monsterous lows and extremely detailed mid and highs and who can beat having a sunfire amp in a tower? not many at anywhere near this price range

heavy as hell but that might be a good quality now that i think about it did you ever know anything heavy to be of bad quality?

i just got these speakers and haven't even had time to break them in yet and i am already ecstatic. i'm listening to music all over again and cursing the day that i ever bought a different pair of speakers. i am using this pair as fronts in my system and i never thought i would say this but i seriously do not even need a sub these things kick serious butt. i am running them with a pioneer elite vsx 27 with only 120 watts per channel and that is nowhere near satisfying these monsters all my movies sound different all my music sound more clear i am just waiting for star wars to come out on dvd and i will be in heaven (well until something better comes out) i consider this one battle won in the never-ending war against the goal of being satisfied with what i have in my home theater. now on to the dvd player-tv-cd player-wiring-eventual seperate amp pre amp and subwoofer so i can hook up 4 subs at once well a fella can dream can't he?

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little bit of this and that i've tried em all at this price range

Awesom highs, great bass, very well made cabinet.

frequency knob on back is small and flimsy.

The Kenwood speakers I replaced were excellent. These AR-3's are sleek, heavy (80+ lbs), and the sound is just fantastic. I sampled a number of other products before choosing the AR-3.
You won't be dispointed with these speakers they absolutely rock the house with music, Dolby Digital or DTS. I got them with the cherry cabinet and they look like more like high quality furniture then the usual black junk cabinets found on most speaks. Very satisfied to say the least! Note: The other post here saying these speakers were weak must be deaf.

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10 year old Kenwood 4 way towers.

uses top-of-the-line drivers and has outstanding build quality.

None that I have found as of yet.

It doesn't get much sweeter than this unless you wanna fork out the BIG BUCKS (>$10,000). The AR3's are a masterpiece. I have them along with the AR2C, AR15's, and ARS300. What a system!!!!! I highly recommend that you audition the Acoustic Research Hi-RES line before buying other speakers in their price range.....or even over for that matter. The best kept secret in the speaker community.

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Campared against Paradigm, PSB, Energym, NHT, and a few other. Thice one came out on top....regardless of price.

Plenty of power clean bass, nice midrange, super clear highs

Knob in back feels cheap. But everything else looks expensive

Good looking speakers clean and powerful.
My home theater Rocks. also I am finding new sounds in my Carlos Santana Supernatural CD and others I will highly recommed them. They sound better with the 3Db setting.
I auditioned Energy, Boston accoustics, Jamo and the AR3's
sounded the most natural.
I am running a boston acoustic center VR10
pair of NHT superones xu for surround
NHT sw2p Sub
AR3's for front
Powered by HK AVR85.
The Best speaker for the money.

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NHT, Boston acoustics, Jamo

sound quality, craftsmanship and value.

gigantic size, the level trim knob seems fragile.

Acoustic Research AR3, weight a whopping 87lbs per speaker and each tower has a built-in side firing 12” Subwoofer powered by Bob Carver/Sunfire 300 Watts RMS internal power amplifier. The construction of this speaker is topnotch and you can tell this is one hell of a speaker as well, each tower has a 1” Plasma-transferred, Diamond coated titanium dome tweeter, and Dual 5.25" MagAlloy Mid drivers.
The AR3 is very efficient and it’s rated at 93dB, and get this…the sub can go all the way down to 20hz!!! Most high-end speakers on the market are rated in between 85dB to 90dB. Generally it takes twice the power to increase 3dB so as you can see, the AR3 doesn’t need a beefy amplifier at all. However, it can handle up to 250 Watts and require as little as 15 Watts. I’m using a Denon DCM-370 5-Disc CD Changer as a source unit, feed the signal into an AudioSource Amp-Two integrated amplifier, which is rated at 80W x 2. This amp is bridgeable to 200W x1 and stable down to 4ohm as well.

