(Like the junior-high gym teacher who's just mentioned athletic supporters for the first time, I pause to let the inevitable Beavis-esque giggling subside.) The new, blue material is said to endow the cone with greater stiffness, yet without penalties in other areas of performancemass, self-damping characteristics, etc.and so to increase detail and perhaps extend upward the woofer's unperturbed response.īecause the handmade, exotically veneered AN-Es are somewhat thin on the ground, and because swapping woofers in and out of an E is no simple matterdrivers are individually tested and matched to one another at the Audio Note factory using a proprietary computer program, then sealed against the baffle with a tar-like adhesivea direct comparison of the old and new woofers was not an option. I've returned to the subject of the Audio Note AN-E for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the development of a new woofer for the line, one whose 8" cone is made of hemp. Like its 10 little stablemates, the AN-E Lexus Signature ($13,900/pair) descended from the late Peter Snell's original Type E design, a deceptively simple thing that had been the result of several years' worth of painstaking, math-soaked researchespecially in terms of determining the correct dimensions of its cabinet, and the sizes and positions within that cabinet of the two dynamic drivers. In the May 2006 issue, Stereophile published my review of Audio Note's AN-E Lexus Signature loudspeaker, one of 11 variants of the AN-E that the British company offers, and which range in price from $5000/pair to $130,000/pair. That the AN-E is electrically sensitive and easy to drive with a low-power tube amp may be a plus, but I no longer think of that as its sole reason for being: Even if I were cursed with a high-power amp, I'd probably want a pair of these. Good dramatic impact, a believably human sense of touch, and altogether superior note-to-note flow: If those things top your list of musical qualities that a high-fidelity system should honor above all others, then the Audio Note AN-E line of speakers should top your list of loudspeakers to covet and consider (footnote 1). Art Dudley wrote about the Audio Note AN-E/SPe HE in August 2008 (Vol.31 No.8):
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