Quote Originally Posted by RGA
The AR 3 is there because of the design concept and most considered it the best AR speaker made...which apparently wasn't saying much since a lot of folks think it was and is dungheep in a heavy box. I have never yet liked the sound of a speaker with rear firing drivers which are tonally innacurate with phase problems and such. Others support that sound and think it's the best. Sound however is directional and should be directional. One reason I prefer two way designs that sound like all music is of one piece... It would be nice if one speaker could produce it all from a ONE-WAY.
Acoustic Research was the result of the pioneering work done by Edgar Vilcher. Acoustic Research was responsible for more innovations in loudspeaker design than almost any other manufacturer I can think of. AR pioneered the Acoustic Suspension principle and even today, the earliest AR 12 inch woofers will give some of the finest subwoofers a run for their money. The AR3 was the first truely full range compact loudspeaker being only 2 cubic feet. It made high quality stereophonic sound in the home a real possibility and was a benchmark against which all other speakers of its day were compared. One of its major crimes was being inefficient in an era when amplifier electrical power was very expensive. It was the first speaker to use dome tweeters. It also used a dome midrange which was unique. Whether you "like it" or not, it was used successfully in many live versus recorded demonstrations including two I heard personally. This attested to its high degree of accuracy. The AR3 design itself was evolved from the earlier AR1 which used a Western Electric tweeter. The design continued to be refined over a stretch of some 40 years from the mid 1950s to the early 1980 through such production units as AR3A, AR 10 Pi, ARLST, AR 303A and (Teledyne)AR9 which IMO is the ultimate expression of that concept. There are probably few manufacturers of loudspeakers which ever equaled the quality control exercised in the manufacture of AR speakers through most of their history.

IMO, almost every one of the most highly prized loudspeakers (AR, KLH, and Advent not included) of every era used indirect firing sound in some way. This recognized that fact that the limitations of direct firing loudspeakers in real rooms could not be overcome with only direct firing drivers and is especially apparant in the treble range. These products may include bipolar radiators or a long column of tweeters which puts the listener off axis of most of them, or indirect firing tweeters. Think of all the electrostatics, Vandersteen, Snell, JBL Paragon, Magneplanar and so many others which exploited the reflective surfaces of rooms to improve sound reproduction. (I'm not going to type the B word.)

Designers of two way speakers face an insurmountable problem and that is how to get only two loudspeaker drivers which are inherently resonant devices to sound like one non resonant device over 10 octaves. Most can't. They are inevitably a compromise. BTW, by compromising the lowest 2 or 3 ocatves and then using a subwoofer, you no longer have a 2 way system. You have designed your own 3 way system so anyone who thinks they have only a two way but uses a subwoofer is only kidding themselves.