Which model is the best sound of AR speaker ?

[Guest]

Hi all,

I've read here a lot of infomation about the AR speakers, particular on vintage ARs and I also have one pair of AR3a too...

In your opinion, which is the best souding of AR speakers, vintage or recent AR? it may be AR LST or AR9 or AR3 etc...How about your own thinking... ?

Chinh.

[Guest]

My grandpa had LST driven by Mc Intosh , and it was impressive in a large room, and I just lucked into AR 9's !

Thats a tough one, it really is, but I would say, based on my memory of long ago, it would be the LST.

The incredible dispersion of the LST in my Grandpa's large Michigan Home was what made an audiophile out of me!

Perhaps I am now a jaded audiophile,, and I own AR9's, but I can still fondly remember the LST's, and also Grandpa, who I also miss very much .

[ninohernes]

I think that the AR-3 is the best AR speaker. It was always AR's flagship model, "The AR-3 is the best speaker we know how to make" This came from one of AR's ads. Its true, the AR-3 sounds fantastic.

Joe

[Guest Brian_D]

It depends on your criteria.

What was the best AR speaker when bass extension is considered? Probably the 9.

What was the best AR speaker when ruler-flat frequency response is considered? Proably the 3.

What was the best AR speaker when power handling is considred? Probably the LST.

What was the best AR speaker when efficiency is considered? Probably one of the bookshelf systems, like the 18 or the 17.

It all comes down to this, however. The best AR speaker is the one you like best. And that's all that really matters.

I'm partial to my 9's of course, and I can't say that I really like the sound of some of the other AR's (like the LST) but that's my preference.

[Guest OpusX]

Interesting thread.....and am very interested in comparisons between what others think about the AR-9s vs AR-LSTs.

Will let you know my final call once I've had a chance to listen to the LSTs when they get up here to Omaha, but right now the AR-9s have it in my book. Got an absolutely beautiful pair of AR-9s two weeks ago in a private sale from a person in Minnesota who took care of them as if they had been one of his children. So far everything that I have listened to with them has been head and shoulders above the same piece of music played through the same system with the difference being the AR-9s in place instead of the AR-90s. And the AR-90s were noticeably better than the AR-11s that I had in the same system prior to that. And the AR-11s were no slouch to begin with. The 9s are noticeably better with a lot fuller sound than the AR-90s. The 12 inch woofers really make a difference.

I think Richard may be posting some of his listening impressions after having listened to the LSTs since the end of November and then he and I can do some head to head comparisons when he brings them up here. We'll listen to a wide variety of music and post our findings.

[Steve F]

This is a fascinating topic. I take it as more of a question of what speaker best represented AR’s sonic philosophy, which model personified what AR at its best really stood for.

This is a difficult thing to evaluate. It’s a lot like trying to compare athletes from different eras or cars that are separated by 40 years’ time. Baseball players in the 30’s didn’t have to contend with night games, they didn’t face specialized hard-throwing “closers,” fielders didn’t have today’s oversized gloves to help them make the catches, there was no exhaustive video and computer analysis of the players’ performances, yesterday’s players didn’t have the benefit of modern training regimens and advanced performance nutrition etc., etc. So when you look at the greats of 70 years ago, are their stats directly comparable to those of today’s players? Maybe not.

As far as cars are concerned, the 1964 Mustang or the 1957 Chevy, for example, were classic cars--incredibly influential on both the public’s mindset and industry design trends for decades to come. But compared to a modern car, neither rides as smoothly, neither is as quiet, the older cars will rust faster, they won’t go 150,000-200,000 miles like any garden-variety Camry, Taurus, or Accord will today, their HVAC systems were nowhere near as effective as those in today’s cars, and so on. But will riding down the neighborhood streets in a Taurus bring a smile to your face the way driving a vintage Mustang will? Be serious.

So the question that is really being asked here, to my mind, is which speaker had the most influence on the industry, which one changed the direction of future products? Which was the acknowledged market leader, the one the competitors took potshots at? Which model was the best representation of what AR was trying to accomplish, the best example of their intentions? That’s an entirely different question than the simpler, more obvious question of “Does the 9 go deeper than the 3?” or “Does the LST handle more power than the 11?” The answer to both of those may be yes, but that’s clearly not the point. Any more than the fact that the 2003 Ford Focus may have a higher lateral skid pad number than the 1966 Mustang.

Here’s my answer (Remember, this is just one man’s opinion, on an incredibly subjective subject):

My vote for the Best AR Speaker is the AR-3a.

Now, before everyone howls in impassioned protest, defending their own personal favorite, let me at least give my reasons.

It’s absolutely true that the AR-1 probably changed the speaker industry more than any other AR speaker. It’s also true that the AR-3, with its first-ever dome midrange and high-range drivers, enjoyed a margin of pure performance ascendancy over its competitive rivals that no speaker, before or since, has ever enjoyed.

