Acoustic Energy AE300.2 speakers
You know you’re getting old when you recall hi-fi brand launches dating back to 1987, that was the year that Acoustic Energy started, in London. One of the founders, I recall, was a neighbour of Richard Branson who I ended up helping with his antenna array. At the time I had a rather love/hate relationship with Acoustic Energy and thought their AE1 far too brash, too aggressive and too bass strong for my taste. But, what do I know? It soon became a hit product and has gone down in history as an audio legend. They were, however, far removed from my staple diet of broadcast monitors and, if I remember, did no favours to speech-based material. But that’s all in the past.
Thankfully, things have changed and AE now offer something for everyone, or at least that’s the way it seems with differing tastes being catered for by their products. Every new design is subjected to a rigorous evaluation-process by Mat Spandl and his team: at prototype stage new designs are voiced through an exhaustive listening process, with electroacoustic measurement used to verify each step. They’re then benchmarked against historical references, mirroring dynamics, transparency, tonal accuracy and musical involvement.
British owned and run from the Cotswolds, the company relies on Chinese manufacture to enable highly-competitive pricing. Between them, its directors clock up over 100-years’ experience and knowledge in the audio industry, so they’ve little if any excuse for getting new designs wrong
One of a new breed
Many brands like to release models as a pure marketing exercise, to keep the range ‘fresh’, but Acoustic Energy’s new 300 Series is a complete redesign. Standing on shoulders of the company’s Corinium project and benefiting from its insights, the aim has been “to elevate mid-product range to a level unequalled at the price”.
To that end, no single component has been taken from the previous 300 Series; thus, we have a completely new acoustic and aesthetic design from the ground up. This includes an all-new mid-woofer, crafted with a blend of paper and coconut husk, which has been partnered with a newly-developed soft-dome tweeter, derived from Corinium.
There is also an exciting development in the cabinets used which feature constrained-layer damping to keep resonance at bay, this was pioneered in the Reference Series nearly 15 years ago and has been “slimmed down as much as possible”. The aim is to significantly reduce cabinet ‘noise’, in other words to stop cabinet vibration colouring the signal from the drive units. Add to this the 300 Series’ aesthetics that embrace bespoke trims and grilles for each finish. Gone are the high-gloss finishes of yesterday, replaced by a modern and highly durable ‘silk-touch’ matte skin.
Design
Aimed at small to medium-sized rooms the new AE300.2 has a 120mm paper/coconut-fibre mid/bass drive unit combined with a 29mm fabric dome tweeter, as you might imagine I am delighted that there are no metal cones involved. The main driver’s motor structure includes an extended copper pole shield (cap) to lower midrange distortion alongside a non-conducting voice coil. The cone material was carefully chosen to offer stiffness and reduce breakup modes.
The tweeter uses a neodymium ring magnet to allow space for a large vent in the copper shielded pole which leads to specifically graded sound absorption material terminating the waste energy in a contoured rear chamber. Enhanced with a new waveguide, it ensures low baffle diffraction at crossover frequencies and a wide listening sweet spot at higher frequencies, delivering an open, delicate, and natural treble.
The cabinet has been constructed to be as inert as possible using an 18mm MDF/bitumen sandwich cabinet. This composite material is said to significantly reduce cabinet radiation compared with traditional MDF or plywood construction. To the rear is a slot-shaped reflex port to boost bass output while reducing the effect of air turbulence. Below is a panel with a single pair of rather plasticky connectors, the first sign that the AE300.2 has been made to hit a competitive price.
Finish options are either walnut effect or the new ‘silk-touch’ matte black or white. Grilles are included but, again, rather cheapened the whole affair and were left in the box. Close attention has also been paid to the crossover network (operating at 3.5kHz) through “an holistic approach” resulting in “a filter that offers a lighter touch, minimizing phase distortion and preserving the speakers’ musicality”.
Installation and first opinion
With my mighty Hegel H600 already in use to make the most of Qobuz Connect streaming, it was easy to connect the AE300.2s mounted atop a pair of Custom Design FS104 Signature stands, the central column partly filled. While primarily installed to undertake in-room nearfield measurements, I couldn’t resist seeing how a £10k amp would work with these £700 loudspeakers. Their modest 86dB sensitivity figure, and in a 6 Ohm design, should benefit from poky electronics.
The results were remarkable and the AE300.2s lapped it up. The overall balance is excellent with all parts of the spectrum in the ‘correct’ proportions. On speech material they are really amazing and come close to broadcast monitors costing many-times the price. Sung vocals also come through in a clear, precise manner with high levels of neutrality; that’s what I am looking for from a competent loudspeaker – not one that tries to stamp its own character on already carefully-balanced material.
