Why so Little on the AN3 at RMAF

So the answer appears to be no, no one has heard it, so lets make this another glass half empty forum take over…:smile::rofl:

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Are you not entertained?

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I thought the AN3 sounded pretty darned good. Much better as a prototype / beta than many of the competing finished products. Was it my best of show? No, but it’s not $35k either. Just saying that I think Paul and team have done a really nice job bringing the product along and it looks like it will be easily competitive. Frankly given the number of changes on drivers over the last 90 days WOW, frankly it’s surprising it made music at all.

TAS has them listed under Best Sound for the Money in their show write up.

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Wow - quite a statement… “the new PS Audio speaker (est: $17k) rivaled speakers approaching six figures.”

I would really love to read any kind of characteristic differentiation by anyone!, all statements here or in other forums, no matter if good or bad or diplomatic, are more than rough.

Wow, wasn’t aware the price had gone up to 17K. Didn’t it start out around 6K?.

Robert Harley, Editor of TAS wrote, " PS Audio’s new work-in-progress speaker was a knockout,
with tremendous transient fidelity, ability to disappear, well-defined bass (the woofer section is powered), and terrific extension at both frequency extremes. All the drivers are blank-sheet designs, with planar-magnetic midrange and tweeter drivers. It appears
that it might be a giant-killer, with a projected price of about $17,000…T he
new PS Audio speaker
(est: $17k) rivaled speakers approaching six figures.”

So, while it may not have been your favorite, I think we did pretty
good in some people’s eyes.

I heard nothing better in there hour I spent poking me head in rooms
(which wasn’t much time).

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That’s a great short review! It seems the speaker already showed several very positive single characteristics as beef already mentioned. A more music related review will probably have to wait for an official review at a later time.

Impressive mini review.

I am glad he noted the speakers are a work-in-progress, something we all need to remember as we comment on them; everything is subject to change and modification.

I think Badbeef summed this up well a few days ago. These speakers have new drivers first fabricated a month before RMAF, the crossovers were done a week before RMAF and, surprise surprise, quite a few people thought they were pretty poor. I suspect, given the timescales, if they had been good it would have been a complete fluke or a total miracle. Even the most experienced speaker companies with decades of experience usually spend years developing a new product. My nearest speaker company, PMC, a true world leader in pro and consumer speakers, took 5 years developing their latest speaker, the Fenestria, and the woofer was existing technology. It was developed and tested at our national research centre. The AN3 had a second mid-bass driver added very recently, a fundamental change, which might explain why some people thought the mid-bass swamped the midrange. What struck me as odd was that the main designer has spent the last 8 years as a regional sales manager, most recently for a microphone company.

How PS Audio puts together a team to produce a speaker product is up to them. How much Paul hypes his latest products and ideas on his own website is also up to him. There’s no law saying you have to agree or even pay any attention.

What I do find odd, from a business perspective, is putting a half-baked product in front of your industry and client base. There’s no point saying it’s a prototype, and last week Paul was saying it was a production version. People will judge it as your product on its merits and compare it to the competition, all of which are likely to be true production versions. How many people here would, in their own business, put forward for consideration an incomplete product or service? You can caveat something as much as you like, but they get ignored. So if there was so little on the AN3 at RMAF, I would have thought that a good thing.

One day I assume it will be finished, shown, reviewed and measured, and hopefully people will buy it. That’s all any manufacturer can hope for.

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Steven, I think what Paul said was that these were the parts of the production version (unlike the one at Axpona). Cabinet, drivers, and so on. They’re still deciding servo or no servo, and other aspects of it are not as it will be set up and tweaked in the finished product. AFAIK. FWIW. LSMFT. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em ; )

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Article from TAS (Neil Gader) on RMAF Loudspeakers, which mentioned AN3:

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Thanks for posting this!

I have tried to look for articles in general about rmaf, and it seems to me like there hasn’t been that much written about it in general compared to last year. So many articles pop up for last year that it is hard to find the 2019 stuff. Am I wrong?

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Two days ago, Robert Harley said Neil’s RMAF Speaker Report post was going to be that same evening. So…take it with a grain of Beryillium. Or Diamond, or Planar material…whatever the Current Thing is.

I would So hate to be a reviewer these days…

Google daily audiophile (one of my daily sojourns).

Lots of coverage by many publications.

Cheers.

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Thanks. Nice site!

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Lets see, common sense, the quality of PS Audio’s new speaker is 2nd to the reputation of PS Audio as a speaker company. If AN was alive and demonstrating them, then his rep from Infinity forces people to acknowledge the speaker. It almost makes more sense initially for PS Audio to create small run editions like Nelson Pass of First Watt/Pass Audio., and make small incremental changes between the runs. Like any product, the PS Audio needs to generate a rep and online reviews by bringing in reviewers, so they can compare against the IRS Vs and/or the IRS Beta and or some other high end Martin Logan ?Neolith?, and after hopefully minor changes, then have a full launch of the new speaker with a top /down explanation as to possible finishes (for the wife factor) and make sure that they don’t have a fatal issue after say 30 units or more running for 3 months without a tweeter failure. So, bottom line, until PS Audio actually has a decent number of shipments and they are in the field for 3 or more months, he is just showing a prototype that may or may not have the same quality of sound and looks to a shipping product…

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