More New Loudspeakers from Cirencester's Finest! Acoustic Energy AE509

This blog is really a follow on and update from the last we posted from in the Cheltenham branch. That last blog was based upon the new Acoustic Energy AE 500 stand mount loudspeakers and now we have the even newer AE509 floorstanding speakers.

Again using the new carbon fibre drive units designed to improve upon transient speed and clarity and to reduce distortion. They also have the same type of cabinet construction using Acoustic Energy’s new 18mm Resonance Suppression Composite (RSC) which is evolved from the famous Reference Series and is designed to reduce cabinet acoustic radiation which otherwise can cause cabinet colourations. Essentially it is a very clever method of building one cabinet around another one with a layer of damping in between. This makes the cabinet more inert so when you are listening to them the cabinets just disappear and you are left with the stereo image of the performance just hanging in the air in front of you.

Of course the main area of improvement over the already rather nifty sound produced by the little AE500 is in the bottom end. The bass on the AE500 goes down to a pretty decent (for the size of the box) 45hz whereas the AE509 digs out a much more respectable 32hz. After trying out a wide variety of music types I thought I would really put them through their paces by playing the fairly new album by a band called Lump. Lump is a wonderful collaboration between Laura Marling (vocals, flute and words) and mike Lindsay (Guitars, bass, rhythms, juno, pocket piano, lamba, drones, and textures) from a band called Tunng.

This album has truly seismic levels of bass at times and playing the track Late To The Flight produced beautifully articulated deep bass that was also clean and tight. The word that crossed my mind was “grunt”! Something that not many speakers at this price are remotely capable of. The really clever thing is that this bass does not colour or confuse the mid-range at all which remains clean and open at all times with some great stereo imaging to boot.

Next on my playlist was The Total Experience Live In Liverpool by Steve Hackett from which I played the track The Musical Box. This is an old Genesis song that gets somewhat of a re-working. Another piece of music that at times has spectacular levels of bass that the AE509’s just sail through.

Another thing I really like about these speakers is the gorgeous metal bases with proper chunky spikes. Most speakers these days treat the spikes as just a cheap add on and they don’t give you a great method of making sure your speaker does not wobble around whereas the Acoustic Energy base and spikes looks amazing, really works, and makes set up easy as well.

If you are interested in getting a listen to these amazing new speakers give us a call in the Cheltenham store and speak to Jon, Farid or Andy. Tea and/or coffee will be laid on …. there may even be some biscuits left!

Acoustic Energy Hi-Fi products are available at the following branches of Audio T: Brentwood. Bristol. Cheltenham. Online. Portsmouth. Preston. Reading. Swindon.