BlockquoteFor those interested in our progress, here’s a new set of cartoons for the AN-1, the big dog. This beast is 7.5’ tall and likely will weigh in at around 500 pounds. 6 12" woofers per side with a 3,000 Watt servo amplifier for the woofers.
Just thinking…from six woofers per side to just one…well…that’s a bit disapointing…and the AN2 was supposed to have four…
There is just so much spl you can get from a single 12"…I was thrilled about the multiple woofers in the earlier drafts…
Yes, I am a bassnut…
From the little I know from people who know, I’m sure this is sonically the best design…and that rules.
Really hard to imagine a speaker with two of such bass chassis of the size and area many of us own kills an IRS with two towers of massive bass chassis in terms of overall impact. In many other aspects I can easily imagine that much smaller speakers can have advantages or be better designed, but the impact, the wall of sound?
We’re doing our best to keep the AN3 close to $6K the pair which is an extraordinary bargain for a speaker with servo controlled and amplified bass and mid-bass as well as the AMT ribbon for the midrange. But, that’s our goal and hopefully we can get close.
I am with you as an avowed bass freak myself. The speakers will have great bass for most people. Let’s be honest and practical. One high power 12” servo controlled woofer is probably more low bass than 99% of the people who buy high-performance loudspeakers has ever had. Certainly far more than ANY passive speaker without servo control and high powered amps. So, for the vast majority of our customers, they’ll have bass beyond anything they ever imagined.
One of the reasons we made the change is that the top 3/4 of the box has to be open for the dipole to work. This means our original idea of woofers moving up the side had to be abandoned. When we first thought of the idea Arnie and I weren’t sure we could get a true dipole AMT folded ribbon and so this was in lieu of that - where we’d duplicate rows of dynamic drivers front and back. What we have now will blow that away.
I wish Arnie could have lived long enough to see this AMT ribbon. Here’s an artist’s drawing.
This will be the center piece of this design. A true miracle of midrange design with more surface area than an 8” woofer without the mass. And speed and transient response are unheard of.
For the customers of the AN2 and AN1 who don’t have enough bass - like you and me - we will make stacked subs available. These will be wireless, servo controlled woofers that you can add as the ultimate sick of 5 per side in an adjacent tower to either the AN2 or AN1. Just stack them up (1, 2, or all 5) and they auto connect, DSP runs and they’re tuned to the room, and you have more bass than Carter’s got pills.
Is it possible that if your equipment makes perfect sound with those speakers full of bass power (as the IRS, too), it’s not rich enough sounding with the rest of the worlds speakers? How can both work?
Is there a rule of thumb or guideline for matching speaker size (or woofer size) to room size?
To be specific to this thread, assuming that the AN2’s will have flat or 3 db down bass response to the low 20 Hz range, what will be the effect of adding the additional subs? I can guess that the increase in radiating surface area will get you closer to the impact of “planar” bass. But at some point, won’t the subs overwhelm room volume?
I’ve heard speakers sounding too small for the environment they are in and vice versa, so intuitively it seems there is some sort of optimum. True or not?
There really isn’t a speaker too big for a room though there are speakers with too much low extension in a small and square room. Which is why our AN speakers all come with built in DSP for bass that will automatically fix any peaks in the bass.
To answer the other question about why add more woofers if the one is adequate that’s a matter of personal taste. For me, I prefer the slight increase in presence and low extension provided by sharing the low frequency duties among multiple woofers. There’s an ease to the bass that only the IRS achieves and it is because of the many servo controlled woofers.
As I mentioned, straight out of the box and without any additional woofers, any of the three AN models will blow away the bass response the vast majority of high-end music lovers have ever had the pleasure of hearing in their homes. I remember while at Genesis we sold the Servo 12 subwoofer. When a pair of these were added to a system—just about any system—we dropped more than a few jaws at the sound. Was it the IRS? No, but then to be honest, there are only 85 total IRS systems in the world. So the AN2 with a full stack of 4 per side will beat the pants off an IRSV. Imagine what an AN1 with a full stack of 5 woofers would do.
I can’t wait.
The point is even without the woofer stack these speakers will outperform ANY passive speaker made and many powered subs. I don’t know of another full range speaker today with a built in servo subwoofer like this one. 700 watts for the AN2 and 1.2kw for the AN1. Oh my. You’ll have all the bass you want. Unless you’re a crazy man like me and a few others.
This reminds me on my years with high biased class A amps. I think I searched for this kind of bass impact by this way, which you instead had with the servo controlled bass of the speakers, better combined with probably more bass controlled, more lank sounding amps.
I think your philosophy is perfect, highly transparent, resolving and soundstaging sources and amps and get/add the richnesss and impact by such speakers. To build a whole system out of exactly those or similar components is more or less a must for perfectionists. It just has to be clear that moving out of this balanced concept (i.e. by adding speakers with much less impact and bass power) can mean slightly unbalanced sound compared to what’s nearly perfect I‘d say.
My feeling is, if you as a bass nut wouldn’t have such speakers, but more normal ones, your amps/components might sound or be voiced a little different?
Here’s a few different angled pictures of the lower cost entry level AN3. Note how this speaker looks and what you get for the (hopeful) price of $6K the pair (but could go higher).
…?
