Speaker Characteristics and Why?

[Feanor]

So your saying that you could source with similar drivers, and build an ANe clone for about $500, and AN charges $1500 for the cheapest kit?!

For about $1500 I could switch out the mid-level tweeters in the AN kit for the top-of-the-line ScanSpeak Revelator tweeter http://www.madisound.com/store/produ...oducts_id=1581 and a matching Revelator woofer. https://www.madisound.com/store/prod...roducts_id=949 and STILL have money left over to a top quality crossover and box.

Wow, they even sell a kit that nearly matches;

https://www.madisound.com/store/prod...oducts_id=8591

Well that's pretty much what I'm saying. But then again ...

RGA scarcely needs anyone to speak for him, but he'll likely say that AN has closely tuned their under-braced plywood cabinet to resonate in just the right way to tweak the efficiency and overall sound of their designs, and that it is reasonable on their part to ask to be compensated for this development.

The question remains whether the AN "voodoo" is really necessary or as effective as it's claimed to be. A real AN "clone" would need to have the under-braced, lightly-stuff cabinet and the wider baffle. Also, it would need a crossover designed for near-wall placement -- but, it anything, that's easier because it omits "baffle shelf compensation"; the wider baffle helps with this too.

My amateur guess is that the AN crossovers are deficient in that they don't include a circuit to suppress resonances that many woofers have above their appropriate ranges, (this would be the case with the CA22RNX driver). Of course careful driver selection would mitigate this.

If I were designing a speaker to emulate the AN -- by which I mean mainly near-wall placement -- I'd try the following:

• Retain the wide baffle
• Omit baffle shelf compensation in the crossover
• Include woofer resonance surpression
• Select a lower xover point vs. the 2000 Hz of the AN, maybe 1500 Hz or lower, (but still 2x the FS of the tweeter)
• Choose a higher order xover, maybe 4th order.
• Build an MDF rather than plywood cabinet since it is easier to work plus less resonant and therefore of more predictable result without a lot of tweaking.