The AR3 is a very warmth-sounding speaker, its exceptional sound staging and imaging are excellent for New Age, Jazz, Classic, Country, Pop and Rock. The High is silky smooth, very detail, airy/open, and clean. Mid bass is tight and solid, the vocal is very live-like as well. The 12” Sub is amazing, produce rip cage thumping and ground rumbling bass, each note hit hard with authority. However, it never overpower the high and mid. Most of the time I find myself turning the sub level all the way down though, let me just put it in this way...my neighbor put a note on my door few days ago and she wrote “The music is so loud it shakes my walls!!!” And I’d only had the volume on 1/4 and the sub level was set on -3 ;-) Can you imagine if I run these babies with a more powerful amp and crank up the volume half way?? Good Lord....

When it comes to Techno, Trance, Rap, and Heavy Metal…The AR3 just won’t cut it, at least not with the components I’m running off of. The Denon CD Player and the AudioSource amp are warmth and neutral sounding to begin with. Unless I use different interconnect and speaker cables with brightness characteristic, perhaps mate it with different amp or CD player, otherwise the AR3 simply doesn’t sound as good on those die-hard music. I’d just ordered $400 worth of interconnects and speaker cable from bettercable.com so I’ll follow up with another review as well.

I’d listen to mostly New Age and Jazz, The Moodfood by Moodswing sounds awesome, very detail and dynamic. Mike Oldfield and The Rippingtons are very enjoyable as well, superb sound staging and imaging, the sound of each instrument is layered, defined, and well positioned. Sarah McLachlan’s Angel is an excellent song to test the vocal, her voice is centralized, opened, and the depth is breath taking. I like the mid on NHT 1.5 as well, I think the NHT has a bit better imaging but they’re not as efficient as the AR series though, Rock, Rap and Techno sound even worst on them, those monitors are very suitable for warmer music and can be fit anywhere in the room. But you’ll need an extra sub to mate with the NHT 1.5 though. The Mirage are kinda nice, but they looks kinda lame...like a pyramid chopped in half. And the bass on them speakers are way too weak for my taste.

My room is 15 x 25ft, I’d played with the speaker placement for a while. The best setup I’d found in my room is to fire the sub toward each other and set them 5ft away from each other. I’d set them at least 2ft away from the sidewall yield better bass result oppose to the recommended 18”. I highly recommend to use some decent speaker cable and interconnect, it was a night and day different to swap from Radio Shack interconnect and Joe Blow brand 12 gauge speaker cable to Monster Interconnect 400MKII and Monster Z1 speaker cable.

All and all, the AR3 is a keeper for sure, I didn’t feel like going anywhere on weekends but to stay home listen to all my albums again, heh. I’d only paid $1150.39(including s/h) for a Brand New pair from consumer-direct.com, I don’t think I can get any better deal than this, the MSRP is $2500 and the local Hi-Fi shop wanted $2200(+ tax). Consumer-Direct has excellent customer service, I’d ordered mine on 3/6/01 evening and received them on 3/9/01 at 6pm.


Equipments:
Denon DCM-370
AudioSource Amp Two
Acoustic Research AR3
Monster Interlink 400 MKII
Monster Z1 speaker cable

Total System Cost so far: $1800.


For the sound quality and craftsmanship at this price range, I wish I can give the AR3 a 10 stars.

note: if your room is smaller than 15 x 25ft, save the money and get the AR5, heard them at the Hi-Fi store and they're just as good.

Bass,Full Range Accuracy & Clarity,BASS

None Significant

The Hi-Res Series Speakers by Acoustic Research are correctly named... they do indeed offer High Resolution...across the full spectrum! They are heavy (which is good-anti-resonant!), quite attractive (especially in Cherry), very well designed & built(but please improve the subwoofer level gain knob), use modern materials, and sport good efficiency...oh, and lest I forget... have Sunfire Amps inside each Tower!!
You like music? Play it through these. Maybe you're finally discovering Home Theater like me? Wait till you hear(and FEEL) it through these! Man, oh man. Thought I had experienced Bass. Boy, and I mean BOY, was I mistaken!
Acoustic Research, you guys have made a excellent speaker. My sincere Thanks.
Accessories 4 less, Thanks for such fine service. And to Scott in Japan... Gawd, don't play a movie that has a eartquake in it! You'll have the neigbors scurrying to get under a table or something.