The treble deserves special mention, it is so smooth that one could easily be listening to a much more expensive loudspeaker. There’s little if any roll-off effect either. Added to this the bass was involving and allowed rhythms to flow well. They don’t have tons of slam and deep-down grunt, but these are small drive units in a compact cabinet. However, the bass extension is impressive and deeper, much deeper, than you might imagine from looking at the AE300.2. I also really like the matt black ‘silk-effect’ finish, it’s ingenious and novel while adding a premium feel (literally) to the product.
The in room nearfield plots are also very respectable and show how the tweeter rolls off naturally as the listener moves off axis, I found it beneficial to have more toe-in than I might normally to avoid the loudspeakers sounding a little ‘soft’.
Panel’s verdict
For the panel listening session I swapped the H600 for Hegel’s H190 and used an Auralic streamer as a more realistic pairing, adjusted the speaker position to increase the toe-in (based on the response plots) and moved the units to be about a foot (30cm) from the wall in order to avoid boom or bass exaggeration.
We started with Mozart’s Rondo for Piano and Orchestra K382, made famous by the spy movie Hopscotch with Walter Mathau and Glenda Jackson. I did wonder if this was unfair since piano is notoriously difficult to reproduce faithfully and cheaper loudspeakers often struggle to make the instrument sound lifelike. I need not have worried. Having already passed muster with speech, the AE300.2s gave us a wonderfully involving rendition by Vladimir Ashkenazy/Philharmonia Orchestra (Decca). There was a real sense of being taken to the recording venue, the piano sounding youthful and elegant simultaneously. It’s perhaps not surprising that Mozart’s piano concertos contain some of his finest music, since he wrote most of them for himself.
The AE300.2 passed this test with flying colours as a panel member noted the sweet treble characteristic, while another mentioned how well controlled it was without being forced, something found with so many speakers in this class that seem to try to make an impression but end up creating boom and tizz. Thankfully AE has resisted that temptation and we are treated to a more natural, smoother presentation even at the slight expense of high frequency sparkle, but that can be so easily overdone to the detriment of the overall balance.
Every hi-fi event tends to feature one artist prominently and at this year’s Munich High End it was Dire Straits, so it seems appropriate to listen to Private Investigations. This revealed the AE300.2s’ ability to retrieve detail as we wallowed in Mark Knopfler’s whispered rather than sung words and wound up the volume to prove that these little boxes will play quite loud before any hint of distortion. Okay, they are not party speakers, but they certainly create sufficient level to annoy the neighbours. The AE300.2 is just as happy with the sinister, deep pitched synthesizer orchestration, the slow piano progression accompanying an acoustic guitar and the pulsing bassline in this tune which highlights its abilities across the frequency spectrum to an impressive degree. That’s an achievement worthy of note in anyone’s books.
I enjoyed the clean midrange and slight warmth to the overall sound across most material but notably in Jennifer Warnes’ hit Right Time of the Night. The way that this mellow ballad was handled, with smooth instrumentation and Warnes’ distinctive vocal timbre unblemished by the transducers was an indication that the AE300.2 is a well-crafted design that reminded me of so many BBC-inspired monitor loudspeakers and is a far cry from those original AE1s that I struggled to come to terms with. The sound is so easy going, unfatiguing and mellow as to make the listener want to hear more and more; that’s surely how a good loudspeaker should sound.
A wider-than-expected soundstage was something noted by a panel member as we finished with Nightshift from The Commodores. This mid-eighties Motown track is deliciously fleshy and also reminded us of the unexpected bass performance of the little AE300.2s as our feet tapped. Even quite close to the wall we were not suffering port anomalies, that letterbox design working well here as the rhythm flowed effortlessly. In fact, given their size and the price it’s hard to find fault with the sonics of the.AE300.2s; their only downfalls to my mind are those grilles (best left in the box) and the connectors which you quickly forget about as they are out-of-sight.
Conclusion
It is incredible that so much loudspeaker in the shape of the Acoustic Energy AE300.2 can be had for the price asked. As one experienced and highly-respected designer remarked, he would be hard pressed to source the parts in the UK or Europe for the selling price of the AE300.2, let alone its manufacturing cost. We have here something of an audio bargain and one that’s clearly highly capable of creating a natural and enjoyable sound with class-leading dynamics.
The Acoustic Energy AE300.2 is a versatile loudspeaker that takes up very little footprint yet produces a fine-sounding midrange, exquisite treble and more bass than you might imagine at first glance. Just remember the toe-in and discard those plastic grilles and the AE300.2 is a Best Buy if ever there was one. We just wonder what Acoustic Energy will come up with next.