Loudspeaker Kit News
Lots to report this time, over the past 6 months much of the work done on the AudioNote™ speaker drivers have finally started filtering though to the product range, and helped separate what we do from the rest of the audio industry’s products even further.

The most important development is the introduction of the hemp cone, which has started to replace the paper cone in all our speakers except the AN-K, the hemp cones will be introduced across the range as parts come in and is offered side by side with the paper cone for now.

The second important development is the new AlNiCo magnets which are now available for both the woofer and the tweeter (limited availaibility until mid 2007), the woofer comes standard with the hemp cone, but the paper cone version will also remain in the program while stock lasts (not long!)

. On the speaker kit front, I have removed the KIT-01 and the silver wired 02/AG and the Black Gate version of this kit, as we no longer make the drivers as their cost is too close to the better silver wired HE woofers used in the 03 kits.
by Peter Quortrop

General
We shall be offering the speaker drivers that we use in our own loudspeakers for general sale from now on, you can buy the drivers individually or together with a package that shows the crossover configuration and cabinet drawings, together with a pair of ports.

We have spent far more time looking at the efficiency/speaker load issues in relationship to the low power SE triode amplifiers than anyone else, and I believe that our solutions are both original and effective, unfortunately nature is as cruel as she is kind, when it comes to efficiency, bandwidth, size and price, so we have to accept the inevitable compromises that she gracefully enforces.

For the time being we will be offering both our drive units and kits with either copper and silver speech coils, whilst the measured difference is negligible, the difference in sound between the two is very great indeed, which again begs the question what it is we measure in relation to what we hear.

All our speaker cabinets used to be made from different materials, front baffel is either plywood or soft chipboard, the wrap is dense MDF and the back is again either plywood or medium chipboard, they are now made entirely from Baltic birch plywood with no damping materials applied to any part of the cabinet, although we do use some bracing to raise and shorten or redistribute the cabinet resonances.

Do I hear cries of "cabinet colouration"??

Despite what you might think the guitar like structure of our cabinets greatly enhances efficiency, dynamics and sparkle and sounds less coloured than the alternative methods, which generally just move the resonans frequency and amplitude of the energy lower down in the spectrum, which in most cases is more audible, mainly because this also increases the duration of the resonans, our belief is that the shorter the duration of the energy is the less likely it is to interfere with the immediacy of the original transient.

For this reason, we also use only a minimal amount of wadding, and it has to be a specific type, preferably well cleaned and carted sheeps wool, positioning is critical, and here experimentation is recommended, if you build the speakers yourself.

We will sell you a basic kit of crossover parts, a cabinet drawing and a port tube, and then you can experiment with the cabinet itself to your hearts delight, alternatively we offer a complete tested kit of drivers and crossover, a cabinet drawing and the port tube, which, if you follow the directions carefully will make a speaker with is reasonably close to a genuine AudioNote™

The following detail the drive units sold:

To get a feel of the sound of the kits we have collected numerous links to reviews of the manufactured AN-E/D, which, if built to plan, you will be creating. Bear in mind that a manufactured pair of these speakers cost around £1500.00

Audio Note AN-E/D loudspeaker, Stereo Times, Review by Constantine Soo, 17 July 2001

Audio Note AN-E/D loudspeaker, Hi-Fi Choice, Issue 204

Audio Note AN-E SEC Silver Loudspeaker, Stereo Times, Reviewed by Constantine Soo, 24 February 2003


Some Frequently Asked Questions Answered

Will my kit be an exact equivalent of the finished AN-E/LX?

No, it will be close provided the cabinet is made with fine tolerances and from the right grade of Baltic birch plywood, BUT it is important to appreciate that a finished AN-E is always likely to be better that any equivalent kit version, no matter which one, as the drivers we use in the kits have a slightly wider "spread" in performance than the ones used in the finished products, basically the kits get the drivers which cannot be matched within the very tight criteria used in our finished products.
Also we do not spend anywhere near the amount of time setting up the Kit speaker's driver - crossover matching, we allow a tolerance on the finished products of 0.2dB plus or minus, in the kits this is increased to 0.6dB plus or minus, mind you this is still several dB better than anything done by other manufacturers, but it is audible in the overall performance of the speakers, if you do a direct comparison on very good equipment.
This and the fact that it is necessary to rematch the driver - crossovers to the actual cabinets when assembled to maintain the tightest possible match, this is not possible for any hobbyist building a kit and means that a kit can never get close to the consistency of a finished product.
Again this does not necessarily mean that a Kit 03 would not be as good as or even better than a standard AN-E/SPe provided you can make a cabinet that is on par with our, which I doubt you can, as the production methods used have takes years to develop and there is much we do not disclose, but is it possible to get quite close if close tolerances are achieved.

What if I put Audio Note silver speaker wire in my Kit?

Upgrading the wiring in any of our kits always improve the sound, so if you change the internal wiring in a Kit 03 for example to SPe it will raise the level of the Kit 03 closer to that of the finished SPe model.

Can I upgrade my standard Kit 02 to a Kit 03 by changing the woofer?

No, it is NOT possible to upgrade a standard kit to the high efficiency version later as both the drivers and the crossover are different.

Can I order a fully silver wired kit, similar to the AN-E/SE Silver for example?

No, we will not be offering all-silver versions of the kits, as the cost of all the silver inductors, Black Gate or copper foil capacitors plus the time it takes to test, match and calibrate the crossover to the drivers is so great that there would be a percentage wise small saving and in addition to maintain the tight specification the final testing must be done in situ in the cabinet, all of which makes it impossible to offer a comparable quality kit version to the justly famous AN-E/SE Signature or AN-E/SEC Signature speakers we sell finished, so please do not ask!!

General.

I think it is important to make the point here, that the whilst "AN-E kits" are exceptional quality for the money, they are generally not as good or as consistent as our finished products, in the final equation one always gets what one pays for in our products.