Acoustic Energy AE1 40th Anniversary speakers
You will have almost certainly noticed that nostalgia and retro are ‘doing the numbers’ in a huge swathe of product categories at the moment. It’s not too hard to see why either. Retro creates a pincer movement that snares people who couldn’t afford the object the first time around on one side and people who simply want to be reminded of a point when things were, if not less awful than the present, at least differently awful. Hifi has been no exception to this trend and we’ve seen a a variety of products ‘inspired by’ older designs hitting the market.
The AE1 40th Anniversary you see here from Acoustic Energy looks like more of the same but the reality is a little more complex than that. The AE1 was the first ever Acoustic Energy product and something of a revolution when it hit the market in 1987. It was a small speaker that had power handling far in excess of other compact designs and a significantly wider frequency response than had traditionally been the case. It was an immediate success and put Acoustic Energy on the map, establishing a cult following that meant it has already re-entered production once (in 2006 before ceasing again in 2016). The demand is clearly there for it to return.
On the face of it, putting the AE1 back into production is perfectly logical but there’s a catch. The speakers that Acoustic Energy is currently building, such as the deeply talented Corinium, have nothing in common in terms of design and material choices with the original. If you tried to apply these modern practises to an AE1, it wouldn’t be an AE1 any more, so the process by which many retro designs have been created (old on the outside, modern on the inside) is a non-starter. What this means is that the 40th Anniversary AE1 is technically not the best small speaker that Acoustic Energy knows how to make and is instead the best AE1 they know how to make, which is a subtly different proposition.
Don’t go thinking that all AE has done is dust off the tooling and turn the power back on either. The AE1 40th Anniversary shares no parts in common with the original and technically counts as a ‘new’ speaker; simply one cooked up with a 40 year old recipe. What Matt Spandl head of acoustics at AE has done, is work through the design and, where appropriate, applied modern Acoustic Energy principles to them. This means that the cabinet of the Anniversary uses the modern bitumen damping from the Corinium instead of ‘about a pint and a half’ of concrete used in the original. This damping is partnered with an internal brace to mimic the performance of the concrete cab.
At the front of the cabinet, the two small circular ports of the original are retained instead of a slot port commonly encountered on new AE designs. What you can’t see is that each port now has an inner flare as well as an outer one for lower turbulence. The AE1 40th Anniversary is also the first of its kind to have magnetic grill tabs and a corresponding reduction in the number of holes in the front panel.
Both the mid/bass and tweeter are larger on the AE1 40th Anniversary than before; 125mm for the former and 29mm for the latter. The result is greater ability to move air, reduced distortion and a slight improvement in sensitivity to 87dB. The tweeter is a ferrofluid cooled, aluminium dome and the mid/bass still has the spun aluminium straight sided cone of the original, but it’s now ceramic backed and even more rigid. On the inside you will find a shorting ring fitted to the motor structure for the first time. The surround is still foam as none of the materials used with their current drivers will mate with the aluminium correctly. The crossover that connects the two drivers, still crosses over at around 3kHz but it is considerably less ornate than the fourth order arrangement of the original, which adopted a protective approach to the tweeter to stop it being popped; it was considerably less resistant to input power than the woofer.
The aesthetics of the new speaker are magnetic grill tabs aside unchanged from the original and this is a very good thing. The AE1 40th Anniversary screams purposefulness because it effectively forgoes styling and has the minimum of frippery required to encase the bits that make noise. This in turn lends it a beauty all of its own. Piano black and walnut finishes are available (I think black works better but it’s nice to have the choice, and no, black crackle is no longer on the menu) and the Anniversary status is denoted by writing around the tweeter housing. This has four gold bolts securing it which I mind less than I thought I would. Fit and finish is superb too. This is still not a large speaker but you can see where the money has gone.
I was very keen to get my hands on the AE1 40th Anniversary for the simple reason that I adore the AE1 and have done since I first listened to a pair in, of all places, the music department of my school when I was thirteen or so. I am not blind to its failings but they are always completely overshadowed by the sheer joy and immediacy delivered. I have – on this very site no less – called it an angry sounding speaker but it’s more a sense of ballistic ‘up for anything’ restlessness than actual aggression. I have put my money where my mouth is on this one and I own the last ever pair of original pattern AE1s ever made (AE1 Classics which were a copy of the original made around 2016). Normally they serve no role in reviewing but it seemed only logical to see how the new AE1 40th Anniversary compares.
Sound quality
And, so we get this out of the way nice and early, it more than compares to its ancestor. If you eschew any nods to being an audiophile, whack on Their Law by The Prodigy and wind up the volume, the AE1 40th Anniversary does absolutely everything that I expect an AE1 to do. There is a speed, immediacy and a ‘are you sure you don’t want to nudge it a bit louder?’ quality to what the Acoustic Energy does that I find utterly addictive. The composure it retains even as all hell breaks loose is truly impressive and the sound is always bigger and harder hitting than you would realistically expect a box this size to be capable of.
What the AE1 40th Anniversary does is take these qualities and improve on them. In all save one area (which we’ll come to) these improvements are relatively small but noticeable nonetheless. The quoted lower frequency response of the new speaker is 50Hz at +/– 6dB which is little changed from the original but the new AE1 manages to feel like it is producing deeper and more controlled bass than the older speaker. Some of this is unquestionably down to those revised bass ports as well as the larger driver. I’ve never perceived their presence in the performance of my pair but I also can’t argue that the Anniversary is cleaner and more detailed from 100Hz down in a manner that suggests that its air pressure management is comfortably superior.
This also contributes to there being a greater sense of air and space around the presentation that the AE1 40th Anniversary produces. This is never going to be a credible alternative to a pair of Quad Electrostatics but the strings in Radiohead’s Burn the Witch now extend beyond the cabinets rather than sitting between them. This is still a speaker designed for nearfield and it is most effective when used in this way but it is happier than ever before when given a little more room around it.
It’s the upper registers of the AE1 40th Anniversary that are the most significant step forward though. There is now a level of top end clarity and control that my own pair can’t match. When the flute begins playing towards the end of Ray LaMontagne’s You Can Bring Me Flowers, it is every bit as crisp and dynamic as the older speaker but significantly sweeter in tonal terms and richer with it. What has truly impressed me though is that for all the unburstable excitement that is still baked into the presentation, the AE1 40th Anniversary can handle harshness and poor recordings in a way that the original wants no part of. Quite how this balance has been struck is perhaps the most significant step forward in the whole speaker.
It is this sense of refinement and improvement that is the most extraordinary thing about the AE1 40th Anniversary. It feels more than anything like an automotive ‘restomod’ – where highly skilled people in nondescript industrial units return classic cars to as new condition but also equip them with the performance and facilities of something rather more up to date. This is still an AE1 but an AE1 that is better in every single aspect of its performance.
Conclusion
The fact that the AE1 40th Anniversary still feels and behaves like an AE1 is where the true magic lies. It still wants you play louder, listen longer and revisit dusty corners of your collection in a way that even some significantly more expensive and sophisticated speakers cannot do, it just sounds even better while it does it.
For more than a few people, the nods to nostalgia and deliberate omission of the latest Acoustic Energy engineering meaning that this speaker is not as good as it technically ‘could’ be will put them off. Other people though – including people who weren’t even born in 1987, will sit down in front of the Anniversary and know – not think, know – that they have found the sound they want. The AE1 40th Anniversary is a magnificent love letter to the original and an absolute joy.