Audio Note Speaker Kit Construstion Manual

Copyright © 2006 Audio Note (UK)
Limited

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www.audionote.co.uk

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Manual Version 1.4 - February 2007

Copyright © 2006 Audio Note (UK)
Limited

Website

www.audionote.co.uk

E-Mail

[e-mail]

Telephone [phone]

Page 2

Table of Contents

Section 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................3

Cabinets............................................................................................................................................................................... 3

A Note about Cabinet Material.........................................................................................................................................4

Handling............................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Section 2: Parts Included ........................................................................................................................................................5

Section 3: Assembly................................................................................................................................................................7

Fitting the Crossover/rear speaker connection panel.......................................................................................................... 7

Fitting the Wadding..............................................................................................................................................................8

Installing the Drivers ............................................................................................................................................................9

Installing the Tweeter.......................................................................................................................................................9

Installing the Woofer ........................................................................................................................................................9

Section 4: Connecting Your Speakers ..................................................................................................................................10

Simple Connection ............................................................................................................................................................ 11

Bi-Wire Connection............................................................................................................................................................11

Bi-Amplifying Connections.................................................................................................................................................11

Section 5: Speaker Placement..............................................................................................................................................14

Copyright © 2006 Audio Note (UK)
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Section 1: Introduction

Thank you for purchasing this Audio Note speaker kit. Our goal is to provide you with the highest quality kit that you will
build from scratch with these instructions.

Please read this section thoroughly before beginning any construction - especially about cabinet construction
and materials that may differ from the enclosed cabinet construction plans.

Each stereo pair of woofer/tweeter/crossover has been matched and should remain in their matched group - not
mixed. You will notice that the box has been packed in such a manner that there is one such group on one side of
the box and another on the other side of the box - these are the matched groups. They may also carry an
identification number that will identify which group a matched component belongs to.

The kit is based on the world-renowned Audio Note AN/E range of loudspeakers.

The AN-E is a two-way, ported enclosure, with a carefully designed cabinet that is shaped to enhance and aid driver
dispersion on one hand, and bass output on the other. The cabinet is lightly braced and little internal damping is used.
The cabinet is designed in such a way that it augments and supports the drivers in their task, not unlike the box of a
guitar.

Audio Note have spent far more time looking at the efficiency/speaker load issues in relationship to the low power SE
triode amplifiers than anyone else, and I believe that our solutions are both original and effective, unfortunately nature is
as cruel as she is kind, when it comes to efficiency, bandwidth, size and price, so we have to accept the inevitable
compromises that she gracefully enforces.

It is important to appreciate that a finished AN-E is always likely to be better that any equivalent kit version, no matter
which one, as the drivers we use in the kits have a slightly wider "spread" in performance than the ones used in the
finished products, basically the kits get the drivers which cannot be matched within the very tight criteria used in our
finished products.

Also we do not spend anywhere near the amount of time setting up the Kit speaker's driver/crossover matching, we allow
a tolerance on the finished products of 0.2dB plus or minus, in the kits this is increased to 0.6dB plus or minus, mind you
this is still several dB better than anything done by other manufacturers, but it is audible in the overall performance of the
speakers, if you do a direct comparison on very good equipment.

This and the fact that it is necessary to rematch the driver/crossovers to the actual cabinets when assembled to maintain
the tightest possible match, this is not possible for any hobbyist building a kit and means that a kit can never get close to
the consistency of a finished product.

Again this does not necessarily mean that a Kit 03, say, would not be as good as or even better than a standard AN­E/SPe provided you can make a cabinet that is on par with ours, which I doubt you can, as the production methods used
have taken years to develop and there is much we do not disclose, but is it possible to get quite close if close tolerances
are achieved.

Despite all this, I believe that if you follow the enclosed instructions carefully and build the cabinets to the correct
tolerance levels, using the recommended materials, you will be more than happy with the resulting loudspeaker, as many
others have been over the years since we introduced these popular kits.

