GoldenEar Aon 3

Great sound for all spaces

You might be thinking if you go with a small pair of speakers, you'll be compromising on sound quality. After all, tower speakers are the best around since they use larger cabinets and bigger drivers, right? GoldenEar's unique, uncompromising Aon 3 stands ready to challenge that. Whether you're into smooth jazz or hair metal (or anything in-between), the speaker effortlessly brings gobs of detail and clarity to your music. Plus, it's a homerun hitter in smaller-to-mid-sized spaces, making it a great alternative to larger tower speakers.

What's up with the unusual appearance?

One look at the Aon 3 and you'll see it's not like other speakers. Its machined MDF cabinet certainly has an eye-catching shape. The company chose that shape primarily to reduce standing waves inside the cabinet. The tweeter is also slightly offset to the right. That's not an engineering mistake; with the tweeter offset like that, the sound waves bouncing around off the front baffle and cover won't amplify each other and create harsh, sharp highs.

Potent drivers

If you pull down the speaker's sock-like cover, you'll find lots to geek out over.

GoldenEar's proprietary HVFR™ tweeter is one of the company's favorite achievements. It's a trickle-down technology borrowed from their top-of-the-line Triton-Series. It uses neodymium magnets to squeeze and pressurize the air between the folds of a high-density Kapton film diaphragm.

The no-resonance and low-distortion design helps the tweeter reach an astonishingly high 35,000 Hz while keeping a smooth, detailed response at all volumes. There's almost no moving mass and, as a result, the tweeter isn't subject to the piston-like issues (namely, "wobble" or distortion) of traditional dome-style tweeters. And since it has a much larger surface area, the dispersion is wider and the stereo imaging is superb.

The 7" mid/woofer is intricate and detailed thanks to the added stiffness and rigidity the cast basket provides. The large magnet used in its motor structure keeps the cone's movement precisely linear and the sound pure and accurate. The center of the driver uses GoldenEar's proprietary MVPP (multi-vaned phase plug), which is used to control energy in the center of the driver and minimize cone diffraction.

The twin 8" bass radiators mounted on either side gives the speaker what GoldenEar calls an "inertially balanced configuration." By that, they mean that cabinet vibrations are minimized since the two bass radiators' frequencies cancel each other out inside the box, keeping internal resonances very low.

Got wire?

The Aon 3 bookshelf speaker doesn't include any speaker wire. Read our article about choosing and installing speaker wire.
Shop our selection of speaker wire.