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Infinity

Incredibly clean, powerful bass. Crisp, detailed mids and highs. Beautiful, well made cabinet. Carpet spikes are included.

None that are really important. The speaker grills are hard to take off. The 30hz gain on the back is not very sturdy; be careful with it. The power cords for the amps are only about 6' long. At 87lbs a piece they are difficult to move around.

I just got these a few days ago. Purchased them online from Cyberteria A/V (www.cyberteria.com) for $1340 which included shipping. What a great deal! Crutchfield wanted $2000. The rest of my system currently consists of the following:
Sony STR-DE935 110w Receiver
Sony CDP-CA80ES ES-Series CD player
Monster Cable HTS1000 line conditioner
Monster Cable all M-Series cables
Terk amplified AM/FM antenna

The speakers, in a word, are terrific! At first the sound was a bit too tight sounding which is now gone after I broke them in (about 24hrs playing time). I am hearing details I never could hear from my CDs before. The only bad part about that is I can hear a very slight hum from my receiver that I never heard with my old speakers. That is the fault of the receiver and will probably upgrade to the Sony STR-DA777ES sometime, which should fix that. The sound is very clean and clear, not like my old, muddy sounding, cheap Sharp speakers. I am still adjusting the bass on the speakers and receiver trying to find the best sound. Right from the start, I had to turn off the bass boost on the receiver, it was way more bass than these speakers needed. The entire house was vibrating from the sub! The AR3s are probably about as close to sounding like real band is in your living room as it gets without spending over $10,000. I would recommend them to anyone who is more concerned with quality than price, but doesn't want sell their house or children to afford them.

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Sharp 3-way tower pair from a 1992 rack system which consisted of 1-10" woofer, 1-3" mid, 1-2" tweeter.

none

definately cant handle loud music input,PROBABLY MADE FOR THE PERSON WHO PLAYS MUSIC LOW SO WHY DO THEY HAVE 300 WATT AMPS

a woofer and two tweeters blew out already. disapointed even cheaper speakers i own took more punch, whats the sense of owning expensive speakers if they dont craNK

none

definately cant handle loud music input,PROBABLY MADE FOR THE PERSON WHO PLAYS MUSIC LOW SO WHY DO THEY HAVE 300 WATT AMPS

a woofer and two tweeters blew out already. disapointed even cheaper speakers i own took more punch, whats the sense of owning expensive speakers if they dont craNK

Good sound when they work.

Crappy sound when they break.

I bought a pair of AR3 towers brand new about 3 months ago. The speakers produce good sound for their price, and I've been quite happy with the purchase. I've been listening to these speakers on "5-channel" stereo mode, so I never noticed anything wrong with them. Yesterday, I switched to stereo mode, I noticed the music was awefully dull. I took the grills off to listen to each driver, and lo and behold, the tweeters don't give off any sound. If this was just on one tower, I would probably not have noticed it...but this was on both towers! AR has some serious quality control issues here. Either that, or I'm extremely unlucky to have 2 tweeters bust on me at once. At are the odds of that happening? I've never turned my system on that loud before, and the only drivers busted are the tweeters, so I do not think they were fried by overpowering. And no, I did not receive defective speakers to begin with; I tested them out right after receiving them. What I don't understand is: why do $1100 speakers break after 3 months of normal usage? I just emailed their customer support, and I'll do a follow up post on how they handle warranty. Hopefully it will be a smooth experience. This makes me wary of the AR brand name for some time to come.