But the 3a was the very best incarnation of the basic, original AR design. It retained the AR-1’s superb, standard-setting bass response--bass that’s still excellent even by 2003 standards. The 3a took the 3’s incredibly wide-dispersion and smooth upper-end response and significantly improved on it. It even looked nicer, in my opinion anyway, with the new grille cloth and logo badge.

Yet as important as these advances over the AR-1 and AR-3 were, it’s incredibly significant to remember that the 3a came of age at a time when the stereo market was really starting to take off. The 3a’s lifespan—the late 60’s to mid-70’s—was the time when “stereo” came out of the dark basement recesses of the middle-aged, engineer-minded hobbyist, and into the family room light of the mainstream market. And there was the 3a, front and center, heralded by Julian Hirsch, Larry Zide, Audio Magazine and all the others as the standard-bearer of the day for high performance. No less significant was the fact that the 3a became the “target” of criticism for non-AR dealers, the object of unscrupulous dealers who would drill holes in the cabinet to ruin its bass or turn down level controls to wreck its sound on A-B comparisons. It was such an important product that even dealers who didn’t carry it felt compelled to acknowledge its existence. It would be as if a Honda dealer made every customer who came into their dealership drive an intentionally mis-tuned Camry first, in an effort to corrupt their opinion. Much of the 3a’s bad treatment at retail was AR’s own fault, because of their non-dealer friendly sales and marketing policies. The 3a was the lightening rod for this controversy.

The term “3a” became an icon. There are very few components in the history of audio that are recognizable just by their model number, without any mention whatsoever of the manufacturer. But say “3a” to anyone in 1971, and they knew exactly what you were talking about. Love it or hate it, they still knew. It was the target, it was the goal. “One of these days, I’ll own the 3a…It’s better than the 3a…It’s as good as the 3a at half the price…It puts the 3a to shame…It’s no 3a, but it’s pretty darn good.” And on and on. Precious few components have ever had that degree of notoriety and impact.

Some of the characteristics identified in the paragraphs above also apply to other AR speakers. (“LST” can only mean one thing. And the 3, LST, and 9 received best-in-industry reviews in their day as well.) Yet only about the 3a can ALL these things be said—the technical excellence, the arrival on the market at such an important juncture in time, the competitive visibility, the icon name status, the fame 35 years after the fact. The AR-3a was the very best philosophical, technical, and marketing expression of what AR was as a company during their prime original years, the years that AR was, to me, the real AR. To own and appreciate the 3a is to understand the very essence of AR—both the good and the bad.

[Guest]

Wow, what a post !

That almost brought tears to me eyes mate !

God, I too remember those days, I got out of high school in 1972, and I could only dream of owning 3a's !

I made do with some BIC venturi's, and moved up to Rectilinears, and dreamed of owning 3a's .

Never did like the JBL " west coast " sound, too spitty and sibilant for me ears ?

Owned some EPI 100's, blew em up, trashed em, and some years later bought EPI Time/Energy 360's, they were horrible!

I got so mad I called up EPI, spoke to one of their engineers about how bad the speakers were, and he said they were TOLD to deliberately make a tweeter with a rising high end response !

I read him the riot act for engineering a speaker with a built in treble control you cant turn off !

I own AR 9's now, and I am enjoying them very much, but my Grandpas old LST's really sounded good.

I had an audiophile friend over that is a new audiophile, and he has 6 foot tall ribbon hybrid speakers.

He heard, and liked the AR9's.

He has just placed his speakers for sale on Audiogon.

I dont think he will ever get 9's, but once he heard what music is supposed to sound like w/o peakiness and IMD, he sort of got the message!

I am rambling, sorry, that was a wonderful of yours!

[ar_pro]

A superb reply, Steve - thought-provoking, and very well presented.

Let me preface by stating that I am in complete agreement with your choice of the 3a as being best representative of what AR was all about - it had the most "AR-ness" of any Acoustic Research loudspeaker, combining new technologies, aesthetic virtues, and a practical design that became, and stayed a standard-setter, benchmark and comparator for speakers to this day.

That said, I've always been of the opinion that comparing audio equipment to automobiles is a flawed analogy (we've all used it, so it's got to have something to do with the male mind!) - there is no four-wheeled counterpart to the AR-3a. There has never been an automobile produced that combined revolutionary state-of-the-art performance at an everyday price, and stayed a legitimate performer for decades - there has never been a combination of best performance, affordable price, and long-term validity at *any* point in automotive history.

Perhaps your baseball comparison more successfully serves our purpose...mainly because the near-perfection of its concept better mirrors our end-goal of accurate musical reproduction. The parameters of the game are pretty much the same as they were 100 years ago (90' bases, 60' 6" from the rubber, 3 strikes, etc.), with a clear-cut desired result. Methodology is infinite (within the laws of physics), and subjectivity forms its inner beauty...sounds like loudspeaker-design to me!

