14 DAY TRIAL // Acoustic Research, Inc. was founded in 1952 and incorporated on August 10, 1954 by Edgar Vullchur and Henry Kloss. The company's first product was the 185$ AR-1, a commercial loudspeaker design incorporating the acoustic suspension principle based on patent No. 2,775,309 granted to Villchur and assigned to Acoustic Research in 1956.
The Acoustic Research brand of Hi-Fi loudspeakers became notorious with the help of its AR-3 loudspeaker that used the 12 inch acoustic suspension woofer from the AR-1, combined with newly designed dome midrange and high frequency drives. While these devices were the first of their kind, today there are a lot of speaker systems for iPod, but none available from Acoustic Research. Well, not until a few days ago...
At Las Vegas, Acoustic Research has shown to CES' visitors its first speaker systems targeting the iPod. The two products demonstrated there feature a universal dock adapter, remote control and come covered in a high gloss black finish. Their names are blackVault and black Tower, and they are not shipping yet.
The blackVault comes with a vacuum tube amplifier and wooden subwoofer and speaker cabinets. The price announced for it is 199$, and it will become available in February, according to the company. Its performance specifications published on the official product page include a SPL (sound-pressure level) of 96dB at 3 feet, and a frequency response between 50Hz and 20kHz. Apart from the woofer and satellites, the package also includes an auxiliary input cable, the remote control, iPod dock seats and a spare vacuum tube.
The second speaker system from Acoustic Research is the blackTower, and this time we get a digital amplifier and a larger subwoofer, but no vacuum tube, so the extra punch of the woofer won't benefit from the warmth specific to the vacuum tube amplified woofers. The price will be around 150$, but an official product page is not available yet at this time, so you'll have to be pleased with the attached picture for now...