Acoustic Research

Acoustic Research, Inc. ("AR") was founded in 1954 by audio pioneer, writer, inventor, researcher and audio-electronics teacher Edgar Villchur and his student, Henry Kloss. AR was established to produce the US$185 (equivalent to $2,190 in 2025) model AR-1, a loudspeaker design incorporating the acoustic suspension principle based on U.S. patent 2,775,309, granted to Edgar Villchur and assigned to Acoustic Research in 1956.

Edgar Villchur's technical innovation was based on objective testing and research, most of which was made publicly available as documents, specifications, and measurements—all of which were then new in the loudspeaker industry. Acoustic Research, as an employer, claimed equal opportunity and offered liberal employee benefits, insurance, and profit sharing to its employees.

Acoustic suspension loudspeaker

The acoustic suspension woofer provided an elegant solution to the age-old problem of bass distortion in loudspeakers caused by non-linear, mechanical suspensions in conventional loudspeakers. The existing state-of-the-art at the time of AR's invention was the bass reflex speaker, which boosted bass response for a given amount of cone travel by directing sound energy from the rear of the speaker cone through a port in the cabinet "tuned" for reinforcement of the direct signal from the front of the cone by the signal from the rear of the cone.

Among the drawbacks of bass reflex design are the stringent design parameters required for accurate bass reinforcement, requiring high precision and, at the time, large cabinets. Some loss of accuracy ("smearing" or "vooming" of low frequencies) was inevitable, and the results were not entirely predictable. Extensive prototyping drove up the development costs of new designs, pushing them out of popular price ranges. High-fidelity woofers were vulnerable to damage from extreme low-frequency signals. Those issues were addressed with the invention of the acoustic suspension woofer.

The acoustic suspension woofer (sometimes known as "air suspension") used the elasticity of air within a small, sealed enclosure of about 1.7 cu ft (48 L) to provide the restoring force for the woofer cone. The entrapped air of the sealed-loudspeaker enclosure, unlike the mechanical springs of conventional speakers, provided an almost linear spring for the woofer's diaphragm, enabling it to move back and forth large distances ("excursion") in a linear fashion, a requirement for the reproduction of deep bass tones.

The disadvantage of this arrangement is low efficiency. Since the restoring force is large with a large woofer in a small cabinet, the cone must be massive to keep the resonant frequency in the required low bass region. The AR-1s were about 10 percent as efficient as other (physically much larger) existing speakers with equivalent bass response, but since higher power amplifiers were becoming available about the same time, this was a reasonable trade-off to get good bass response from a relatively small speaker.

The AR-1 set new standards for low-frequency performance and low distortion that were unsurpassed for many years. Some of the best loudspeakers available fifty years later continue to use the acoustic suspension principle for high-quality, low-distortion bass reproduction.

The small size of the high-performance AR-1 permitted by the acoustic suspension design helped usher in the age of stereophonic sound reproduction.

In 1967, Acoustic Research was bought by Teledyne, Inc., and for the next 22 years, it continued development and operations in Cambridge as Teledyne Acoustic Research. Technological breakthroughs during this period included a high-current amplifier. When purchased by Teledyne, AR was the world's second-largest supplier of branded loudspeakers. Although Acoustic Research continued product development, by 1989, AR had dropped to fifth place worldwide, and Teledyne sold the company to their major competitor, Jensen Electronics. In 1996, Jensen, including AR, was sold to Recoton Audio Corporation.

Under both Jensen and Recoton, the AR brand continued development in the speaker industry, including the environmental controls that allowed a speaker to be placed in different room areas, the Acoustic Blanket that minimized diffraction and interference in speaker baffles, and a speaker line designed to complement home theater and the digital technologies of the 1990s.

In 2003, Audiovox (now Voxx International) acquired Recoton's US audio operations and continues developing and selling AR-brand speakers. An associated firm, AB Tech Services, provided maintenance of AR speakers until mid-2014. Web-based audiophile communities lamented the company's closure and apparent liquidation of parts stock. As of July 2014, CM Tech Support assumed responsibility for Acoustic Research parts and services.