vinylviola
Well-Known Member
I picked up a minty pair of AR-3a's several months ago, and for one reason or another, they ended up in the storage with the rest of my out-of-circulation gear.
I'm getting ready for a move and so decided it was time to part with anything that wasn't something I wasn't going to listen every day, which meant my daily axes were going to be a pair of Polk SDA 2B's.
In getting them ready to move along I was playing through various source material and happened to hook up a CD player that I'm selling to a CL buyer tomorrow. I'd forgotten I left a disc in the machine, so when I fired it up, Beethoven's 'Waldstein' piano sonata played by Arthur Rubinstein came through the AR3a's.
Uh-oh.:drool:
In the course of all of the other source material I was using the AR-3a's had been underwhelming in the arena of reproducing many of the production colors that many of my favorite bands like to use. The Polk SDA's show these off beautifully, but the AR's just seemed...plain. I was all prepared to move 'em along.
Then I sat down and listened to the piano reproduction. I know they did their famed demonstration/experiment concerts with the Fine Arts Quartet to demonstrate their life-like reproduction, but I guess I'd presumed that the capabilities of these speakers had been copied in subsequent generations of speaker design and was now old news.
I've NEVER heard such accurate reproduction of my classical records as from the AR-3a's. I'm a classical musician, and listening to these is the closest I've actually felt to being on stage with the actual musicians themselves. I can actually listen to Rubinstein's pedaling, how he's articulating his left hand differently from his left... it's been incredible.
I think my favorite part is how effortless and how deep the low register comes out on the piano. With rock recordings the bass was good, punchy, but not necessarily musical. Here its true purpose is really being showcased.
Now it's 2 AM and I'm still no closer to going to bed than I was when this started.
I need to see how it handles string chamber music. And then the symphonic stuff...brass instruments? What about choral? Or opera...I have a disc of greatest hits-type arias that would find out if these babies would make my ears bleed on the soprano's high Es...
I sent an offer to a friend to see if he wanted the 3a's before I posted on CL, but I don't think he's going to get them after all. I may just have to make room in my shoebox apartment for these guys.
The only technical issue is a dirty pot on one tweeter - it's fighting to be heard, but a good cleaning is all it needs, I think.
Anyways, back to it...
I'm getting ready for a move and so decided it was time to part with anything that wasn't something I wasn't going to listen every day, which meant my daily axes were going to be a pair of Polk SDA 2B's.
In getting them ready to move along I was playing through various source material and happened to hook up a CD player that I'm selling to a CL buyer tomorrow. I'd forgotten I left a disc in the machine, so when I fired it up, Beethoven's 'Waldstein' piano sonata played by Arthur Rubinstein came through the AR3a's.
Uh-oh.:drool:
In the course of all of the other source material I was using the AR-3a's had been underwhelming in the arena of reproducing many of the production colors that many of my favorite bands like to use. The Polk SDA's show these off beautifully, but the AR's just seemed...plain. I was all prepared to move 'em along.
Then I sat down and listened to the piano reproduction. I know they did their famed demonstration/experiment concerts with the Fine Arts Quartet to demonstrate their life-like reproduction, but I guess I'd presumed that the capabilities of these speakers had been copied in subsequent generations of speaker design and was now old news.
I've NEVER heard such accurate reproduction of my classical records as from the AR-3a's. I'm a classical musician, and listening to these is the closest I've actually felt to being on stage with the actual musicians themselves. I can actually listen to Rubinstein's pedaling, how he's articulating his left hand differently from his left... it's been incredible.
I think my favorite part is how effortless and how deep the low register comes out on the piano. With rock recordings the bass was good, punchy, but not necessarily musical. Here its true purpose is really being showcased.
Now it's 2 AM and I'm still no closer to going to bed than I was when this started.
I need to see how it handles string chamber music. And then the symphonic stuff...brass instruments? What about choral? Or opera...I have a disc of greatest hits-type arias that would find out if these babies would make my ears bleed on the soprano's high Es...
I sent an offer to a friend to see if he wanted the 3a's before I posted on CL, but I don't think he's going to get them after all. I may just have to make room in my shoebox apartment for these guys.
The only technical issue is a dirty pot on one tweeter - it's fighting to be heard, but a good cleaning is all it needs, I think.
Anyways, back to it...