Company History

In today’s article, we are taking a look at some of our favorite speakers from Aerial Acoustics. Back in 1991, right after Audio Advice had moved into their first really large showroom, a gentleman wandered into our store and started telling us about a speaker he had designed. This was our first meeting with Michael Kelly of Aerial Acoustics and since that day, his speakers have become a huge staff favorite with the Audio Advice team. 

Michael had been with ADS back in their heyday in the ’70s and ’80s and was responsible for many of their legendary speaker designs. He had a connection to Raleigh, NC as he grew up there.  Michael attended North Carolina State University where he majored in physics.  Later he went to MIT to get his masters in business. 

Michael and David Marshall had met at ADS and left to start Aerial Acoustics. Michael brought in a prototype of the 10T, a unique looking speaker with the midrange and tweeter mounted in a separate cast Novalith® stone head. We took a serious listen and advised Michael we loved everything but felt the treble was a little too forward. To our surprise, a few months later, Michael showed back up with a slightly redesigned 10T, which we fell in love with, and within about a week of listening decided to become a dealer for Aerial Acoustics.

We will first go over the great common technology these models share. We will also get a bit into the Aerial design philosophy that helps endear their sound and design to the Audio Advice team and customer base. Finally, we will go over the individual models to help you understand which one might be the best fit for your system.

Aerial Acoustics Design Philosophy

Having known Michael Kelly for almost 30 years, we have learned he is an absolute perfectionist when it comes to any and everything about his speakers. When he sets out to update a model or create a new one, it is almost always a multiyear process with lots of testing and listening. Aerial Acoustics is a small company without the resources to build things from scratch which does add to the timeline as they have to design parts, have them made, then go back and forth with the OEM supplier to make sure they are perfect and consistent. Michael and David have traveled the world to find small niche specialty companies to make the components.

Almost all of the speaker drivers are custom-made to their exacting specifications from high-end facilities in Denmark, Norway, USA, or Germany. Since Michael and David accept nothing less than perfection, their drivers wind up being far better made than most speaker companies and as a result, cost more. However, the sound that Aerial owners love is well worth it.

Since we first saw an Aerial speaker, we have always been in love with their beautiful cabinet work. They have always had cabinets that rival what you would see on a $20,000 piece of handcrafted furniture. In their early days, they were able to get these amazing cabinets made in the US and Denmark from two boutique woodworking companies. Unfortunately at the time, but a bonus for the long run, both of them went out of business, and Aerial was forced to scour the world to find a substitute. They wound up finding a custom plant in Asia that now produces their beautifully curved cabinets and we have to say, these look the best of any Aerial product we have seen in the last three decades.

Cabinet Design

Aerial Acoustics speaker cabinets are a prime example of the extremes they go to. If you know anything about speakers, a cabinet should just be there to provide the airspace needed for each speaker driver, to hold them in place in the right position, and add zero coloration to the sound. This is a lot harder said than done as any hollow box is going to add some resonances of its own.

The 7T, 6T, 5T, and 7CC all share the same cabinet type of design. Aerial uses a curved shaped cabinet which greatly reduces internal reflections. Multiple layers of 3mm thick pieces of MDF are soaked in glue then bonded together under high pressure for 48 hours in a 20-ton press that applies the curve to them. 

Since the glue totally soaks into the MDF, when it dries and the multiple layers are bonded, you have something far more inert than just standard MDF. It has more mass and it is far more rigid. 

Several internal cross braces are then installed to make the cabinet super rigid. In the case of all but the 5T, a separate internal box is on the inside for the midrange driver. Aerial even uses a special environmentally friendly glue that is made to damp out vibrations to bond the front baffle the drivers are mounted on to the cabinet. The front baffle and the glue together give you almost 2” of thickness. Since this is thicker than the cabinet, you get the benefit of constrained layer damping. The combination of the soft glue and the thicker front keep any of the speaker vibrations from transferring to the cabinet walls. 

Aerial also went so far as to determine which internal damping sounds the best. It turns out long fiber wool from New Zealand sheep offers the best acoustic properties. Does this cost more than standard speaker insulation but the sonic improvement is well worth it when you are making a speaker like an Aerial.

