Studio sound at a consumer price
Airpulse A100, A200, A300 are budget versions of the renowned $12,000 AAD 7001 reference monitors designed by legendary speaker designer Phil Jones whose most famous work is Acoustic Energy AE-1. Much like the AE-1 speakers were chosen by Abbey Road studio in London in the 80s, the 7001 was the choice of famed musicians such as Bob James, Victor Wooten and Grammy Award producer Don Murray.
This series inherits 7001's mechanism that matches horn-loaded ribbon tweeter with aluminum woofer for a balanced, detailed and accurate sound. All technical and design aspects of Airpulse products were crafted by Phil Jones to reflect its commitment to providing premium studio-quality sound at affordable prices.
Horn loaded ribbon tweeter
Upgraded from the A100, the larger tweeter on A300 is capable of moving more air and increase SPL. The thin aluminium ribbon diaphragm is highly sensitive with superb transient response. It can deliver extended frequency range with well-defined resolution. The horn shape directs an optimized high-frequency directly to the listener and minimizes room reflection.
6.5” Aluminum Cone Under-hung Coil Woofer
The woofer is a 6.5” unit with a hard anodized aluminum alloy cone suspended in a heavy, ultra rigid cast magnesium alloy frame. The proprietary aluminium alloy cone was designed through a meticulous analyzing process using a Klippel Laser Doppler Interferometer. A300 adopts under-hung coil design, which requires a much larger magnetic field and costs more yet it has a lower distortion and more linear electromotive force.
XMOS processor for active DSP crossover and async USB input
A300 comes with a XMOS processor that supports Digital Signal Processing (DSP) for active crossover. Comparing to traditional passive crossover networks, active digital crossovers done in DSP can better distribute sound frequency to tweeters and woofers in a more effective manner but cost more. Benefited by the cooperation with Edifier, the largest Chinese loudspeaker manufacturer, Airpulse managed to offer DSP at an entry level price range of traditional HiFi. It also comes with Dynamic Range Control that can minimize distortion when volume changes.
XMOS of A300 supports USB asynchronous mode up to 192kHz. Via asynchronous USB input, the amount of digital data transferred in the frame can be controlled and avoid distortions caused by high levels of jitters.
Highly Efficient Texas Instrument Class D Amps
A300 produces 10w×2 rms for tweeters and 70w×2 RMS for woofers using three TI TAS5754 digital amplifiers operating at ultra high 768khz PWM frequency that effectively lowers treble and background distortion. Two of these chips are bridged in parallel to drive the left and right woofers while the other is in bridge mode for both tweeters. Each speaker has a rear facing bass reflex port for better extension. The port is rounded smoothly to achieve low turbulence and high velocity, thus provide better sound performance. The cabinets are made of 25mm MDF with retro wood styling to minimize acoustic resonance. The interior is lined with professional-grade sound absorption materials to reduce unwanted colorations. Internal wiring is produced by TRANSPARENT to lower signal loss in transmission. The result is full and three dimensional sound with each detail well defined.