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REVIEW: Audio Note AN-J/Spe Speakers

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Model: AN-J/Spe
Category: Speakers
Suggested Retail Price: $3,575.00
Description: 2 way full range stand-mount.
Manufacturer URL: Audio Note
Manufacturer URL: Audio Note

Review by RGA ( A ) on September 30, 2004 at 18:56:05
IP Address: 207.81.75.114
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for the AN-J/Spe


I’ll start with the banal information. The Audio Note J/Spe is a 2 way 2 driver stand mount speaker which is quite large for a stand mount. The speaker is a rear ported enclosure with 1" tweeter and 8" bass driver, 93dB efficient and is SET friendly. The speaker uses Audio Note AN-SPe silver speaker cable, and very nice silver binding posts for bi-wiring etc. The speaker uses Russian birch plywood front and back and an MDF wrap – though they may be all Birch now – mine is last year’s model. Current models don’t come with grill cloths as they are meant to be played without the grill cloths. The speaker is rated 25hz -23Khz-6db. The speakers are best suited for corner placement but they do seem fairly room friendly. Lastly, the speakers are upgradeable to currently a $19,450.00US version.

Ok onto the actual review:

About four months ago I decided to upgrade my Audio Note K/Spe speaker to the J/Spe given that my finances and a good price were aligned for my student budget to handle. I was also rather daunted with the prospect of trying to integrate a subwoofer. Like all Audio Note speakers these are two way stand-mounts, but the middle range between the K and the fuller range larger E speakers. So after a healthy warm-up listening to the K at my dealer www.soundhounds.com we switched over the J’s. After compensating a bit for the higher sensitivity of the J’s I would discover that there would be more to the game than merely adding bass depth.

The entire presentation got bigger more open especially in the treble range and the whole presentation is just more vibrant, visceral, and three dimensional. I posted a review of the K/Spe on this site so you can get an idea of where I started from. The J is a considerable improvement in every single way. I also posted one of my earlier listening sessions of the J/Spe previously describing more of the differences I found between the two that you can read if you wish to keep the preamble at a minimum http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=speakers&n=163762&highlight=Soundhounds+Audio+Note+J/Spe+RGA&r=&session=

I have to say I’m not one for continual upgrades generally speaking. I figure if you choose right the first time you should be set until whatever you buy drops dead. I suppose many of you are no different if you can at all help it. But audio seems to be one of those areas where constant change is apparent. I say change instead of upgrade because often I see people change from one component to another not because the new unit is completely better but just better in certain areas. This of course means that what you traded away may have things you’re eventually going to miss. Then this means another upgrade is not too far from view.

So I stopped bothering looking for specific traits in sound reproduction. It either hits me that the system rings true to me or it does not. From there I put my hobbyist reviewer’s hat on and attempt to grade the speaker trying to say good things about components I would not want to own or recommend to close friends. Naturally, for those who have conversed with me over the years this isn’t really for me so I get into lots of tiffs with people for my rather very blunt telling it the way I see err hear it views.

This is why I lasted all of 3 days selling stereo equipment. I was 19 when a customer came into the store with his rather impoverished looking family looking to buy a small stereo system with their $400.00Cdn budget. The store I worked at carried some truly terrible equipment from those big Japanese corporations (and we didn’t even have the good ones of that lot). So after looking around a bit and seemingly ready to plop down what must have been a fortune to them, I took them aside and told them where to get something considerably better for less money.

Obviously if I wanted to continue to eat and have shelter this was probably not the career choice for me. I realized that the only way I would ever want to get into selling audio, or anything for that matter, would be if I could recommend the stuff to my best friend or would be happy to own it myself. And the highest praise I can give is that -- if I were to sell stereo equipment I would have to sell Audio Note. So, now where can this review go after making such a claim?

Well, this didn’t really hit me until not long ago when reading Kevin F’s Audio Note Level 3 system review in the “other” reviews section. I went down the path Kevin mentions of relying upon the new marketing drive of the day published in all of the magazines of a revolutionary new speaker driver, or cabinet shape that would get rid of standing waves or amplification devices and super up-sampling cd players. I remember the fanfare of the one bit system that Technics brought out called the 1 bit MASH that would change err fix the horrible sound of cd forever – until next month when Pioneer’s Legato Link Conversion or Sony’s One bit pulse flow or some other thing would come out and apparently top yesterday’s passé MASH bit system.

I was becoming more interested in what new device would serve the music better when in reality none truly did. The flagship Wharfedale speakers I bought in 1990 didn’t sound any worse then most current speakers and often times better than what the magazine reviews were touting. Certain publications would give a certain product 5 stars and the next year would give it 4 as if to say the new stuff is better. So I guess if we continued down that path, once your speakers were 5 years old or so they would be un-listenable garbage? Something was up.

Speaker companies and Amp/Cd manufacturers kept changing speakers nearly as fast as Felix Unger would change underwear. Heck some of the receiver makers it’s almost yearly. I also realized that everything seemed to get a good review by some magazine or other. But wait surely not everything can be great – if that were the case then why have reviews? Everything is great all CD players sound the same, as do amps so hey that takes the brainwork out of it.

The measurements I dabbled with as well, but those didn’t help me either because it didn’t seem to matter what the measurements said – the reviewer invariably liked the speaker anyway. Besides they didn’t all seem to be on the same page. Two magazines would not a certain anomaly and one would say that that anomaly was desirable. So how could a bad measurement exist if the reviewer and people buying them all loved the sound of them?

