Spring of 2023 was a busy time for PTA, with the team having hit up several shows in a row. The end of February brought a welcome trip to Tampa for FLAX 2023, and mid-April resulted in coverage of AXPONA. On both occasions I had the opportunity to hear many new-to-me speaker brands, and I came away impressed at the depth and breadth of offerings in the current market. I spent a lot of time looking at floorstanding speakers in the $2,000-$5,000 range and came to the realization that this was a very competitive segment. What a great time to be an audiophile, I thought, to have all these great products at our disposal. No brand impressed me more than Acoustic Energy, however, and soon I had the Acoustic Energy AE509 loudspeakers in for review.
Words and Photos by Matthew Partrick
Let’s be honest; I already knew their products were fantastic after hearing the larger Acoustic Energy AE520 floorstanding speakers at both shows, and there is no greater excuse to enjoy six months of speakers in one’s home than to offer to review them with the façade of objective review for the PTA reader. I’m not being condescending here to our readership; quite the opposite. We spend a lot of time at these shows sorting the wheat from the chaff so that we can highlight the best products on the market and having come away from FLAX and AXPONA with a very positive impression of these Acoustic Energy speakers, I felt it appropriate to focus a few months of my time to bring these speakers to your attention. They are well worth it.
When corresponding with the Acoustic Energy distributor, Fidelity Imports, it quickly became clear that getting my preferred AE520 speakers in for review wasn’t going to happen. I guess that’s the result of a great product, that there aren’t really any review samples as a result. Instead, I was offered the Acoustic Energy AE509, and in retrospect that was a fortuitous turn of events. While the AE509 has less drivers than the AE520, and at least on paper may be slightly less impressive, it turned out that matching the 509 with appropriate components and shooting to have an amazing system for less than $6,000 made the most sense. (I did not at all miss those extra drivers, either.) Serendipity strikes again, and this time I was so happy I got the “lesser” model.
Acoustic Energy was founded in London in 1987. During that time, they have remained competitive among the other highly regarded British speaker manufacturers. They are British owned-and-run, and have since left London to relocate in the beautiful Cotswolds in Gloucestershire (back in 1995). Having made their name with the extremely well-regarded AE1 loudspeaker, they now offer a range of both bookshelf monitors and floorstanding models with the 500 series being one step down from their top-of-the-line Corinium offerings.
There are three speakers in this line: the 501 bookshelves, and the 509 and 520 floorstanders. As mentioned above, the 520s have more drivers in an almost-identically sized enclosure as the Acoustic Energy AE509, and at the shows I was initially drawn to the 520s for their presence, imaging and slam. While one may be disappointed at being offered the lower priced model in the lineup to review, that turned out to be a falsehood during my six-month love affair with the AE509 speakers.
Acoustic Energy AE509 Specs
The Acoustic Energy AE509 speakers retail for about $3,700/pr and come with two 125 mm carbon fiber drivers with 25 mm carbon fiber dome tweeters. (Ridiculous Imperial measurement fanatics, I am not going to translate that into inches for you. Suffice it to say they’re big enough for you.) The speakers offer impressive specs: 32 Hz-28 kHz frequency response, 89 dB sensitivity, 6 Ohm resistance, and 175 watts power handling.
After having lived with these speakers for half of 2023, I can tell you there’s no way you’ll ever need 175 watts, even with an average sensitivity of 89 dB. These speakers sing with modest power supply and seem to get along well with both analog and digital amplification. More on that later. They are offered in gloss white, gloss piano black, and walnut veneer.
Mine came with the fantastic gloss black finish. They are one meter tall and 185 mm wide, perhaps average for the crowded gloss black floorstanding speaker segment. However, these speakers turned out to be anything but average. Fit and finish were impeccable on my samples.
Acoustic Energy AE509 Setup
Setup with these speakers was an absolute breeze. Included in the box are aluminum outrigger-style bracing stands with very well-made spike feet. While not necessarily recommended by the manufacturer, if one is wary of placing sharp objects into one’s expensive flooring and scratching the hell out of them during the positioning process, thereby risking the ire of one’s spouse, the spikes are indeed reversible with the knob end placed on the floor. How would I have discovered this chance turn of events is anyone’s guess, but I haven’t filed for divorce yet, so you do the math.
The stands for the Acoustic Energy AE509 easily screw into the bottom of the speakers and the exceedingly well-built terminals accept a variety of wire attachments. I mainly was using either Cardas Clear with spade terminals or Triode Wire Labs with plug terminals. My personal preference for this type of terminal is spade, but you do you Boo.