Cabinets

Your first job will be to build a pair of cabinets for your loudspeakers. Separate plans are enclosed with the kit. I cannot
emphasize enough how important it is to follow these plans carefully and to observe the specified tolerances.

Copyright © 2006 Audio Note (UK)
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The cabinet construction is an important part of the design of these loudspeakers and differs in various ways from those
from other manufacturers' philosophies. It is all too easy for someone who has built speaker cabinets in the past to decide
to change something during construction because it worked for another design. This should not be the case when
constructing these cabinets and would undoubtedly result in an inferior loudspeaker.

Despite what you may think, the guitar like structure of our cabinets greatly enhances efficiency, dynamics and sparkle
and sounds less colored than the alternative methods, which generally just move the resonant frequency and amplitude of
the energy lower down in the spectrum, which in most cases is more audible, mainly because this also increases the
duration of the resonance. Our belief is that the shorter the duration of the energy is, the less likely it is to interfere with the
immediacy of the original transient.

A Note about Cabinet Material

Audio Note have fairly recently changed the materials that the cabinets should be made form. The enclosed cabinet plans
may still direct you to construct the outer front, back, top, bottom, and sides from either chipboard or MDF. Since these
plans were originally drawn, however, we have changed our recommendations for all of these to be made from 13-ply
Russian Birch Ply. All of our production speakers are now made from Baltic birch plywood.

The materials that are specified for internal bracing and sub-baffle, etc. may still be of the specified materials.

Handling

Care should always be taken when handling the drivers. You should only hold them by their frames or magnet assembly.
It is easy to, for example, accidentally put your finger through the paper cone of a woofer if you are not holding it correctly
because of their top-heavy nature.

The tweeter too is a soft domed tweeter. That means that the central dome can easily be distorted by attempting to hold it
by its dome.

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Limited

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Section 2: Parts Included

Here is a checklist of parts included in this kit. Note that this manual is intended to cover both our Kit02 and Kit03 range
and, as such, specific driver models will not be noted.

It is important to note that each crossover/woofer/tweeter of the stereo pair is matched and calibrated. They must,
therefore, remain together and not mixed. To ease confusion, each pair will usually be marked with a number that relates
to their matching. For example, one matched group of components will be marked, say, with a number '012' and the other
set with, say, '013'.

Part Quantity Description

Manual 1 This manual.

Cabinet Construction Drawings 1 Cabinet plans. Note that information in these plans may be overridden

by information stated in the introduction section of this manual.

Port 2 Plastic bass ports to be attached to the bass port on the rear of the

cabinets (from the inside).

Crossover/rear speaker connection
panel

2 This panel contains the crossover components, speaker terminals,

and leads that connect to the tweeter and woofer.

Woofer 2 This is the larger of the two drive units.

Tweeter 2 This is the smaller of the two drive units.

Wadding sheets 2 This is the wadding that is to be used. One sheet per loudspeaker.

Blu-Tack 2 packs This is used as both a sealant and a method of de-coupling (or

damping) the drive units from the cabinets.

T-Nut bag 1 Contains 14 t-nuts that are to be located inside the cabinets to aid the

fixing of the drivers.

Screw bag 1 Contains:

•

8x woofer fixing screws.

•

6x tweeter fixing screws.

• 8x crossover board/rear connection panel fixing screws.

Terminal Link Wires 4 Link wires for shorting out the speaker terminals when being used

with one stereo pair speaker cable per loudspeaker. More information
is available elsewhere in this manual for bi-wiring and bi-amplifying,
etc.

As you can see, the hard-wired crossovers are mounted onto the rear speaker connection panels. This has been done to
keep wire lengths down to an absolute minimum - an important design feature. The speaker terminals themselves are
made of high quality silver parts.

Drivers (both woofer and tweeter) vary from one kit model to another and may use copper or silver coils. They may also
be of standard or high efficiency types etc.