Acoustic Energy AE1 40th Anniversary Edition Loudspeaker Pair

Designing the new AE1 was no easy task. Not only was it a design classic but all the original parts have been out of production for some time, so they had to start from scratch. With the sound of this speaker and its reputation for very high performance already well established, there was no room for wild variation from the original design. Each element had to be crafted to sound the same as the old, and while they smoothed off some of the rougher edges, it was with a very light touch so as not to destroy what was great about the original design. So they allowed themselves a few modernizations weighed carefully to be at no detriment to the original.

Tweeter: featuring a new larger 29mm voice coil, it supports a slightly larger aluminium dome to lower distortion. Like the original it’s ferrofluid cooled and damped.

Woofer: a new woofer was also developed to specifically match the characteristic sound of the original. The new cone is slightly larger, conforming to modern 125mm woofer standards, while the greater radiating area offers slightly higher efficiency, lower distortion and the ability to move more air. The cone design was the key element to the original woofer and fundamental to the original speaker’s success, producing a very natural midrange, great power handling and dynamics for its size. So they retained the straight sided aluminium profile and a little used forming process known as ‘spinning’ as opposed to the more usual pressing method. The cone itself is then further strengthened by a thick, hard anodised ceramic layer coating on both sides. The new woofer further features a thermally conductive aluminium voice coil with a very powerful motor structure. One modern improvement was the addition of an aluminium shorting ring in the motor structure. This dramatically reduces the distortion caused by motional variation in the voice coil’s inductance.

Crossover: drawing inspiration from the luxury ‘Signature’ version of the original speaker, the crossover uses low order filters and high-quality components to achieve a very natural ‘live’ dynamic sound. It has a warm natural midrange, good bass weight for its size, forgiving high frequencies and exceptional punch throughout its operating range.

Cabinet: coated in ten layers of high gloss black paint or walnut wood veneer, the cabinet has been tuned to match the characteristic sound of the original AE1. The cabinet has been upgraded to include the RSC material capturing the sound of the original without any of the production drawbacks.