Positioning the Acoustic Energy AE509 for optimal listening was a little easier with the knob feet down as opposed to the spikes, but perhaps I’m biased against spikes. I’ve never had flooring that required the coupling that spikes may provide, and I have always lived in fear, as a card-carrying member of OCD Anonymous, of scratches.
With the knob feet, sliding these not-too-heavy speakers into position allowed the imaging to very quickly snap into focus. These speakers are not at all fussy about positioning, and it took me about ninety seconds, conservatively, to find optimal positioning in my rather fussy room.
Acoustic Energy AE509 Listening
I started out listening to the Acoustic Energy AE509 loudspeakers in my office. My usual setup in this room is a modest offering of a Cambridge Audio Evo 75 integrated streaming amplifier and Harbeth P3 ESR desktops with Cardas Clear wiring. This setup is so simple, idiot-proof and effortless, and at the same time deceptively awesome-sounding that I figured it would be a sensible place to get started. Additionally, I really wanted to see how the AE 509s matched with a source component that would provide the potential buyer with another British product, offering a three-box solution for just under $6,000.
After this as-an-aside experiment was done, I seriously began to question just what I was trying to accomplish with my end-game, cost-is-no-object, dash-laden main system. Is spending shitloads of money really what this hobby should be about? With the Cambridge offering seemingly all the streaming audio options, an ESS Sabre ES9016K2M DAC, and an ooey-gooey smooth class D digital amplification, this is a setup with which any sane human being should be happy for the rest of their lives.
The Evo 75 streams with several different sources: Chromecast, Spotify, Roon, as well as Tidal and Qobuz separately. This left me with endless choices with which to test out the Acoustic Energy AE509 speakers. And you may shoot me for volunteering this info, but in the Partrick household, when the clock strikes midnight on October 31st, Christmas music becomes fair game. It’s as much of a guilty pleasure as a passive aggressive attempt to irritate my loved ones. That said, I’m not cruel enough to put Mariah Carey on repeat. We get enough of that on the airwaves. (As an aside I wish I had played sleigh bells on that track, as I’d probably be richer than Warren Buffett by now.)
Anyhoo, my main slant when it comes to holiday music is anything swanky, big band all the way through atomic mid-mod sixties and perhaps even some peyote-fever dream Ray Coniff or Lawrence Welk. Dean Martin’s “Baby it’s Cold Outside” is my kind of jam, if one perhaps ignores the connotation that Dean-o was perhaps dropping Quaalude into his date’s drink and suggesting that it was easier to sleep with him than freeze to death in a snowbank.
Streamed by Qobuz in redbook format, Dean’s silky voice comes across the Acoustic Energy AE509’s drivers and carbon fiber dome tweeters and fills the room with smooth holiday goodness. The call and response format of the song allows listeners to enjoy the female singer’s voice as well; on the 1959 classic recording this is provided by Marilyn Maxwell, a voice you all know very well but perhaps couldn’t place with a name. Acoustic Energy prides itself on providing precise imaging with a holographic soundstage, which really comes across on this recording. In particular I found the use of carbon fiber in both the drivers and the tweeters in Acoustic Energy’s lineup to provide a very integrated sound, which really helped any crossover-induced frequency wrinkles to disappear.
Perhaps that’s why I was so drawn to them at the shows compared to many other floor-standing offerings in attendance. When you’re shaming other British companies at half the price point, AE must be doing something right.
I also use the holidays as an excuse to listen to possibly my favorite artist of all time, Ella Fitzgerald. Regular readers will remember I’ve used her flawless voice to test speakers in the past, and the Acoustic Energy AE509 was no exception. A great track of hers to enjoy is “The Christmas Song” off Ella Fitzgerald Wishes You a Swinging Christmas, a 1960 offering featuring a United Records studio orchestra led by Frank DeVol. The Acoustic Energy AE509 loudspeakers allow Ella’s voice to shine, painting the room with chestnuts roasting on an open fire. I can usually hear her intake of breath on good speakers at reasonable SPLs, and the AEs do not disappoint in this regard. The integration of the Acoustic Energy product with the Cambridge Audio offering did wonders in my home office, but it was time to move into the main room.
