My Dream System(s)

So recently, to avoid facing reality, I have again turned to dreaming about my ideal audio system. The first system is based around the Acoustic Research AR3 speakers, a 3-way system that was a huge innovation when it came on the market in 1958 as one of the first, if not the first, to use a dome-style tweeter. This was on top of their 12" acoustic suspension woofer which was the first of its kind and is how pretty much all speakers still produce low and accurate bass to this day. (Read all about it here)

Anyway, I have heard a pair of these speakers before, and they were incredibly warm and room filling. In the 60s, AR held a bunch of "blind taste tests" in which they used a live string quartet and the AR3s and asked people to blindly choose which was the live music and which was the reproduced sound. Listeners were largely unable to tell the difference. Oh, and, in my opinion, they are beautiful:Acoustic suspension speakers are, by their nature, quite inefficient. And driving a 12" woofer is no easy task either, so these need power. But it needs to be nice clean power. Just to keep it classic, it would be fun to drive these with the Dynaco ST-70 tube power amp:This was the popular amp of the time, and it was probably the best reasonably priced option to drive the speakers. It puts out 35 clean watts per channel, which some might argue is still a little under-powered for the AR3s.

After that it's a bit of a wash. You could go with a record player to stay authentic, but the sound coming out of this pair will be warm no matter what you drive it with. These would not be party speakers, and they may not even be hard, fast rock and roll speakers. These are slowly sipping an aged bottle of scotch or perfect bottle of wine in front of a fire place on a cold day speakers...and seriously, that's how they would sound, especially powered by the Dynaco amp.

The drawback here is that they will lack some clarity and "imaging" that people really are in love with. The upside is that they will sound great no matter where you are in the room with them, whereas most "imaging" speakers require that you sit in a fairly small sweet spot to get the full effect.

I'm also kind of obsessed with this system because I think they would be an endpoint. There wouldn't be a need to add on a subwoofer or something. No need to upgrade anything. Also, they have the whole package because they look good, too. They would blend nicely into a room's furnishing while still making a statement of their own. Finally, their authenticity as a vintage system allows that last bit of completeness that I don't think you can get if you go chasing the hottest new speaker or the most perfectly clear speaker and fanciest new amp, or even the "best" tube amp.

So while there may be other complements of stereo equipment I could see myself wanting, I would probably sell everything else I currently have if I could get my hands on this system.