Audio Note AN-E Lexus Signature loudspeaker

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.

Before tackling the specifics, some history is in order. 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. 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. As Snell's distributor, Qvortrup enjoyed particular success with three relatively efficient models: the Snell Type J, Type K, and Type E.

Everything 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. 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. I agree.

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. 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. 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.

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.

Description 
The original Snell Type E was a bass-reflex design with a 1" soft-dome tweeter and an 8" paper woofer. According to a spec sheet from 1984, it had an electrical sensitivity of 90dB and a nominal impedance of 8 ohms. I suppose the Type E would have been a pretty decent mate for some of those low-power tube amps that didn't yet exist (footnote 1).

But over the years, Peter Qvortrup worked to refine the E formula, in an effort to wring even greater efficiency—among other things—from the very same box. That brings us to the AN-E Lexus Signature, whose cabinet is made entirely from Russian birch plywood (as opposed to the particleboard of its antecedents). Its rear-firing port is 5" long and 2.5" in diameter, and although I wasn't able to pry apart the review samples and see for myself, a photo supplied by Audio Note's US distributor, Triode & Co., shows the use of some strategically placed hardwood braces.