Introduction - Audio Note AN-E/D Owner's Manual

Introduction

Congratulations on your purchase of the Audio Note AN-E/D loudspeaker.
We hope they will give you many hours of musical satisfaction and trouble free listening.
The ideal loudspeaker would be 100% efficient. In other words it would convert all of the
electrical energy at its input into mechanical energy in the form of moving air (sound waves) at its
output.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve perfection due to energy losses within the materials used,
but high efficiency remains a most desirable objective. There are NO benefits in making the job of
an amplifier more difficult than is absolutely necessary. The high powered complex amplifiers
required to drive inefficient loudspeakers are themselves poor energy converters and as such are
invariably inferior to more simple, lower powered designs.
The usual means of achieving maximum efficiency is by the use of horn loading. To achieve good
low frequency bandwidth, this usually requires large, intricate and expensive cabinets which, unless
extremely carefully designed and built, will impose distinctive characteristics of their own onto the
sound.
However, the Audio Note AN-E/D Loudspeaker is an infinite battle design, where the cabinet is
made from materials that compliment the workings of the chosen drive units, where instead of
trying to dampen the resonances in the cabinet, we place them in frequency bands where they aid
and enhance the operation of the drive units. This novel and difficult method helps ensure
maximum efficiency and dynamic behaviour.
The drive units employed in the AN-E/D are manufactured to our specification and coupled with
the crossover to give an extremely even load characteristic and a very flat power and frequency
response that remains within tightly controlled limits throughout the working bandwidth of the
design.
The individual adjustment of each crossover network to a known reference allows each pair of
loudspeakers to achieve an unparalleled degree of sample to sample consistency; not only within
pairs of loudspeakers, but also from one pair to another. This adjustment, carried out under
dynamic operating conditions compensates for the slight variations that always exist in drive units
and assures precise uniformity of sonic performance. Complete quality assurance can only be
achieved by such a system of 100% sample testing.
The crossover is hardwired and incorporates careful location of components, both in relation to
each other, but also in relation to the woofers magnets, which influences the behaviour of the
crossover a great deal.
The crossover uses precisely matched air cored chokes and selected bipolar and polypropylene
capacitors. For internal wiring, Audio Note's AN-D 99.99% pure copper cable is used.
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July 05