Acoustic Energy AE100²

One key design aim for the AE100² was to make it sensitive, and O reasonably the quoted 87dB shows that this has just about been achieved. 

The 130mm paper coned mid/bass unit is as large as can be crammed into a cabinet just 165mm wide. Paper isn't particularly fashionable as a cone material, but it's light, stiff and natural sounding.

High frequencies are dispensed by a 25mm fabric dome tweeter. Although Acoustic Energy is famous for its metal dome high-frequency units, fabric is a fine compromise.

Potentially such a tweeter can sound very smooth and mates nicely, tonally, with paper mid/bass drivers. The crossover does its stuff at 2.9kHz.

Sound quality

No speaker at this price is anywhere near perfect. The trick is too minimise what it gets wrong - because in absolute terms it's never going to be accurate and/or neutral. And that's the strength of this little mini-monitor - it hides its limitations in a really self-effacing way.

Put it on the end of a half decent system and it sings. It's lots of fun, yet totally inoffensive - so it doesn't scream, squawk or boom at you. It's way less detailed and open than, say, Acoustic Energy's mid-price AE500 (HFC 465), yet is a quarter of the price but not 25 percent of the fun...