The end result for all of these models is a cabinet that is totally inert, and when you go to pick one up, you can sure tell it! Even the small 5T weighs in at 23 pounds each and the 7T is almost 100 pounds!

Once the cabinets are all set a beautiful wood veneer or high-end automotive paint finish is applied to give you a speaker cabinet that looks like a fine piece of furniture. In our opinion of all the speakers we have, only the B&W Diamond series rivals the Aerial cabinets in quality of construction and finish. 

Speaker Driver Technology

As we said in the beginning, the Aerial team designs all of their own speaker drivers, then has them made to their performance specifications at companies in Norway, Germany, Denmark, or the US. 

All of the midrange drivers are made from a special Papyrus blend cone material. Michael and David spent a lot of time developing this cone which gives them something very stiff and precisely damped. The baskets (which is the part of a woofer or midrange that holds everything together) in all Aerial Speakers are a cast magnesium frame, again, a far more expensive material than you typically see.

These models also use an identical tweeter that is pretty interesting looking. This is a new tweeter Aerial developed for the “T” series. It is called a soft ring-dome tweeter. They use large dual magnets with a damped chamber. Aerial is all about scientific measurements and this tweeter has super-low distortion, can reproduce transients extremely well, and extends way beyond the range of human hearing.

And speaking of science and measurements, when you measure a speaker's frequency response, you have several ways of quoting the result. The industry standard used to be plus or minus 3dB, which means you could not say a speaker went as low as 20 Hz if it was 10dB down at 20 Hz. Recently, we have seen many companies start to stretch these numbers and use plus or minus 6 dB to make it look like their speakers play deeper than they really do. Aerial has the tightest range of measurements we have ever seen on their specs, quoting at not plus or minus 3 dB, but plus or minus 2 dB! That is just unheard of, as it could potentially make their specs not look as good at a glance as their competition, but when you make such a super accurate speaker, you don’t have to worry!

All of the Aerial speakers are also set up with heavy-duty binding posts that allow for you to bi-wire or bi-amp. 

We really love the sound of both the midrange and tweeter drivers. Aerial speakers just have this sweet sound that pulls you into the music. They have the ability to reproduce those little subtle micro dynamics that make music sound more alive. 

Crossover Design

A speaker crossover is somewhat similar to a conductor of a symphony orchestra. Its job is to decide which tones go to which drivers and how loud they are in relation to the rest of the spectrum. You never see a crossover, so it’s tempting for some speaker manufacturers who are trying to hit a budget to scrimp on it as the parts for good ones can be pretty expensive.

Aerial Acoustics has some of the best-made crossovers we have seen! All of them use very high-quality components like polypropylene film capacitors and low-oxygen copper air-core coils. The circuit boards are all glass epoxy and the three-way designs are even separated from each other for the bass and midrange/tweeter. All of the internal wiring is very high-purity copper with Teflon insulation. To assemble them, the best audiophile-grade silver solder is used. 

These extremes Aerial goes to means the music passes through the crossovers with almost no degradation resulting in their very sweet, open, effortless sound. 

Now we will look at each of the models and give you our take on where a model fits best into a system.

Aerial Acoustics Model 5T Bookshelf Speakers Review

Ask anyone at Audio Advice if they had to pick a favorite bookshelf speaker and 90% of us will choose the Aerial 5T. We certainly have some that cost more and might offer a little better performance, but the combination of sound, beauty, and ease of set up make the 5T one of our favorites.

The 5T uses the special Papyrus material for its 6.7” driver. If you know speakers, you probably think it’s an odd size. Most are 6” or 6 ½”. That is what happens when you have a company who custom designs drivers to their needs. The tweeter is the same soft ring-dome most Aerials use. The 5T is fairly tall at 15” but is only about 8” wide and 12 ½” deep, giving it a pretty cool look from a ratio standpoint. It also has an angled cabinet with a sloping front.

The port on the 5T is on the front, which means this is a bookshelf speaker you can actually place on a bookshelf and not have to worry about bass interference from a rear-firing port. 

Bass response is just outstanding on the 5T, bettering many floor standing speakers with a 2 dB (not 3 or 6 but 2, which is incredible) of 48 Hz. The tweeter extends out beyond our hearing range to 25 Hz. 