Powering a $3,700 pair of speakers with an amplifier costing approximately ten times that may come across as silly to some, and you’d be right. I did not spend a ton of time listening to the Acoustic Energy AE509 loudspeakers with the Vinnie Rossi Brama I bought earlier this year, but I did test the waters a little to see how the speakers would handle that much power. They did very well, and as I stated earlier demonstrated that while they can tolerate tons of power, they certainly don’t need it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I also took the time to hook up my Linear Tube Audio Z10 integrated amplifier, sporting 13 watts of tube power. In my main room I did most of my listening through this rig, using a Mytek Brooklyn Bridge II streamer/DAC as the source. I wanted to see how the Acoustic Energy AE509 did with some slam tracks, so I booted up “Ratchets” by Hildegaard, a Danish group that some of the big-name speaker companies such as Acora and Børresen use to highlight their products. Acoustic Energy speakers aren’t typically known to pressurize the room with a ton of slam, especially with 125 mm drivers, but I was pleasantly surprised with how they handled themselves, especially with only 13 watts of power into an 89 dB speaker. I don’t think it will rupture anyone’s eardrums any time soon, and the normal audiophile should be perfectly happy with the bass provided.
If you haven’t spent much time with Jon Batiste, stop what you’re doing and turn on your equipment. This young man is yet another an exceptionally long line of musical geniuses to come out of the New Orleans scene, and his heritage shines through on the old standard track “St. James Infirmary Blues.” Take everything you love about the original Louis Armstrong track, add a dash of Absinthe-fueled Jazz Funeral procession and finish it off with pianistic skills reminiscent of John Legend or Harry Connick Jr, and you get the idea. It almost makes me want to catch consumption. The Qobuz version of this track streamed through the above setup can transport the listener to Preservation Hall in an instant, and the Acoustic Energy AE509 speakers do a bang-up job of projecting Batiste’s voice into your room. Close your eyes and be prepared to be transported to your own dingy Bourbon Street jazz bar at your own peril. You can almost smell the stale cigarettes and bathtub gin.
One time, maybe thirty years ago, I watched a 90s romcom flick with Kevin Kline in it, and really liked the soundtrack that featured some really cool postwar French cool jazz. The movie, French Kiss, was forgettable, but the music stuck with me. It turns out that the quintessentially “French” artist on the soundtrack, the one who was able to evoke a feeling of really being in Paris and listening to romantic music, was actually an Italian artist named Paolo Conte. His signature track, “Via Con Me,” sung in Italian, was able to transport me to a sidewalk table at the Deux Magots on the Left Bank, smoking Gauloises and drinking café au lait.
I don’t smoke that unfiltered French trash, but you get the idea. Listening to Conte on the Mytek/LTA/AE combo really is a transformative experience. Conte’s upright piano work on the track comes across the Acoustic Energy AE509 speakers in a way that doesn’t feel that much of a stretch to close one’s eyes and see Conte sneaking in and out of an alley up on Montmartre, shopping for a Selmer-Maccaferri guitar strung with old dirty flatwound strings that may have once been touched by Django Reinhardt himself.
I kept coming back to the Cambridge Audio Evo 75 as the perfect foil to the AE 509s, so much that I pulled it out of my office and moved it into the main room. Perhaps I was foolish to sink so much money into my main rig when listening bliss was just three simple boxes away? I will leave you to judge, but if you have a penchant for British audio but need all the modern bells and whistles, you could do far worse than to try this combo out.
I spent about three months using this setup, to the detriment of my main Vinnie Rossi Brama/dCS Bartok/Volti Rival setup. Why complain when even my wife downloaded the Cambridge app so she could control streaming on her phone? When it comes to music her idea of convenience is “Alexa, play Dave Matthews,” so I was ecstatic to see her participate. It also speaks volumes about how much she loved the sound of the speakers to see someone who has discerning ears and is a former professional musician and recording artist, but doesn’t consider herself an audiophile, gravitate towards listening to them. In exchange I was listening to a fair bit of early 2000s angry white music and early 90s gangsta rap, but all kidding aside it was a testament to the versatility of the Acoustic Energy AE509 speakers that they handled these various genres with aplomb.
Verdict
Going into this review, I already knew I really liked these speakers after short term audio show listening opportunities. That said, after living with them for six months, I was deeply sorry to see them go. I think it speaks volumes about a product to make one second guess why they spent maybe ten times the amount on their main system when listening bliss was so financially feasible. Will it scare my next-door neighbors–the Hemingway House’s 75 six-toed cats–into submission with its cat chow-melting SPLs? Perhaps not, but in the grand scheme of things is that sort of thing really that important?
I’m talking about real world daily listening and the joy that provides, not some financial micturition contest among old audiophiles. Spend a tenth of the cost and be perpetually happy. It could really happen if you let it and stop second guessing yourself into buying yet another product that you think will get you to sonic nirvana. Do yourself a favor and check out the Acoustic Energy AE509 speakers, and you won’t regret it. So highly recommended it’s hard to describe.
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