Полочная акустика — Audio Note AN-J

The AN-J is a stand-mount two-way speaker from the British company Audio Note (UK), built around the company's view that a cabinet should work with its drive units instead of trying to suppress every resonance. It exists in several grades that share the same box and driver layout - the AN-J/LX with Audio Note LEXUS LX copper internal cable, the AN-J/SPe with AN-SPe silver cable, the AN-J/SPe-SE, the AN-J SE Silver and the AN-J SEC Silver - and a /D version uses a chipboard or MDF cabinet instead of birch ply. Hemp paper cones are offered on some variants.

Key specs that matter

An 8 inch paper-cone bass driver on a foam surround works with a 1 inch impregnated silk dome tweeter. Audio Note rates sensitivity at 93 dB for 1 W at 1 m in the base grades, rising to 93.5 dB for the SE Silver and 94 dB for the SEC Silver. Characteristic impedance is 6 ohms. The in-room response runs from 25 Hz to 23 kHz within plus or minus 6 dB. Amplifier power should be at least 7 W RMS per channel and no more than 150 W unclipped. Each cabinet measures 585 mm high, 330 mm wide and 235 mm deep and weighs 13 kg, and Audio Note covers it with a two-year guarantee.

Engineering and use context

The enclosure is ported and deliberately shallow with a wide baffle, and Audio Note intends it to be placed near room boundaries, where nearby walls reinforce the low end. Bracing and internal damping are kept to a minimum and placed only where they help the drivers. The crossover is simple, essentially first order and hardwired, with air-cored chokes and bipolar and polypropylene capacitors in copper foil or silver foil depending on grade, and internal wire of 99.99 percent copper or silver. Higher grades go further - the SPe-SE adds silver wired inductors, Black Gate bipolar capacitors and copper foil adjusters, the SE Silver has silver wired voice coils, and the SEC Silver fits an Alnico magnet to the bass unit. Every pair goes through a dynamic matching process that holds each speaker within 0.4 dB of a master curve and of its partner, and all production is tested. Paper for the woofer and silk for the tweeter were chosen so the two units behave as a matched pair.

Pairing

Audio Note designs its loudspeakers mainly for valve amplification, and the low minimum power rating lets a low-power single-ended triode drive the AN-J, although transistor amplifiers are also supported. Two pairs of binding posts, joined by removable links, allow bi-wiring, or bi-amping from either a pair of stereo amplifiers or four monoblocks. A matching four-leg steel stand, meant to be filled with lead shot and sand, is sold separately.

Alternatives

The Audio Note AN-K is a more compact bookshelf design from the same maker, using the same two-driver principle in an 11 kg cabinet 470 mm high.