The only bad news is, to fully appreciate the 5T, you are going to need a very good amplifier. They really do not come to life hooked up to a modest home theater or stereo receiver. We really like the way they sound paired up with the upper-end Cambridge N series or even better with the Edge and if you can move up to Mark Levinson or McIntosh, you’ll have an even bigger smile on your face when you listen. They are just so accurate that the better signal you give them, the better they sound!

Aerial Acoustics Model 6T Loudspeaker Review

For many people with a small to medium-sized room, the Aerial 6T will be a great choice. It stands at about 43” tall but is less than 8” wide so it has this very elegant and slender look, especially due to the curved cabinet. When you think about it, the footprint of the 6T is actually skinnier than most bookshelf speakers on a stand, and it has enough deep bass reach to give you great impact in a medium-sized room. 

Like the 5T, the drivers are all custom-sized with its 4.9” Papyrus based midrange and dual 5.9” woofers. The dual woofers give you the area of a much larger woofer, but their small size means they have incredible speed and accuracy. Like all of the “T” series, the tweeter is the same here as well.

To our ears, the 6T combines this neutral, open, and transparent sound, with dynamics and bass impact you would not expect to get from a speaker that appears so small. Plus their ratio of height to width coupled with their beautiful cabinets makes them look just gorgeous in most rooms.

The 6T is for us, the best value in the entire lineup unless you have a really large room.

Aerial Acoustics Model 7T Loudspeaker Review

While the Aerial 6T looks small and slender, the 7T has a much bigger, more serious business appearance. It is about 44” tall, 10” wide and almost 18” deep with a weight of 96 pounds! When you look at the gloss rosewood or Nero metallic black cabinet from the side, they just look super impressive and beautiful.

With the 7T you get a different material for the woofers as Aerial chooses a special bi-laminate composite for the two 7.1” cones. And yes, once again, this is a totally unique driver size. The cabinet on the 7T has the most layers of any model with 9 and has 7 interlocking internal braces. The midrange is a 5.9” Papyrus based driver and like all the others has the same great tweeter.

The 7T does need serious power to give you all of the bass dynamics it is capable of. Many of our music-loving clients feel like it is such a good value that they spend even more on the electronics driving them than the speakers themselves, which says a whole lot about how good the 7T really is.

Aerial Acoustics Model 7CC Center Channel & 7LCR Loudspeaker Review

The Aerial 7CC and 7LCR have identical components in different shaped cabinets to fit whichever situation you need for one of the best center channel or LCR speakers available today. The LCR version has the ability to turn the midrange/tweeter assembly 90 degrees to allow it to be either a vertical wall mounted LCR or turned horizontally for a center channel. It is 38” long but under 5” deep which means it can work well wall mounted under a large flat panel TV.

The 7CC is more of a conventional center channel in shape being roughly 24” wide, 8” tall, and about 12” deep.

Both models used the special pressed MDF layered curved cabinets. Aerial developed a special aluminum woofer cone for the dual 6.7” drivers. The midrange is a cross between the ones used in the 6T and 7T with a 5” diameter special Papyrus material cone. And of course, they all share that same great tweeter. 

We sound like a broken record here, but both of these also need good power and a lot of it to perform their best so we usually see these going into systems where we have separate amps for the home theater speakers.

On the subject of home theater, an Aerial system is hard to beat. With identical tweeters and very similar-sized with the same material midrange drivers, the coherency is just fantastic as sounds pan around. The only thing missing for a complete Dolby Atmos system are in-ceiling height speakers. We’ve spoken to Aerial about this and can help you with suggestions Aerial thinks will work well with their different models.

Summary

We hope this overview has given you a taste of one of our favorite speaker brands at Audio Advice. All of these models have a sound that does not bowl you over with anything at first but lures you in the longer you listen with their honest and transparent presentation. The model that is right for you will depend a lot on your budget and room size, but every single one sounds fantastic to our ears. We just can’t wait for Aerial to finally come out with their replacement for the top of the line 20T. We’ve been waiting on it for several years, hint hint Aerial!