So, having heard the Big Three (3a, LST, and 9), and having owned the 3a and 9, my personal preference is for the 9 as AR's finest performing loudspeaker - to my ears, it preserves the best of the Acoustic Research design philosophy, while providing better large-room capabilities and relative affordability (remember, the LST was never intended or marketed to the Average Joe - it was a Laboratory Standard Transducer, and quite expensive in its time). But the 3a is as close to design "rightness" as the Empire State Building - a masterpiece.

[Guest]

>I dont think he will ever get 9's, but once he heard what music is supposed to sound like w/o peakiness and IMD, he sort of got the message!<

A lot of that happens. :-)

Almost all my friends moved to AR speakers over the years.

Did you see the 9's that went for under $600 on eBay? Hard to believe. If they hadn't been so far away they might be here now. What would I do with 2 pair? I dunno. Bedroom?

Bret

[administrator]

Hey Bret .. what were you trying to do where that broken graphic icon is? Looks like I have another small bug to squash. Argh.

Mark

[Guest]

>In your opinion, which is the best souding of AR speakers, vintage or recent AR? <

I think the "middle" AR probably had the best sounding speakers. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I think the 10pi has the 3a beat. I suspect if I ever heard a pair of 303's I'd like them as well as or better than the 10pi/11, I've just not had the chance.

The 11/10pi kept the "ARness" and improved the high-end. That is; the wide-dispersion is still apparent and the speakers have no "in your face" quality about them, oh, and they will shake the walls without breathing hard like the 3a will.

So while I am a huge fan of the 3a and the LST, I just can't bring myself to say my ears tell me they are superior to the later designs.

But I think the most awe-inspiring speaker AR ever built was the 9, but I qualify that by saying I never heard the MGC-1 or a 303. I have not heard anything out of the current AR stable, either, but judging by their design and having heard others arrayed similarly I doubt I'd approve.

Bret

[tysontom]

Wow, Steve! There's really not much more that can be said to capture the essence of Acoustic Research. That was a superb reply to the original question.

This question also relates to the original design philosophy at AR all through the years: design and manufacture loudspeakers that reproduced music as accurately as possible, without regard to personal preferences or favorite-type sounds or any other subjective reason. The feeling was that if the speaker was designed scientifically, it would also "sound" better because it would come closer in creating a facsimile of the original performance.

In a series of AR's product catalogs, during the late-1960s and early-1970s, AR stated its "mission," so-to-speak:

"The accurate reproduction of music is one of man's more benevolent technological gifts to himself. Long-playing records, FM broadcasts and high-fidelity components have helped to transform the enjoyment of great music from a diversion for the few into an experience familiar to nearly everyone. Science and technology have given a kind of immortality to those dedicated musical performers who 'serve the cause of Mozart.'

Manufacturers of equipment designed to reproduce recorded and broadcast music have a wider cultural responsibility than that usually associated with manufacturers. For AR this means the design of equipment capable of reproducing music with the greatest possible accuracy, so that the work of the composer, performers and recording engineers is presented to the listener with the highest degree of precision possible."

Acoustic Research's single-minded passion for musical accuracy is the reason we all love AR products so much.

--Tom Tyson

[charger3834]

The 3a is also my vote.

[Guest]

I Begged my friend to buy them, and when he declined, I had a friend have a mass for him, lit candles, etc.

My mom was even going to invoke St.Jude !

I almost bought em, but I didnt want to deny another audiophile the chance to own this masterpiece of the loudspeaker engineers art, or to pay way too much for them!

My friend loves the tonal balance, but to be honest, I have some imaging issues with mine that may be due to having one original upper dome, and one AB tech replacement dome ?

I am going to just take the plunge and buy a new replacement dome for the other one, what do you think, ?

[kkantor]

Personally, I'm never able to pick champion "bests" in life. Hendrix vs. Segovia vs. DaVinci vs. Ali vs. Freud vs. Ferrari vs. Penicillin vs. James Joyce vs. the Parthenon vs. the Rosetta Stone vs. particles vs. waves v s. tubes... so many good choices, so few dollar/years.

I guess I tend to think AR's first-in-series as often the ground-breaker, with the second being more refined. 90's vs. 9's. 10pi vs. LST. 3a vs. 1. etc.

[Guest SteveG]

Great question posed. But answers have been to 2 different questions.

1) Which AR speaker was the most significant speaker in terms of its impact on the industry? No Question that the 3a is the winner. It was the standard for so long, it was widely known and accessable to listeners of even fairly modest means. The standard for all that followed.

