Has any one heard of this brand before.My friend told me about their subwoofers and I checked them out, why are they so expensive? I didn't run into any that were under a thousand dollars.
Acoustic Research (AR) is one of the older brands still around. They've been around since at least the early 60's. Air suspension speakers are their specialty. One of their founders helped invent the concept in the late 50's. Their 60's and 70's speakers are considered "classic" and were very good for the time (some say they are good compared to most modern speakers). I don't know anything about their modern designs, except they they no longer have such a market dominance as they once had.
To tweak your answer a bit: The AR-1 hit the market in 1955. I was at the audio show in NYC for its debut (on TDY from the Signal Corps Engineering Labs at Ft. Monmouth). It had the 12 inch "air suspension" speaker invented by Edgar Vilchur who realized that air was much more linear in compression than conventional suspension designs were. The cone had a natural free air resonance around 10 hz which was raised by the sealed box to around 30 hz It also had an Altec 755 as the midrange/tweeter so that most of what you heard was the Altec/Western Electric (Bell Labs) design. The AR-1 blew everyone's minds. The favorite disc playing on that speaker and every other speaker in the show was "Fabulous Eddie Osborne" playing a humongous theater pipe organ. (Vol.1). I still play several of his tracks every year in my organ concerts for our lake. I first heard the 755 in the Audio Visual Ed Dept at the UofMN about 1950. It was a wonder! The room had a big monitor speaker of local build and the 755 blew it away. The AR-2 had a 10 inch woofer and the AR-3 a 12", but by then Vilchur had dropped the 755 to save money. It took him a long time to equal it. I have a pair of AR-3a's which still sound pretty good. He hit his peak with the AR-9 of which I have a pair. The AR-90 was a scaled down version of the AR-9. I gave a pair to my daughter. Vilchur's patent on air suspension was successfully challenged as "obvious" - which of course it had never been. -Dick
I have never seen an AR speaker with a burned out tweeter. What I have seen is this: For some unknown reason the controls that AR had on the back of their speakers were extremely prone to open and kill the tweeters all together. Vigorous swiping back and forth could always cure the problem, but it would come back again over and over. Eventually I opened them up and rewired the controls so that the pots were out of the circuit - always tweeter full on. THAT would fix them. The woofers were so good it was difficult to notice that the tweeter was dead. Whenever I visited a certain friend's house for an evening of music, I always had to "fix" his AR tweeters first. Today, IMHOP, they are still as good as anything within miles of their price or size. When I give outside organ concerts in stereo, I use a huge system with three Altec A-7's per channel for the Lake. I use two AR-3a's as a side system for people on my lawn.
It has been brought to my attention that I should warn everyone about AR speakers. The models I was waxing so lyrical about were the original AR designs. They are no longer made and the company is long defunct. After several acquisitions, the AR name was resurrected and the new owners (bless them - NOT) decided to reuse the original labels on their new lines. The AR-9 made these days is NO Relation to the original. They price them high to perpetuate the fantasy that they are the same. If you can find the originals, they are worth just about whatever the seller is asking for them. I've never heard any of the new brand and don't want to. I consider what they are doing disgusting.
CF6969 Messages: 2 Registered: November 2009 Location: canada
Esquire
Hi there well I have been blessed with a pair of proff.rebuilt (to factory spec ) AR-LST2 and I just can`t get over what these babies can do.I was driving them with a Mac754 and they sounded great then I plugged in my Bryston 4b fresh from a trip to the factory and they just sound even better,at all sound levels,Im not trying to break the sound barrier but these speakers need an amp that has alot of head room,they will amaze you.Room filling sound and great imaging as well .Anyhow there`s my 2 cents on a product that came out in 1976 or there abouts. cheers cliffe
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