So enter my original trip to Soundhounds where after hearing the AN K directly against names I knew and industry approved designs, the Audio Note stone-age speakers were the last speakers I wanted to like. And I describe my thought on this in my K/Spe review. Since then I have spent a lot of time with a lot of other Audio Note speakers and gear – which is to say I’ve heard barely anything from them since they make such an enormous amount of gear.

Now I could start going on about my J/Spe speakers and my auditions which discs I used and how they sounded just like the mainstream reviews. I could start making comments about how wonderful this or that sonic aspect is just like the mainstream reviews. But all of that verbiage everyone has read. I ask you, does any of that really resonate in the end with the reader?

I’ve read enough reviews that comment on how great the off-axis response is or how smooth the treble is that basically it could apply to whatever product popped up this week in the monthly magazine and besides the professionals would be much better than yours truly at talking about great imaging – they are paid to say that 47 different ways from issue to issue. I did try. I began a rating system on another forum and in the end assigning numbers to how good something sounds I found to be rather meaningless. What does giving a speaker’s bass response a 7 versus giving another speaker an 8 mean? Maybe an 8 to me is the bare minimum of acceptance and 7 is something I can recommend but for YOU not for me. This also applies to letter grades as some parents would be thrilled if their child brought home B’s while some parents might smack their kid with a bat for not getting A’s. As a soon to be teacher – you’d be surprised.

So how do I review my Audio Note AN-J/Spe if I don’t assign numbers or ratings? I could try and describe its wondrous musicality, but that sounds too touchy feely and implies its own set of negative connotations. I could list all my recordings and give you a step by step synopsis as to how the J/spe did versus the competition. The fact that I bought the J/Spe and bothered to review them will tell you which speaker I felt was better at reproducing the musical event, which in turn includes all those sonic aspects.

It really boils down to the fact that I have heard no other systems that communicate to me or move me on emotional level to the degree that Audio Note so wholly succeeds at doing. My attention is not drawn to specific sonic aspects of the J/Spe, but rather they communicate the musical event which rings true. In an e-mail I sent to the owner of Audio Note, Peter Qvortrup, he said to me that many people who purchase his products have a sort of religious experience about them. I suppose that’s a reasonable analogy given the polarizing effect the speakers and gear have had on me and from some of the other owners and reviewers of his products. I usually seek the tangible. I want to know why the speaker does things for me emotionally and how they can so engage me that the competition has not been able to do. I am not a person who is easily moved to tears from music – and yet Audio Note has managed to do it. I especially want to know how it can be done from a much smaller company without the resources of the big boys.

Until I finally realized that it really doesn’t matter. Audio Note doesn’t produce product literature with streams of reading materials and pamphlets nor do they have product placements on hit television shows or films. Sure they have a badly out of date web-site which has a decidedly forceful tone and a couple of essays – but unless you heard the product and liked it – chances are you would not actively go out of your way to read all that stuff. I heard the product – the product was the best I had heard and now the readings just seem to be there for some kind of rationale as to why it sounds better.

None of this tells you what you really need to know. What you need to know is how it actually breathes life into the music you own. What you need to know is how it sounds against the other speakers being considered on your audition list. Audio Note seems to go by the notion that the you don’t need heavy advertising or product literature because the sound will sell itself, if you need the external stuff then chances are the sound didn’t sell itself because the person obviously has extensive reservations about it and needs to seek some external approval – a review, lengthy technical assessments, spending weekends at home comparing several speakers to make sure one is better than the other etc. I have done these kinds of things with gear over the years.

So it was quite surprising, even startling, to me that within one four minute track, the J/Spe was so obviously going to be the speaker for me. There was no real need to do extensive A/B comparisons with the other speakers I was auditioning or had heard over the years because the speaker just did the music thing so right. Of course I listened for longer periods and against others to be sure I was not liking some euphonic trick – after all people are always saying SET is terrible so speakers from a big SET maker I wanted to make darn sure I wasn’t being tricked. I’ve even waited all this time to be sure. And I’m sure.

It was startlingly obvious to me that this speaker, like other Audio Note speakers, was doing something I could not live without and which was not provided to me by the competitors and other speakers and headphones I have owned and heard over the last ~14 years. This was ultimately to involve me and enthrall me with the reproduction of music from all the various genres of music I listen to from classical, jazz, pop, rock, hard rock, country and trance and the various new age progressive variants in between. Very few speakers I have been impressed with being able to do all genres of music well.

So there you go. If you are like I was in speaker limbo never being wholly impressed by what the magazines are touting as great sounding products, then I highly recommend you give the AN-J/Spe a try.


Product Weakness: Some may not like retro appearance.
Product Strengths: Sheer overriding musicality. Deep tuneful bass and incredible microdynamics. Full range low volume playing. Expressive vocal and midrange, smooth extended resolute treble response.


Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier: Sugden A48b integrated
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): none
Sources (CDP/Turntable): Cambridge Audio CD6 -- NAD 533 with Shure M97Xe cartridge
Speakers: AN J/Spe
Cables/Interconnects: Audio Reference series
Music Used (Genre/Selections): Jazz, Classical, female vocals, instrumentals, Pop, Rock, Trance
Room Size (LxWxH): 15 x 12 x 8
Time Period/Length of Audition: 4 months
Type of Audition/Review: Product Owner




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Topic - REVIEW: Audio Note AN-J/Spe Speakers - RGA 18:56:05 09/30/04 ( 17)