Thus, more than two decades after his death, you can still acquire Peter Snell's finest "bookshelf" loudspeakers, the ensuing evolution of which may be in keeping with their designer's intentions. After that, Qvortrup took the only route left: He sought and obtained permission to continue building Js, Ks, and Es on his own, crediting the original designs to Snell and selling the finished products under his own label. He bought up all the remaining stock of Snell Js, Ks, and Es, and when they were gone, he bought the remaining unfilled cabinets, too. That left Qvortrup-who would soon team up with Hiroyasu Kondo to sell products under the Audio Note name-in a bit of a jam. Almost immediately, Voecks began to take Snell's product line in a direction that had nothing whatsoever to do with Peter Snell's original work, as far as Peter Qvortrup was concerned. As Snell's distributor, Qvortrup enjoyed particular success with three relatively efficient models: the Snell Type J, Type K, and Type E.Įverything went swimmingly until fall 1984, when Peter Snell dropped dead on the factory floor-and his surviving business partners hired Canadian designer Kevin Voecks, late of Mirage, to take his place. Qvortrup admired Peter Snell's design innovations-not only were their cabinets precisely sized and shaped to support a particular range of frequencies, but Snell Acoustics was among the first companies to hand-match every crossover component to its own unique set of drivers. Audio Note's involvement in the loudspeaker world dates to the early 1980s, when audio maven Peter Qvortrup represented the Snell Acoustics line throughout Europe. So it goes with Audio Note's latest, the AN-E Lexus Signature, which takes the company's basic E-size loudspeaker-at just under 70 liters, the largest of Audio Note's cabinet sizes-and refines it in a number of subtle and mostly invisible ways.īefore tackling the specifics, some history is in order. What you wouldn't expect is how they go about doing it, since none of the 20-odd models in their speaker line appears to be much more than a plain-Jane two-way box, with nary a horn or whizzer in sight. Given Audio Note's early dominance of the low-power scene, you'd expect any loudspeaker from them to be a high-efficiency design, and you'd be right.
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