Напольная акустика — AER The Jazz

The Jazz is the entry-level model among the horn loudspeakers made by AER Loudspeakers, a slim floorstanding design that runs one full-range driver completely without a crossover. A back-loaded horn handles the low frequencies, while a front-loaded AER Excenter horn is mounted on the front of the cabinet. At launch the pair cost EUR 13,000 including 19% EU VAT, or EUR 15,000 together with the AER Subway subwoofer, and AER gives a 10-year guarantee.

Key specs that matter

Its only drive unit is the AER BD2B, a full-range high-performance design. AER states an efficiency of 100 dB for 1 W at 1 m and a nominal impedance of 16 ohm. The published frequency range is 100 Hz to 20 kHz. Power handling is given as 100 W nominal and 300 W peak. The cabinet is 106 cm tall, 33 cm wide and 25 cm deep, and the Excenter horn on the front measures 65 cm in length and 18 cm in depth. Each speaker weighs 11 kg.

Engineering and use context

With no crossover between amplifier and driver, the signal reaches the BD2B directly, and no capacitors, coils or resistors sit in the path. The Excenter horn is extremely flat and widens continuously, and it is positioned eccentrically relative to the driver, a layout AER uses to suppress harmonic distortion. The back horn passes only the low tones and ends in a fire-down opening that radiates toward the floor, so the floor surface becomes part of the horn mouth. Buyers can choose an acrylic cabinet in high-gloss black or white as standard, or a veneered cabinet in satin wood. The compact footprint suits rooms of around 20 m2 better than the much larger horns in the AER range. AER builds its loudspeakers from a combination of spherical horns, open baffles and point sources, and the same off-centre horn principle appears in its large Excenter model, which pairs a BD3B driver with a 128 cm diameter horn and a separate bass section below 100 Hz. The Jazz condenses that approach into a single cabinet of normal living-room proportions.

Pairing

With its high impedance and high efficiency, the Jazz is well suited to single-ended triode amplifiers, which AER names as a match, and low-powered valve designs with a matching output tap are the most natural choice. Because the listed range stops well above the lowest octaves, AER offers the Subway subwoofer as a package option to cover them.

Alternatives

The AER Pnoe is a much larger floorstanding horn at 220 cm tall and 52 kg, driven by the BD4 full-range unit with a quoted 116 dB sensitivity.