英國 Acoustic Energy(AE) Managing Director Mr. Moses A. Gabbay 專訪

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本日下午在 Mr. Moses A. Gabbay 下榻的六福皇宮商務中心, 接受專訪 8)

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Moses的個人經歷非常豐富, 在 1970 年代是美國AVID集團負責航太部門的首席工程師，接著任職D＆M 天龍馬蘭士控股集團的總裁兼首席執行者。在到AE之前，Mosesu,也在美國Boston Acoustic任職多年。

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Moses 非常的努力, 昨晚和總代理談完的該說的訂單, 還特地為今日的專訪寫下了一篇資料供給網友們參考.....


Market/future direction

AE embrace the currect trends towards digital music either from a PC based home system or MP3 player source as this is the future, CD's and vinyl will still have their place but they will likely become/remain niche as the majority of people value convenience over quality as long as the quality is acceptable. MP3 formats can be as good as CD if the files are lossless or high bitrate and work very well in a high end hi-fi system, their nature opens up new possibilities for loudspeaker manufacturers as active amplification starts to make a lot more sense when you can just plug and play a portable source - active speakers have many benefits to the designer over passive systems as we have more control over the sound and less in the signal path to interfere. Of course we will continue with passive speakers too, these will always have their place and for the time being be by far the core produc - there are just now opportunities to investigate active variants of the passive models to offer something different.

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The market in general seems to be making a return to stereo in quite a big way, there are probably many factors in this - not least the fact that screens have been getting incredibly slim in recent years so full-sized speakers look out of place when placed alongside them! Music is generally far more accessible now due to the internet and I would think this has a large bearing of the resurgence of stereo though, instant acess to any music you're after is far less troublethan digging through old LP collections for the exact track/album you want. We will never forget our core hi-fi enthusiaast customers and continue to develop new high-end product with many technical advances as in the new reference Series, our goal will always be to produce the highest performance product in relation to its price point whether it be entry-level computer speakers, 5.1 systems or luxury high-end stereo.

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AE Basic design philosophy

Our basic design philosophy is to minimise all forms of stored energy in the speaker system. All energy stored in the speaker system whether in the cone, the cabinet or heat in the motor system or crossover components will change the sound of speaker and inhibit the musical message.

Our speaker cones are aluminium which has very low internal damping and a high wave speed, which stores very little energy so does not add any colour to the sound. The drive unit motor system is thermally optimised to quickly and efficiently dissipate waste heat which would otherwise cause changes to the tone of the sound.

Our cabinets are optimised to dissipate energy rather than store it like most do. Our curved cabinets are low mass, high stiffness so they have a very deacy time, our reference series cabinets are critically damped to completely eliminate sound radiation from there surfaces. any energy stored in cabinates blurs transients and inhibits the speakers timing.

Our tweeters have low moving mass, and the ring radiator design means that there is no dome type colouration, which causes the tweeter to have its own sonic signature which colours the sound. As well as low stored energy we believe that speakers should be tonally accurate on all axis, we believe the polar output of the speaker should be even and continuous to allow most users to get the best sound in most rooms. Our speakers should be listened to slightly off axis, almost pointing straight down thw room to achieve the most even in room sound, and the most consistent tonal balance.

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Moses 非常的健談, 可以說是知無不言, 包括他個人的生平到AE未來的幾個新企劃, 都做了相當的陳述...

有關AE目前中低階的產品, 箱體及部份原件是由集團中的馬來西亞廠負責, 最終仍是送回英國做最後的組裝與測試, 高階產品全數在英國製造及組裝測試

目前正在進行中, 且在不久的將來, AE 將要推出新的 Reference系列喇叭, Refeence 1 與 Reference 2, AE的主要業務大部份是落在專業領域之上，因此focus 在Hi-Fi以及Hi-End上，相對來說的推出新產品的速度也就不是那麼快。另一個新的產品線是 Compact 系列, 強調的是小SIZE, 價格平民化, 但是仍有 AE 堅持且不妥協的 "true sound", 希望給入門族群及學生族得到真正的音樂樂趣.

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今天又收到 Moses 有關 Reference Cabinet 的補充說明 ...

Reference Cabinet:

“The key principle is that the cabinet panels should be non-resonant, that is they dissipate sound energy within the cabinet walls, without transmitting it to the listening environment. The cabinet walls are constructed using the constrained layer damping technique whereby a layer of damping material is laminated between 2 sheets of MDF, forming a self damping panel which is non resonant and has a very low sound transmission factor.

All 6 panels that make up the cabinet are built using these self damping panels. The net result is that midrange sounds very smooth and lifelike, and the sound does not hang around the speaker, rather it floats in space forming 3 dimensional stereo images, with a deep soundstage.

The inside of the cabinet is extensively braced to make the cabinet very stiff, this makes the bass sound very percussive and natural.

The inside structure of the cabinet also contains baffling to form a labyrinth termination for the mid/bass drive unit. This effectively eliminates internal standing wave energy in the cabinet that would otherwise be re-radiated through the cone, colouring the sound.”