the speaker. Recent experience with phonograph records, something I haven't listened to much in decades shows me that their spectral balance varies widely. But at least recording companies equalized their monitors with very expensive equalizers and calibrated microphones frequently to be reasonably flat. This resulted in some consistency from recording to recording and from company to company. CDs on the other hand strike me has having spectral balance variations at least an order of magnitude greater than phonograph records. This may be one reason why so many people don't like them.

The peculiar religious mantra of many audiophiles that says "thou shalt not budge bass and treble controls from their indicated neutral positions" and its corollary "thou shalt not use an equalizer flies in the face of every rational principle of electrical engineering. High fidelity sound recording/reproducing equipment are systems where the overall results are what counts, in fact the only thing that counts (besides cost and reliability.) Ironically those highly cherished vinyls audiophiles love so much have usually undergone at least six equalizations by the time the signal reaches the phono preamp output if they have not been recorded with Dolby, fourteen if they have. Because speakers like AR3 and AR3a cover the entire audible spectrum without distortion unlike any except a few others (deep extended bass capability without audible harmonic distortion, excellent high frequency dispersion) they can be rebalanced using a graphic equalizer, a powerful tool unavailable to consumers in the era these speakers were manufactured to be anything you wnat it to be within their power handling capabilities. If you want AR3 to sound thin and shrill, that is entirely within your cability and you can buy perfectly good 10 band graphic equalizers on e-bay that nobody wants the way I do for 10 to 20 dollars plus another 10 to 20 dollars for shipping.