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Acoustic Research AR91 Speakers

Now these are some serious speakers.  While they don't hold a candle to their bigger brother, they still produce a fine sound signature.

The AR91 are floor standing speakers in a 3-way acoustic sealed design.  It features AR's 12" woofer, it actually measures out to be 11", dome midrange and dome tweeter.  If you're looking for big and detailed sound, these are a fine pair of speakers.

They are pretty big but, not super large and they are well designed having that real wood veneer and unique shape.  The grills are also bowed out at the bottom, so they are quite elegant to look at with some serious sound behind them.

The woofers have been freshly redone and still need to be broken in.  The downsize of these AR91s are that they are power hungry.  They aren't really efficient and they love clean dynamic power.  So, no they aren't really tube friendly unless you have some serious tube monoblocks.  They are also 4 ohms and need something with a good transformer. 

They are quite heavy, but when I was servicing them, the woofer weight was one of the reason why they're so heavy!  Beefy magnets on those woofers. 

For their sound signature they are darker sounding than what I normally listen too.  They are the Sennheiser of speakers.  If you are familiar with Sennheiser headphones the AR91s have similar sound signature.  Hence, why I would recommend a brigher/dynamic amplifier to balance the sound to my taste.  They have superb bass.  They are quite detailed with a lovely midrange and can fill a room nicely with beautiful music.  I just can't stress that you need a very good amplifier to drive them. 

Overall, they are in excellent shape!  Only flaws is the dampening foam on the midrange and tweeters have stiffen due to age.  However, I was lucky to find they still came with it.  So, if you got a powerful amplifier and need some great speakers that have a bit of WAF appeal, these might do!


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