AR9 cost

[fordf250]

Does anyone have an idea of what the AR9 retail cost would be, if introduced, new, to the market, today?

[Steve F]

There are lots of ‘inflation calculators’ on the web, and any one of them might tell you that the 9’s $1800/pr. price in 1978 translates to about $7000/pr. today.

But the AR9 as designed and built in 1978 would never be done the same way today, so the direct 1978-2016 translation of price is somewhat meaningless, in my view.  Keeping the raw acoustics the same—which is fair, since the 9 is so incredibly excellent—the cabinet, terminals, feet/spikes (the 9 had none) and crossover would be designed quite differently, to address today’s market realities.

Specifically, the 9’s ugly-duckling cabinet, with its strange woofer grilles and astonishingly mediocre walnut veneer, wouldn’t look that way today. That would never pass muster. Today’s 9 would be housed in a gorgeous furniture-grade cabinet with smooth, sleek contours and a beautiful overall look that mitigated its immense absolute size.

Likewise, in a nod to 2016 market realities, the terminals would be large, beefy gold-plated units, perhaps tri-amp capable. The crossover would boast “audiophile” componentry, with expensive, bragging-rights caps, chokes and resistors. There would be feet/spikes, likely brushed aluminum or stainless steel.

Add it up and today’s 9, with the same acoustic performance but vastly superior aesthetics, would likely go for well north of 10 large for the pair.

 

And be a bargain.

Steve F.

[ar_pro]

Very true, Steve. Although the AR-9 broke with tradition by having a floor-standing speaker whose depth was greater than its width, I doubt that very much else would pass muster in a newly-introduced high-end loudspeaker.

I've griped about some of the cosmetic choices that AR made with the AR-9 series (vinyl stickers, "chrome" plastic trim around the grill panels, brown paint (!) on various surfaces, and the Acoustic Blanket with its sometimes-there, sometimes-not foam inserts), and there are certainly a number of particulars that would need to be changed in regard to acceptable contemporary standards, such as the heavier speaker terminals that you've mentioned, MUCH improved crossover board design & execution, upgraded internal bracing, and improved fit & finish. It's entirely possible that in an updated design, the woofer system would become active, with a built-in superpower digital amplifier.

And then there's labor - where would it be built? My guess is that unless the manufacturer went whole-hog designed-and-built-in-the-USA, the product would wind up looking like something from Golden Ear; an outstanding speaker, constructed to a price, offering excellent value/performance, and built in China. If a true high-end American or European company (Wilson, Magico, Raidho, Aerial, B&W, Focal, etc.) took it on, it would cost like their more expensive designs. Another issue would be why they would take on such a project, in that the AR-9 design is pretty much nothing like anyone is producing these days. Other than some NHT designs, is anyone still building a true acoustic suspension system?

 

[genek]

If you consider the amount of hand work that went into AR speakers even during the Teledyne era, a "new" version of the ar9 in the very limited numbers of both drivers that would have to be made and assembled units that would likely to be sold would most likely be solidly in the "high end" world. Figure on somewhere between $10k-$15k.

[Steve F]

Let’s try not to go off on too many tangents, as to where it would be built, how many would be sold, whether the bass section would be powered, etc. Those are unanswerable hypothetical questions.

 

The original question was what the AR9 would cost in today’s dollars. A straight 1978-2016 translation of 1978’s $1800 is $7000 in 2016.

 

I stand by my original position that the 9 today would be a bit nicer and have a few more niceties, like spiked feet, tri-amp terminals, audiophile x-overs, etc. That would put it into the 10k + range, as Gene K agrees.

As to AR Pro’s question if anyone is doing a sealed high-end speaker these days, yes: Legacy Audio.

 

Their Signature uses dual sealed 10’s in a 4-way config, very similar in size and specs to the AR90, but with AMTs replacing the dome mid and tweeter.

 

http://legacyaudio.com/products/view/signature-se/

 

Their web site is very confusing, but I think they go for about $7500/pr., depending on finish. I’d consider these if my 9’s ever give up the ghost.

 

Legacy’s founder/designer Bill Dudleston is long on record as being a big fan of he AR9, because of its dual 12-inch woofer air-moving capability and 4-way design.

 

The other thing I’ve toyed around with in my mind is designing/building my own, since I am still close friends with the engineering people at past speaker companies I’ve worked at and I still have access to their engineering facilities and vendor sampling services. I could have “sample” cabinets built, co-design the speakers, do all the measurements in SOTA professional labs, tweak the x-overs to be exactly the way I want, etc.

