Description
Designed to be used on a mixing desk at ear level as a near-field monitor.
The art of designing a good near-field monitor is to stay out of the way of the music. The monitor marks the point at which recorded music becomes real. It also often marks the point at which many musically significant distortions occur. Staying out of the way of the music means applying the best engineering practice to make sure, as far as the laws of physics allow, that any distortions are innocuous and that the music, not the monitor, is heard.
We never imagined we’d want to write about this about an Acoustic Energy product but we’ll have succeeded in our aims with the AE22 if it is taken for granted. Because the mark of a good near-field monitor, apart from staying out of the way of the music, is that it sits there, session after session, consistently doing its job without anybody really noticing.
The AE22 Active monitor incorporate high quality class A-B power amplifiers totalling 160 Watts for each speaker, including EQ presets to provide adjustment of tonal balance and low frequency bandwidth. A high visibility LED display gives clear indication of all user settings ensuring both speakers are set up identically.
The AE22 is a low distortion, closed box speaker with an exceptional time domain performance (better than 40dB down within 5ms) and good horizontal off-axis consistency. It doesn’t have the flattest anechoic amplitude response you’ll ever see, nor the widest bandwidth, but from 60Hz to 25kHz it is about as musically accurate as moving-coil driver technology can achieve at the price.
