Acoustic Research was a Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

-based company that manufactured high-end audio

High-end audio

High-end audio is a term used to describe a class of consumer home audio equipment marketed to audio enthusiasts on the basis of high price or quality, and esoteric or novel sound reproduction technologies. High-end audio can refer simply to the price, to the build quality of the components, or to...

 equipment. The brand is now owned by Audiovox

Audiovox

Audiovox Corporation is an American consumer electronics company founded in 1965 and headquartered in Hauppauge, New York.Among the domestic brands now owned by Audiovox are: Acoustic Research, Advent, Code Alarm, Invision, Jensen, Prestige, RCA, and Terk. The international brands they own include...

. Acoustic Research was well known for the AR-3 series of speaker systems, which used the 12-inch (305 mm) acoustic suspension woofer of the AR-1 with newly designed dome mid-range and high-frequency drivers, which were the first of their kind. AR's line of acoustic suspension speakers were extraordinary for their time, as they were the first loudspeaker

Loudspeaker

A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...

s with flat response, extended bass, wide dispersion, small size, and reasonable cost.

Company history

Acoustic Research, Inc. (“AR”) was founded in 1952 and incorporated on August 10, 1954 by audio

Sound recording and reproduction

Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...

 pioneer, writer, inventor, researcher and audio-electronics teacher Edgar Villchur

Edgar Villchur

Edgar Marion Villchur was an American inventor, educator, and writer widely known for his 1954 invention of the acoustic suspension loudspeaker which revolutionized the field of high-fidelity equipment...

 and his student, Henry Kloss

Henry Kloss

Henry Kloss was a prominent American audio engineer and businessman who helped advance high fidelity loudspeaker and radio receiver technology beginning in the 1950s. Kloss was an undergraduate student in physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , but never received a degree...

. AR was established to produce the $185 model AR-1, a loudspeaker design incorporating the acoustic suspension principle based on patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

 US No. 2,775,309, granted to Edgar Villchur and assigned to Acoustic Research in 1956.

Technical innovation

Edgar Villchur's technical innovation was based in large part on scientific as well as objective

Objectivity (science)

Objectivity in science is a value that informs how science is practiced and how scientific truths are created. It is the idea that scientists, in attempting to uncover truths about the natural world, must aspire to eliminate personal biases, a priori commitments, emotional involvement, etc...

 testing and research, making most of it publicly available as documents, specifications, and measurements—all of which was then new in the loudspeaker industry. Acoustic Research, under Villchur's leadership, was also innovative during this period in the way the company offered equal opportunity

Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity, or equality of opportunity, is a controversial political concept; and an important informal decision-making standard without a precise definition involving fair choices within the public sphere...

, liberal employee benefit

Employee benefit

Employee benefits and benefits in kind are various non-wage compensations provided to employees in addition to their normal wages or salaries...

s, insurance

Insurance

In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...

, and profit sharing

Profit sharing

Profit sharing, when used as a special term, refers to various incentive plans introduced by businesses that provide direct or indirect payments to employees that depend on company's profitability in addition to employees' regular salary and bonuses...

 to every employee.

Acoustic suspension loudspeaker

The acoustic suspension woofer provided an elegant solution to the age-old problem of bass distortion in loudspeakers caused by non-linear, mechanical suspensions in conventional loudspeakers. The acoustic suspension woofer (sometimes known as “air suspension”) used the elasticity of air within a small, sealed enclosure of about 1.7 cu ft (48.1 l) to provide the restoring force for the woofer cone. The entrapped air of the sealed-loudspeaker enclosure -— unlike the mechanical springs of conventional speakers—provided an (almost) linear spring for the woofer's diaphragm, enabling it to move back and forth great distances (“excursion”) in a linear fashion, a requirement in the reproduction of deep bass tones. The disadvantage of this arrangement is low efficiency; since the restoring force is large with a large woofer in a small cabinet, the cone must be massive to keep the resonant frequency in the required low bass region. The AR-1s were about a factor of 10 less efficient than other (physically much larger) existing speakers with the same bass response, but since higher power amplifiers were becoming available about the same time, this was a reasonable trade-off to get good bass response from a relatively small speaker.

As such, the AR-1 set new standards of low-frequency performance and low distortion that were unsurpassed for many years; in fact, some of the best loudspeakers available fifty-two years later continue to use the acoustic suspension principle for highest quality, low distortion bass reproduction. The small size of the high performance AR-1 (permitted by the acoustic suspension design) was a dividend that helped usher in the age of stereophonic sound reproduction. Two bookshelf-sized loudspeakers were far more acceptable in a living room than the two refrigerator-sized boxes previously necessary to reproduce low frequency bass notes.

By March 1957, AR began shipping a smaller, less expensive, acoustic suspension system, the US$

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

87 Model AR-2. The AR-2 was selected by Consumer Reports

Consumer Reports

Consumer Reports is an American magazine published monthly by Consumers Union since 1936. It publishes reviews and comparisons of consumer products and services based on reporting and results from its in-house testing laboratory. It also publishes cleaning and general buying guides...

 as a 'best buy' and the company's sales went from $383,000 in 1956 to nearly $1,000,000 by the end of 1957. Also that year, co-founder and Vice President Henry Kloss left AR to form a new loudspeaker company, KLH

KLH (company)

KLH is an audio company founded in 1957 as KLH Research and Development Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, by Henry Kloss, Malcolm S. Low, and J. Anton Hoffman originally to produce loudspeakers. KLH had sales of $17 million, employed over 500 people and sold over 30,000...

.