 

The big impediment to this is the fact that everything would have to be done “after hours” so as not to interfere with their regular business, which would lead to this being a very long, drawn-out process. I’ve calculated my “wholesale” parts/materials cost and extrapolated that to retail price. It comes to about…..$10,000/pr. retail. So the 9’s estimated cost in 2016 of $10k+ is spot on.

 

 

Steve F.

 

[tysontom]

On 3/10/2016 at 9:40 AM, Steve F said:

The original question was what the AR9 would cost in today’s dollars. A straight 1978-2016 translation of 1978’s $1800 is $7000 in 2016.

I stand by my original position that the 9 today would be a bit nicer and have a few more niceties, like spiked feet, tri-amp terminals, audiophile x-overs, etc. That would put it into the 10k + range, as Gene K agrees.

As to AR Pro’s question if anyone is doing a sealed high-end speaker these days, yes: Legacy Audio.

Their Signature uses dual sealed 10’s in a 4-way config, very similar in size and specs to the AR90, but with AMTs replacing the dome mid and tweeter.

http://legacyaudio.com/products/view/signature-se/

Steve F.

 

I certainly agree with Steve's assessment of modern-day costs, if only based on the current "inflation" calculations for costs.  In reality, I think an AR9 might easily exceed even $10k considering the types of components, etc.  Unfortunately, the inflation calculator is based pretty much on the rate of inflation, and with a very depressed economy for the past 8-10 years, it's really hard to make a clear judgement on actual costs since our economy has nearly approached the point of retraction rather than growth.  Labor rates would be significantly higher, too, and a speaker such as the AR9 would have significant manual labor involved, especially with the large oiled-walnut cabinet.  But at $10k, I would think the AR9 would be a bargain in today's money!  There are probably few loudspeakers -- even current models -- that can outperform the AR9 in overall performance.  I really can't name any speaker that is smoother in overall response, has lower distortion with lower bass resonance and wider dispersion than the AR9.  Some might outpoint it in one or two respects, but none to my knowledge is better overall.  Can we name any?  It would be a good comparison.

As for the modern "equivalents" to sealed-system loudspeakers, the formula for the "pure" acoustic-suspension" woofer has constantly evolved.  In the early days of AR's AR-1, AR-3 and AR-3a, the woofers were very, very compliant and contributed to less than 20% mechanical restoring force vs. 80% or so with the contribution of the sealed cabinet's air.  Mechanical restoring force was the minimum necessary for physical centering and stability of the voice coil in the gap.  For years, the lowest-distortion woofers were made by Acoustic Research and were rarely equaled, let alone surpassed, over time even to the present.  However, today's drivers are built more for longevity than low distortion, insofar as most listeners can't readily discern levels of distortion.  Today's woofers are significantly less compliant (I've heard that it's more like 60:40 than 80:20), even those with low free-air (fs) resonance similar to the originals.  Therefore, there is more contribution from the mechanical components of the woofers themselves -- such as the inner (spider) suspension and the outer (skiver) surround suspensions -- in the interest of mechanical durability and reliability.  With today's taste in music, probably a smaller group of listeners (those still interested in audio) listen to classical, organ or jazz than listen to modern pop music, so the deepest registers of bass are rarely plumbed with today's equipment.  Some do like electronic music, but there is no analog in real life, making distortion is very difficult to detect.

Major exceptions to this would be large, powerful subwoofers, particularly those with servo-tracking voice coils.  Velodyne Acoustics comes to mind, of course, and the woofer servo mechanism counteracts the fairly significant mechanical distortion generated by the big, stiffly sprung woofers to give very low harmonic distortion in the final output.  But with stand-alone speakers, it is a different matter.

--Tom Tyson

[genek]

Inflation calculators are not very useful when applied to electronics, because design and manufacturing methodologies have changed so much over the years.  In many cases, today's versions of products actually cost less than their equivalents of a couple of decades ago.

Looking at the AR9 and the other models in that series, we can see that most, if not all, of its components were also used in other models.  For someone trying to build an AR9 copy today, that volume savings would not exist. Could you come up with a design that gets the same performance using today's off-the-shelf components? If so, you'd avoid that problem.

Producing the same oil-finished walnut cabinetry would definitely be material labor and time expensive. OTOH, if you provide complete plans, there are shops that can turn out CNC machined MDF cabinet panels, assemble them and robotically spray on a helluva nice piano black or other color finish for quite a bit less money.

So the question is, what do you want? Equivalent or better performance, or a museum-quality replica?

[harry398]

I would love to see that shootout.....a FRESH set of AR9's vs.........

somebody set that up!!!!

