CUSTOMERS RAVE:
It's been awhile since I've felt compelled to write a review of anything, but I do feel compelled to speak about these babies - even though it's already been said.
I've been a SET-and-horn guy for a couple years (back horns) so you know where my priorities are: coherence, directness, dynamics - musicality. I am not into booming bass, not into audio parlor tricks, and not into flat, un-dynamic boxed speakers (and these adjectives apply to nearly all multi-way bass-reflex or sealed boxed speakers in my experience).
I've been a fan of the Audio Note rooms at the shows for a couple years; to me, the sound has always been very lifelike - pure, coherent, very dynamic, and extended, despite the use of technologies that seem very pedestrian at first blush.
After trying (mainly buying & selling) many different speakers (and amps, preamps, etc.) over the last several years, I decided a month or two ago to give the A-N kit speakers a try. I didn't want to drop the much larger dollars on a "test-run" of a factory model; I thought this would be the best way to try out the AN/E sound at home. Mind you, I was not and am not unhappy with my horns in any way - far from it. And, though the Kit 3s will not likely replace the horns in the main system, they are just so astoundingly good I had to write a bit about them.
I put them together just yesterday; they have about 20 hours of playing time, including break-in. It may seem silly to post a review after such a short period of listening, but I do have 12+ solid hours listening, and at this point I know what I like and am able to form judgments quickly. I also believe in the value of early impressions.
[The kits are very easy to assemble. Especially since I also purchased the solid-birch cabinets from A-N Kits which, at $800, seem a steal to me, as they were perfectly made & finished.]
I also purchased the Sistrum speaker stands as recommended by Jack Roberts in his review. I have no experience with the A-N stands so can make no comparisons.
So, about the speakers: basically, what the reviews say is spot-on. But, you really don't know what that means until you hear it for yourself. And you don't know if the show sound will transfer to your home. And, possibly most importantly, I had never heard the kits and had no idea how close the performance would come to the factory model.
It had been almost a year since I'd heard an AN/E (2007 RMAF), and I think the model I heard was the AN/E Spe, which I believe retails for around $8000, but I will have to say that the AN/E Kit 3 is not shamed in area by those speakers or by any of the speakers I've owned, most of which are 2-4x its price, and in fact it is all-in-all possibly the single best of them all. [There's no such thing as 'best' of course; I mean best to me, for what I value, but these speakers are indeed incredibly well-rounded and do complete justice to all musical genres.]
So, what makes them special? They are a TWO-WAY BASS-REFLEX SPEAKER - what could it be that makes them sound like, well, really nothing like any other two-way BR box I've heard or heard of?
- The crossover seems to be absolutely, completely seamless. It is undetectable. The speaker is as coherent as any single-driver speaker (or planar) and sounds like a point-source with one voice.
- The tonal balance is as perfect as I have heard. They are not bright, dark, tipped-up, recessed or anything else: they just 'sound like music' (to use the phrase that's become a cliche some love to hate).
- They are astoundingly dynamic for a non-horn-loaded speaker. Actually, I think this is mostly because they are a horn-loaded speaker: the corners are their horns. This is the way they were designed to be used and the way I'm using them. I think the live cabinet also accounts for the excellent dynamics.
- All of these things together, along with their perfect pace (PRaT), and the fact that they are indeed very extended (easily flat to 30 Hz in my large room), just make for an extremely musical and transparent speaker.
There are lots and lots of 'conventional' speakers that sound smooth, pure, and seamless (Kharma comes to mind, though there are plenty of others). However, there are no other box speakers I know of that have that quality but are also capable of the realistic dynamics of horns - or anything close to it. The compression that these speakers place over the music is a show-stopper for me; thus, I really can't put enough emphasis on the fact that the AN/Es just don't have that weakness. Drum thwacks are truly *thwacks* as they must be - anyone who experiences live, unamplified music regularly knows just how dynamic real instruments really are.
Audio Note rates them (controversially!) at 98 dB/W, but goes to great lengths to explain that this is nothing like the standard one meter on-axis anechoic measurement. If this number were completely accurate, I believe my 2W Fi monoblocks running EML 45s would have a bit more oomph than they seem to - as it is, they are fine for moderate volume levels, but to show the dynamics the speakers are truly capable of more power is needed. My Consonance 211 SET monoblocks fit the bill nicely; these amps are almost as direct and provided an essentially infinite amount of power as far as these speakers were considered.
So - they may not end up my main speaker, but they are so fabulous I feel the need to rave about them. Should you buy a pair of Audio Note Kits AN/E Kit 3 speakers today? Yes. Yes you should.
I have no affiliation to Audio Note or Audio Note kits whatsoever. |
