Chane A2rx-c 5.0 Loudspeaker Review Discussion Thread

I just emailed Dennis thanking him for his effort and commending him on a particularly clear and pleasant review. It's one thing to find favorable remarks about your product in the press, but it's another to see such a nicely written and presented piece. Thanks again, Dennis. This is genuinely good reporting.

To address another interest in this thread: Chane has undertaken a hopefully brief update program for the next - and likely to be final - A5 platform. Many of you know that we continually look for minor updates and improvements and this next cycle will be no different. I think we'll be very hard pressed to do better than it without appreciable cost and price increases, but there are a few elements I'd like to try to pass on to customers as value adders for the A5.

Our new website should launch soon and will include more details.

It's a pleasure to be a small part of a community of such dedicated, competent enthusiasts. Thank you again Dennis and HTS, and we look forward to more good things soon.

red99 said:

I would like to know how does the A2rx-c with a port plug sound and perform vs open ported.

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Red, the difference between the two modes is that the bass reflex, open-port mode makes each of our four models relatively full-band speakers (lacking the bottom octave plus a little). The rolloff is the typical ~4th order function, meaning -24dB/octave. Deep(est) bass; fast roll-out.

Sealing the cabinet creates a somewhat overdamped classic 2nd order function, or -12dB at right about where you'd want it for a 80Hz standard subwoofer response. Less bass but a shallow roll-out.

In-room effects are all but guaranteed to swamp these respective functions at a microphone to the point of unrecognizability, but what counts is that these inherent power functions remain and are important for effective, powerful subwoofer meshing. Either can work with a sub, but as I think Dennis found, you don't always want the speaker's full bass register to get there.

Try the ports plugged and play with the sub settings in both processor and active subwoofer. For the perfectionist there's more to it than that (and we've prepared a user guide going into a little more detail) but most users of the A1rx-c and A2rx-c are probably going to try them in sealed mode.

The five channel A2rx-c system in the review, to me at least, sort of calls out for the standard 60-80Hz highpass and a good likelihood of not needing (or wanting) the extra bass extension and more abrupt roll-out used for larger models in 2.0 setups.

Quick brush-up on subwoofers, crossovers, and power responses:

Assuming a standard 80Hz lowpass subwoofer frequency setting, and assuming a 4th order LR crossover function, the complementary satellite setting is naturally a symmetrical 80Hz 4th order LR highpass. A system arranged around this relatively standard function sums to flat response in both SPL (on axis) and power responses.

How do we get it? Subs are commonly able to be set this way - see the knobs on the amplifier plate.

This leaves us with getting a 4th order highpass out of the combination of acoustical and electrical functions in our satellite speakers and crossover. Simply put, just sum them up.

Plugging the ports renders the satellite speaker close enough to a 2nd order acoustical highpass at the desired frequency that we've gotten half of our target. We need only to find a 2nd order, 80Hz electrical function in the processor.

That's really it. The biggest hurdle is, you guessed it, 2nd order highpasses in AVR and processor crossover control panels aren't standard. They're not rare, but you won't find them in everything. And, of course, the other exception is that in a world of affordable speaker and room correction firmware, you may not have to resort to a classic setup routine like this one at all.

But if possible, try 1) a stopped-port or other 80Hz sealed satellite speaker system coupled with 2) a common 80Hz, 4th order, LR subwoofer setup and 3) a simple 2nd order electrical crossover to the satellites set around 80Hz. Tune to taste.

Done well it can really add apparent acoustical power and a perfectly seamless, inaudible subwoofer transition to the system. (Years ago I set up a system involving big Acoustat electrostatic panels and twin custom bandpass subwoofers like this and we found the big panels sounded like they went all the way to 20Hz, which was an uncanny effect. Acoustically, the subwoofers just disappeared...)

gdstupak said:

Hopefully Jon Lane can chime in here to substantiate what I have read...

But I understand that at first Jon didn't want to make anything bigger/more complex than the original A3 because his thinking was that the bigger 3 way design would hinder audiophile qualities.

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bkeeler10 said:

I'm pretty sure the A5 (original version) was considered superior to the A3 (original version). Then the A3rx-c came out, and was proclaimed to be extremely close in character to the A5 (original). My understanding was that the goal with the A5rx-c was to make a significant improvement to the A5 (original); otherwise it was not going to be worth it to release an updated version.

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gdstupak said:

Bryan,
'superior' is a very vague term.
My understanding is that Jon (and others) considered the A3 to have superior audiophile characteristics. And the A5 to have superior power handling capabilities.

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All this is true, although the A3 > A3rx-c difference was probably more than the A5 > A5rx-c difference.

Yes, the A5 was designed - in the reinforced, heavier shell of the A3 - because a local sound pro and associate talked me into it. I wanted it to be better than the A3 in every way and took a good half a year settling on the crossover. As these things generally go, it all fell together at once, late in the development, and the rest you can read about here and elsewhere - apparently it works fairly well.

Since then the A3rx-c replaced the A3 and the A5rx-c replaced the A5. All rx-c versions moved to the lighter, louder tweeter, which gives us a better crossover fit with more thermal protection after the treble is padded back down. The most recent A3rx-c and A5rx-c, due to stock in six weeks or so, feature slightly upgraded midwoofers.

The whole aim of the line has always been to see how much real tech we can pack into a modest look and set of price points, so refinements can happen every few months.

2016 should bring us some new surprises. My datelines and projections are chronically wrong, but I own 100% of Chane and I'll expect that models like these stay on the leading edge of value in our class in as timely a fashion as I can.

(Oh, and Dennis, if you're interested, there may be something else of the MTM variety to interest you shortly.)