stylish looks, small foot-print

sensitive to speaker placement

AR has a lot of good ideas and research put into the drivers and design of these. sound pretty good, reasonable price, and good low frequency extension. I am happy with my purchase

powerful bass, mids & highs smooth,clear

mid-bass (I'm guessing around 100 Hz) a little uneven

I've used AR speakers for years, and have always been a fan. Bought these based on Stereophile review of the AR-1. I previously used the AR-98 (similar to the classic AR-9). Compared to those, the bass is much more powerful, considerably deeper. Sting's CD "Brand New Day" will show that. The mid bass (probably near the upper end of the woofer's range, before crossover) is not quite as smooth as the AR98s, but still good. The mids and highs are crystal clear, very open. The overall response sounds very smooth to my ears -- very little listener fatigue (better than the AR98s). I've spent some time in small clubs listening to music, and these speakers give a very accurate representation of what I've heard there. I think these speakers are great.

Similar Products Used:

AR-3a, AR-98

This is the first and last time I work with a so-called sound-couselor. I guess these AR-3's are fine if you live in a small cottage. Although they sounded very "tinny" when they were expurgating the higher frequencies, be it country, heavy-metal, opera, classical, instrumental, Jazz or popular song (ie. Sinatra). The handling of rhe lower frequencies wasn't much better. My old 48" Floor Speakers, (Heil Air Transformer, 12" Inch Mid-Range and 15" Bass sounded twice as good as the AR-3's, and they are over twenty years old. If these are powerful speakers, I guess you need to buy a 900Sq. Ft. house or an apartment, so theycan fill-up a small room with sound. BUMMER!

Acoustic Research AR3 3- WAY TOWER, Black ($574.50 Each)

The equally impressive AR3 3-way tower loudspeaker features a side loaded 12", 300 watt Bob Carver/Sunfire® Powered Subwoofer. Dual 5-1/4" MagAlloy™ midrange drivers are newly designed and consist of a unique blend of magnesium and aluminum which is light in weight but extremely rigid and responsive.

The monologue, concave cone eliminates the need for a dust dome allowing the cone to act as perfect piston. The result is lower distortion, an extended frequency response and is unrivaled for accuracy in the critical midrange frequencies.

I just recently purchased and installed these. They are hooked up to my SONY STR-DA50ES. I use Monster cables with banana plugs to make the connections. They are placed about 19' apart. The speakers consist of 1" tweeter, 2-51/4" midrange drivers on the front with a 12" side-firing subwoofer on the side. The speakers are mirrors of each other so that the woofers fire to the outside of the listening area. The subs are driven by 300W Sunfire amps in each enclosure. As for speaker inputs, there are two. One is for speaker-level and the other is for a sub pre-out from your receiver. There is also a passthru on the sub pre-out input in case you only have one out on your receiver. If there is no signal to the speakers, the sub amps will drop out of ready mode to a standby mode to conserve energy.
Once connected it called up the satellite (DirecTV) and dialed the AC-3 demo channel. Great fidelity and clarity. The midrange/tweeter arrangement (Dual Focused Array Configuration) comes at you at eye level. While the bass is all around you. While I wasn't decoding AC-3, I wanted something with dynamic range. I then put on a CD (Do You Feel Like I Do, Peter Frampton Live) and cranked it up a bit (new speakers, can't get too crazy). I felt I was in an envelope of sound.

These speakers are similar to the AR P312HO's that have been available since last year.