Quote Originally Posted by RGA
I have read numerous discussions of the AR9 and there is certainly no consensus on that speaker - a lot of people are put off by its numerous phase poblems(too many crossover points) lack of treble response, lack of detail and some just complain that it's dull and lifeless.
Out of the box, I'd have to agree at least about AR9s lack of treble. It took 5 years before I had a clue as to how to fix it. I heard and saw Snell AIIIi, one of my all time favorite speakers at a trade show around 1989 and noticed that they had added an indirect firing tweeter. I decided to add a pair to my AR9s and then another and another. Rebalancing the system meaning using the crossover level controls and an equalizer has made a huge difference. I would say that as they sound now, no other speaker I have heard is nearly as accurate or beats it or even equals it in any important respect. It does everything right as far as I am concerned. I'm using the same approach with every other speaker system I own. A loudspeaker with a single direct firing tweeter is now unthinkable for me.

BTW, you can see that the treble has always been a bugaboo for Acoustic research. Every evolutionary step in their high end models has incorporated a major redesign of the treble while according to the in-the-know experts on the Acoustic Research section of Arsenal, the basic woofer design and performance hardly changed at all for about 40 years. This despite the measurements always showing flat on axis response right out to 20 Khz. Obviously, there is much more to subjective treble performance than on axis frequency response.