Loudspeakers

Back in the day (not quite 40 years ago), the first production AE1 standmount employed an ELAC-sourced 25mm alloy dome tweeter married to a 110mm ‘high strength aluminium alloy spun cone’ mounted into a KEF B110 chassis. Fast forward to today and we find the AE1 40th with a 29mm anodised alloy dome with a very similar profile and surround design, ferrofluid damping and rear chamber – custom made for AE. The bass/mid driver is now 125mm (fitted into an ‘international standard’ 5.25in chassis) with a similar, hand-spun – not pressed into shape – straight alloy cone.

Once again this cone is hard anodised to improve its stiffness and push the inevitable resonances out beyond its passband. Incidentally, while the original AE1 employed a 4th-order crossover to rapidly attenuate its output before breakup, the AE1 40th has a gentler ‘quasi-first order’ filter for improved phase alignment (reduced group delay). Now, a notch filter is used to null out the alloy bass/mid’s breakup [around 7.5kHz, see CSD waterfall in Lab Report]. Also, the new cone’s 35µm thickness brings the total moving mass down to that of the original smaller, but thicker 50µm cone.

A new constrained-layer cabinet features panels made of two HDF layers with a bitumen filling, in place of the old MDF cabinet that was internally damped with 0.5 litres of mineral-loaded latex. As a result, the internal air volume has increased from 7 to 7.5 litres. PM