Acoustic Energy AE109²

Acoustic Energy’s smallest floor stander has received a full reworking, but does the new design add up to fun squared?

Small, yet affordable floorstanders are a type of speaker that really should be more successful than they seem to be. A speaker that needs no additional furniture involved in its placement and has useful extra cabinet volume as a result is one that makes a great deal of sense. Acoustic Energy has been producing the 100 Series for a number of years and has recently given the range a revamp. The AE1092 is the smaller of two floorstanders (the larger AE1202 – HFC 473 – was announced shortly after the rest of the range went on sale).

The AE1092 is still a fairly compact speaker, but it is larger than the preceding model. One of the key reasons for this is the drivers it makes use of have increased in size. Where the original 100 Series used a 102mm driver, the new models have increased the size to 130mm. The driver is still made from treated paper but, as well as its increase in size, it now boasts a four-layer voice coil with flux rings that help to improve the transfer of energy from the coil to the diaphragm.

In the 1092, two of these drivers are used in a 2.5-way configuration. They are assisted by a rear-mounted port that is of the slot-type that Acoustic Energy has come to favour in its more recent designs. This port is open to the whole enclosure and sits right at the top of the back panel, which means the tweeter is also open to the port rather than sequestered away in its own chamber – although it seems to have been designed with this in mind. It’s a 25mm soft dome unit that makes use of a prominent and relatively deep waveguide to help with dispersion.