 

 

 

[DavidR]

I'd go for the Legacy Focus SE if my AR's ever give up the ghost.

http://legacyaudio.com/products/view/focus-se/

[harry398]

No doubt that has the tools in the tool box to run.......

 

over my price range....by about 9500 usd...

[frankmarsi]

Thanks DavidR for the exposure of these alternatives. I myself have looked at these for a while and I appreciate your seemingly forward thinking.

Personally, I could never accept lesser speakers with smaller woofers than I've enjoyed with my speakers.

[DavidDru]

What was the big picture with the 9's when they hit the market?  Were they cutting edge best of class etc?  If so, go to today's similar best and see what they cost and there you go.

[AR surround]

4 hours ago, DavidR said:

I'd go for the Legacy Focus SE if my AR's ever give up the ghost.

http://legacyaudio.com/products/view/focus-se/

 

A colleague in town has giant Legacy Whispers driven by McIntosh 500 watt monoblocks.   A magnificent system, but the Whispers are a very unforgiving speaker.   Specifically, they expose everything in excruciating detail...the good and the bad.    Some stuff sounds downright ugly.

[DavidR]

5 minutes ago, AR surround said:

A colleague in town has giant Legacy Whispers driven by McIntosh 500 watt monoblocks.   A magnificent system, but the Whispers are a very unforgiving speaker.   Specifically, they expose everything in excruciating detail...the good and the bad.    Some stuff sounds downright ugly.

Must be those solen caps in bypass Bill uses

My ref gear has that problem > bad recordings are BAD. The tube buffer can help on some but not all.

[frankmarsi]

On 9/3/2017 at 9:14 PM, AR surround said:

A colleague in town has giant Legacy Whispers driven by McIntosh 500 watt monoblocks.   A magnificent system, but the Whispers are a very unforgiving speaker.   Specifically, they expose everything in excruciating detail...the good and the bad.    Some stuff sounds downright ugly.

 

On 9/3/2017 at 9:14 PM, AR surround said:

A colleague in town has giant Legacy Whispers driven by McIntosh 500 watt monoblocks.   A magnificent system, but the Whispers are a very unforgiving speaker.   Specifically, they expose everything in excruciating detail...the good and the bad.    Some stuff sounds downright ugly.

Oh mystic guru and glorious crystal ball gazer, life is unforgiving!

A finely tuned system won't forgive anything, nor will it hold back the beautiful truth about anything.

If I'm not mistaken wasn't it AR that used the advertising words of: "Truth In Listening"?

P.S. If worse was to come to worse, I have since I first spotted the "Legacy" line of speakers as an alternative speakers to the four LST's I presently listen to. Nonetheless,I'm at complete peace with the current set-up.

Allow me to get back to listening to some great music that I have spinning on the turntable rite now.

FM

[Bigjoe]

An old but worthy topic being that the Teledyne AR-9 is one of the best vintage speaker systems made ,and a topic of which I have alot of experience with.

 

1st is that everyone has been using the MSRP of when the speaker was 1st released vs the more accurate final production year cost , to which I vaguely remember being over $2,500 .

 

Next we should look at the AR-9s competition ,it's main challengers from my memory was the Polk SDA line source speakers ,the McIntosh XRT line arrays ,the JBL line ,the Altec line & Klipsch line ,Maggie's weren't a big consumer item that early on ,the speakers that could equal or beat the 9s we're few and in the absolute top price bracket of $10,000 and up at the time , to which using common sense accounting for inflation we would be looking at well over $15,000 in 2019 money if not over $20,000 when we consider they could actually make the same design a true 5 way speaker capable of soaking up 2,000 watts or better .

[DavidR]

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

[frankmarsi]

Why that would mean my four speakers would be valued at near 15 grand if the stars were in perfect alignment. Even though this is silly, I like to sometimes fantasize this way  because to me, they're certainly worth more.

[DavidR]

Good investment Frank ?

[AR surround]

I bought my AR9's new from Sam Goody's in August 1978.   The list price, and their price, was $1300.   I haggled them down to $1200 + tax.   That works out to $4596 + tax in February 2019 dollars.   A bloody steal!   The speakers went up in steeply in price after that.

[Melly]

Hi all. Just been given a pair of AR9 speakers black floor speakers. Serial # 5-52-101592. I know you guys are guru's from reading some posts. Just would like a resale price as I fear if I set these up the cops would be at my house in a flash. Also given some other items I have no price on what to sell them for. A Yamaha AV reciever RX-V663. JBL wooffer Thanks in advance.