AR-3

In 1958, AR once again pioneered loudspeaker technology with the introduction of the landmark model AR-3, which used the AR-1’s acoustic-suspension woofer in conjunction with the first commercially available hemispherical (“dome”) mid-frequency midrange and high-frequency tweeter

Tweeter

A tweeter is a loudspeaker designed to produce high audio frequencies, typically from around 2,000 Hz to 20,000 Hz . Some tweeters can manage response up to 65 kHz...

.

For nearly ten years after its introduction, the AR-3 was widely regarded as the most accurate loudspeaker available at any cost, and was used in countless professional installations, recording studios, and concert halls. Many well-known professional musicians used AR-3 loudspeakers because of their excellent sound reproduction. In the early 1960s, AR conducted a series of over 75 live vs. recorded demonstrations throughout the U.S. in which the sound of a live string quartet was alternated with echo-free recorded music played through a pair of AR-3s. In this “ultimate” subjective test of audio quality, the listeners were largely unable to detect the switch from live to recorded, a strong testament to Acoustic Research's audio quality.

The company also established music demonstration rooms on the mezzanine

Mezzanine (architecture)

In architecture, a mezzanine or entresol is an intermediate floor between main floors of a building, and therefore typically not counted among the overall floors of a building. Often, a mezzanine is low-ceilinged and projects in the form of a balcony. The term is also used for the lowest balcony in...

 of Grand Central Station in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and on a street corner in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the public could stop by and listen to its products, but no sales were made there. This low-key marketing

Marketing

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

 innovation caused a major increase in the company's business.

The AR-3 was subsequently replaced by the AR-3a, with a new dome midrange and tweeter reduced in dimensions, for even better mid and high frequency dispersion. On September 13, 1993 an AR-3 was placed on permanent display in the Information Age Exhibit of National Museum of American History

National Museum of American History

The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. Among the items on display are the original Star-Spangled Banner and Archie Bunker's...

 at The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

The AR-3a was subsequently replaced by the AR-11 and AR-10pi, which both shared the same improved tweeter and midrange domes. The 10pi even had woofer/bass response adjustment switches to allow for a variety of room placements. The new tweeter used in the AR-11/10pi had notably brighter high-frequency response partly to compensate for less dispersion than the tweeter of the AR3a.

AR went on to introduce many other notable designs, and by 1966 the company had grown to hold 32.2% of the U.S. domestic loudspeaker market, based on the IHFM and High Fidelity surveys statistics for that year. This was the largest product market share

Market share

Market share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...

 ever held by a loudspeaker manufacturer since statistics have been kept in the industry.

Turntables

AR also produced a low-cost ($78) belt-drive turntable

Belt-drive turntable

There are two main types of phonograph turntable drives still being manufactured today, the belt-drive and direct-drive systems; the names are based upon the type of motor system found in each....

, a type of phonograph

Phonograph

The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...

, using a cast aluminum 3.3 lb (1.5 kg) turntable platter suspended with a T-bar sub-chassis that greatly reduced acoustic feedback. A 24-pole hysteresis-synchronous, permanent magnet Hurst AC motor propelled the platter via a precision ground rubber belt to produce very low wow and flutter, exceeding the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters

National Association of Broadcasters

The National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association, workers union, and lobby group representing the interests of for-profit, over-the-air radio and television broadcasters in the United States...

) standards for turntable measurements.

Many AR turntable models are still sought after today. In particular, the mid-1980s models are highly modifiable to become first-rate vinyl playback units.

Brand ownership

In 1967, Acoustic Research was bought by Teledyne

Teledyne

Teledyne Technologies Incorporated is an industrial conglomerate primarily based in the United States but with global operations. It was founded in 1960, as Teledyne, Inc., by Henry Singleton and George Kozmetsky....

, Inc., and for the next 22 years it continued development and operations in Cambridge as Teledyne Acoustic Research. Technological breakthroughs in this period included the high-current amplifier. When purchased by Teledyne, AR was the world's second largest supplier of branded loudspeakers. Although Acoustic Research had continued in product development, by 1989 AR had dropped to fifth place worldwide, and Teledyne sold the company to their major competitor, Jensen Electronics

Jensen Electronics

Jensen Is a consumer electronics brand with a history that dates back to 1915 with Peter Jensen's invention of the first loudspeaker. Over the years the Jensen family of brands has grown to include Jensen, Advent, Acoustic Research , Phase Linear and NHT Loudspeakers in the United States and...

. In 1996, Jensen, including AR, was sold to Recoton Audio Corporation.

Under both Jensen and Recoton, the AR brand continued to make technology breakthroughs in the speaker industry; these included the environmental controls that allowed a speaker to be placed in different room areas, the Acoustic Blanket that minimized diffraction and interference in speaker baffles, and a speaker line designed to compliment home theater and the digital technologies of the 1990s.

In 2003, Audiovox

Audiovox

Audiovox Corporation is an American consumer electronics company founded in 1965 and headquartered in Hauppauge, New York.Among the domestic brands now owned by Audiovox are: Acoustic Research, Advent, Code Alarm, Invision, Jensen, Prestige, RCA, and Terk. The international brands they own include...

acquired the U.S. audio operations of Recoton, and continues with AR-brand speaker development and sales. An associated firm, AB Tech Services, provides maintenance of AR speakers.

External links

• Acoustic Research Audiovox branded site
• AB Tech Services AR speaker repair
• The Classic Speaker Pages Resources and discussion forums
• "Edgar Villchur and the Acoustic Suspension Loudspeaker" by Steven E. Schoenherr