2) Which was the "best sounding AR speaker? Just as clearly the 3a is not the answer to this question. It was of course the precursor to all the potential winners, and thus certainly is the answer to question 1. But several have indicated that the 11 was better sounding than the 3a. I have both and have to agree that the 11 does sound better, because it is simply more balanced. But the "best sounding" AR speaker?. I expect that the answer to this question among all of us would be divided between the LST and the 9, depending on your listening preferences and musical taste. I have had LST's for 25 years and the difference in sound between them and either the 3a or 11 is undeniable. The 9 is also a great speaker and preferred particularly if extended bass response is important in the music you listen to. For me the room filling dispersion of the LST is overwhelming and unapproached by the others. One caveat, however, as others have noted, few of us have had the chance to hear the MGC-1. This guy may well take the cake, and if Ken says so most of us would take his word for it. But while the LST was limited production, the MGC-1 seems to be almost non-existent, unfortunately. So, bottom line, "best sounding" AR speaker you can actually buy seems to be either 9 or LST depending on your ears and brain.

SteveG

[kkantor]

On sound quality I must recuse!

Besides, the MGC-1 was definitely a concept car from the lab. Only about 100 pair were made. I like to hope it had its value, commercially and scientifically, but wouldn't put it into the same category as products that went into ongoing production.

[ar_pro]

You're too modest, Ken!

With 100 pair in existence, do they ever change hands? I don't think I've seen one for sale at any time.

[Guest]

>I am going to just take the plunge and buy a new replacement dome for the other one, what do you think<

I did something similar. I bought another pair of "9x" speakers, checked driver numbers and DC resistance, and swapped.

Things did change, but not the way I expected or wanted them to. The cabinets *still* sound different, but now neither sounds like cabinet "A" does with the original, original tweeter. This is the sound I suspect I'm looking for, but can't empirically test. For funsies I also swapped the upper midrange drivers. That didn't seem to change anything (to my ears, anyway) and I went back to the originals.

I've been trying to avoid swapping caps in the crossover. It isn't a lot of trouble, but I didn't want to "change" the speakers at all. It looks like I'm just going to have to break-down and do it no matter how much I hate the idea. I dunno, maybe I was hoping for a slow miracle; that they would heal themselves over time. And as far as I can tell all these tweeters are "supposed to be" identical in performance.

So, here we go. If I swap caps to get identical sound out of each cabinet I'm still going to have a difference in the drivers, I suspect. But it is just a suspicion. After all, if something is wrong with a crossover it is having an effect on whatever I hook to it and perhaps not the same effect. After swapping caps in both cabinets and using replacement, correct model, tweeters in both, I should get identical sound from both. But is it the right identical sound? I suspect I'll never know.

Oh, the other thing that points to my ultimate failure is that the oldest tweeter sounds different in the AR-92's, too. That means, logically, that I'm going to have to settle for right-number-replacement drivers unless I can find an old right number, right cover-plate, driver. . . or two. I haven't seen even one for sale.

What that doesn't tell me is if the old tweeter is damaged and sounds different because of that. It certainly doesn't sound bad to me, just different.

By the way, my "difference" is subtle, but definitely audible. It's too bad that something couldn't have just broken all-the-way rather than go flaky so I would know, as a certainty, what was broken.

I'd really rather not have to buy another pair of 9's to get a pair of tweeters out of them.

Bret

[Guest]

>Hey Bret .. what were you trying to do where that broken graphic icon is? <

I think that was a ;-), but it could have been a :-). It would have been typed instead of selected from the smiley list and clicked-upon.

Bret

[Guest]

>Hey Bret .. what were you trying to do where that broken graphic icon is? <

Ah HA ! It was a typed "colon,hyphen,close parenthesis"; an unembellished smiley-face.

Bret

[Guest]

>On sound quality I must recuse!<

"Foul!," he cried.

I understand the recusal, on the other hand you are perhaps one of two people here who can tell us subjectively what you accomplished with the MGC-1.

I, too, have looked for a pair for sale. I remember seeing used ones somewhere, years ago, when I was scraping change out of the sofa to pay the light bill. They were expensive, but I don't remember the price, certainly more than $2,000.00 and maybe more than $3,000.00. Might as well have been $1,000,000.00 as far as I was concerned. That would have been the early 80's.

I got the impression that they were just too expensive to be mass-produced, not that anyone had any quarrels with their sound.

Bret

[kkantor]

I doubt they change hands much. I think everyone who wanted one got a pair during the late 80's, and that was that. I get one or two emails each year about repair and upgrade options, but other than that, I never see them around.

[kkantor]

Well, if your circumstances have changed and you decide a million bucks is reasonable for a second-hand pair, give me a call. I have an almost functioning pair around. Actually, if there is ever a get-together or birthday event, I'll try and get them into listenable condition.

[Guest]

>Actually, if there is ever a get-together or birthday event, I'll try and get them into listenable condition. <

There's a motivator if I ever heard one.

Bret