Acoustic Energy AE105 + AESub 5.1 Speaker Pack Black

This Acoustic Energy 5.1 speaker pack brings together five AE105 on-wall loudspeakers in black and one AE Sub active subwoofer in matte black, making a complete surround sound system from a single, matched speaker range. It is intended for a home cinema where the speakers need to stay discreet: the five AE105s fix flat to the wall and cover the front left, right, centre and two surround channels, while the AE Sub sits out of the way on the floor and handles the low-frequency effects channel. Buying the six components together as a pack costs less than purchasing them individually.

AE105 On-Wall Loudspeakers

The AE105 is the on-wall model in Acoustic Energy's 100 Series. It is primarily designed for wall mounting but is equally suited to a bookcase or shelf position. A two-way design, it uses Acoustic Energy's 25mm soft dome tweeter with Wide Dispersion Technology (WDT) waveguide alongside two 130mm paper cone drivers, one of which acts as a passive radiator to improve bass performance. The manufacturer quotes a frequency range of 55Hz to 26kHz, 91dB sensitivity, a 6 ohm impedance and 120W power handling, with the crossover set at 3kHz. Each cabinet measures 450 x 200 x 120mm (H x W x D) and weighs 4.7kg. The black vinyl veneer finish is supplied with two slim magnetic cloth grilles per speaker, one black and one light grey, for easy integration with the room. Acoustic Energy designed the AE105 to serve as the front left and right, centre and surround channel speakers within a multichannel home cinema system, which is exactly how this pack uses it. Because all five channels share the same tweeter, drive units and cabinet, the result is a system that is tonally balanced and visually uniform from the front of the room to the back.

AE Sub Active Subwoofer

The AE Sub is Acoustic Energy's subwoofer for the 100 and 300 Series and is designed for both hi-fi and home cinema installations. It uses a sealed cabinet with a downward-firing 12 inch high-excursion driver, whose doped and stiffened paper cone is powered by a 250W RMS Class D amplifier. Acoustic Energy specifies a frequency response of 26Hz to 120Hz (+/-6dB), so the AE Sub reaches the low frequencies of film soundtracks that a compact on-wall speaker cannot produce on its own. The cabinet is a 360mm cube weighing 16.5kg, finished in matte black to sit alongside the black AE105s, and it is supplied with carpet-piercing spikes and fitted with rubber caps for use on hard floors.

Setup and Integration

The layout follows a conventional 5.1 arrangement: two AE105s mount vertically either side of the screen as the front left and right channels, a third mounts horizontally beneath the screen as the centre channel to handle dialogue, and the remaining two go on the side or rear walls as the surrounds. The AE105 can be mounted vertically or horizontally, and it is optimised for vertical mounting with the listening position at or below the tweeter axis. Each speaker is supplied with a rear mounting plate, a mounting template and wall spacers, so fixing five speakers to the wall is straightforward and the template takes the guesswork out of marking the fixing points. The AE105s are passive loudspeakers with 120W power handling, so the pack is designed to be driven by an AV receiver, which also feeds the AE Sub from its subwoofer output. The AE Sub has a dedicated LFE RCA input for this purpose, alongside low-level stereo RCA inputs and high-level stereo binding posts for use with a stereo amplifier. A rotary crossover control adjustable between 40Hz and 180Hz and a 0/180 degree phase switch allow the sub to be blended with the AE105s, an auto power function holds the AE Sub in standby until a signal is detected, and the mains input is switchable between 115V and 240V. Acoustic Energy also notes that a second AE Sub placed elsewhere in the room can give a more uniform bass, should the system be expanded later.