In 1987, Alain Wacquet introduced the third and unfortunately last installment of his EA series of electrodynamic panels.
He would later introduce a "Transparence" upgrade, but this product never became a proper commercial reality. I understand Alain still have a few pairs of these magic panels. If anybody is interested, let me know via our "Contact Us" page and we will put you in touch with Alain.

But back to the EA 16 now!
Alain sent me a copy of a review of these products in HIFI Video, June 1987 issue, and I will try to extract the useful information out of it for you in English. I will also give you access to the original text.
So, it is confirmed, as I have suspected from day one, that EA 16, stands for 16 drivers, which implies that the EA 11 and EA 12 had, guess how many, 11 and 12 drivers respectively...
We also get confirmation that all the drivers are in a single vertical line, and in the EA 16 at least, the midrange and tweeter are further back from the woofers. From the impedance curve, we can derive that the panel has its main resonance around 70Hz, which correlates well with the lack of rock-bottom bass. However, because of the small diameter of the drivers, the 94dB/1W/1m efficiency, and the proper time alignement, the impulse response and the dynamic range are second to none.
Even the best electrostatic panels have difficulty to compete with the EA16s, not a mince feast. The closest I have found are actually the Magnepan panels.
Alain is a jazz music guru, and these panels are certainly very well equipped to properly render the small jazz ensembles and the intimate venues that are usually associated with them.
I don't think I have ever heard percussions, and primarily skins rendered with such accuracy and realism.
The EA 16 compare in size with the Martin Logan CLX and the KS-10 from KingSound (out of Honk Kong) at 90cm wide by 140cm high (vs 178.6cm × 65.4cm for the ML and 196cm x 76cm for the KS)

To emphasize that the balance, dynamic range and impulse response are more important to the auditive result than a perfectly flat and extended measured response, it is interesting to note that this is the case for the EA16s.
A slight emphasis in the 200 to 300Hz region improves the subjective impression of enough bass, specially when teamed up with a dip in the midrange and a contolled cut-off in the treble (the curve below may not be accurate in the treble due to the large size of the panel and the positioning of the measuring microphone, however it correlates well with the listening experience...)

These were expensive speakers at the time and also because of their size would sound best in a large room where you could have them well away from all walls, but then you would be rewarded by one, an extraordinary wide, stable and accurate image and two, a dynamic range and timbral accuracy second to none.
The reviewer at HIFI Video concludes: "The system has the efficiency and energy of a compression speaker, the tonal balance of the best electrodynamic system and the "finesse" of an electrostatic panel."
The best of all worlds then? Maybe not, but certainly one of most rewarding listening experience in my book!

see original review below.

In April 89, the French magazine, La Revue du Son, published this review of the newest incarnation of the EA12 panel by AW Audio.
Called the PA12.2, it was a significant improvement on the original model.
What this review reveals though for the first time, is some technical information about the construction of this outstanding speaker.
And I had guessed successfully some of them...(see previous posts on AW Audio)
First, all the full range speakers are in line, 2 on top of the tweeter, and six underneath. The tweeter is described as an inverted dome tweeter: at that period, only Focal was using that arrangement, so we can assume Alain Wacquet was using one...
The full range speakers are mentioned as being 12cm in diameter, and one can assume that these would be of Audax origin.
Although not exactly a D'Appolito arrangement, it certainly have a lot in common with it in terms of imaging and transient response.
The tweeter is working only over 5KHz, and may or may not been time aligned mechanicaly, but certainly in the complex filter, as one main quality of these panels is their transient response.
It seems also that an external filter is used to compensate for the acoustic short circuit in the bass region, inevitable consequence of a dipole speaker. My recollection of these speakers is that the bass spectrum, although not extended very low, was still believeable and extremely clean.
Alain is a jazz enthusiast, and his demos always included fantastic percussions, which always came out of these panels as extraordinarily accurate.
If I can quote Patrick Vercher and Jean Hiraga in their assessment of their performance, they compare these panels to electrostatic panels, the transcription of the music being "luminous", full of micro details, very respectful of instruments timbres.
Again, my own recollection of these speakers is that voices were very realistic, specially female (Sade, very popular at the time, come to mind...) and the lower medium and upper bass region being perfectly reproduced due to the absence of box coloration.
On small jazz formations and live recordings, you could hear the ambience of the venue, and one could easily feel being there - what any speaker designer is trying to achieve with various degrees of success!
A few years later, Alain introduced the short lived "Transparence", probably the best way to describe his creations in one word.
I am hopefully meeting Alain at the Paris Hifi Show next week-end and expect to get more first hand info on these unique speakers.

AW Audio, started by Alain Wacquet in the northern tip of France in 1983, had a range of extra-ordinary speakers which evolved and grew until 1995.
Alain and I struck a friendship over many joint exhibitions, not least because I was very impressed by his products and his extremely well run demos.
Alain is first and foremost a music lover and a musician himself, involved in Electronica and all sorts of up to the minute electro-acoustic experiments.
As a speaker designer, he is a pure autodidact and, as such, his designs are certainly coming from left field, and outside the square.
Over the last few months, I managed to track him down and convince him to tell his story on this website.
Here is the first instalment: The EA-12 panel speaker
I first heard this product at a small show organised by a famous (although eccentric...) dealer in Lille, not far away from Alain's patch.
Being a small show, there were lots of free time to go and listen to each other's contraptions and have a chance of a proper listen.
Alain was always very secretive about what was IN the speakers and I have been guessing ever since...
One trail I pursued as he conjugated his range into EA-11 and EA-16 later, was that 12, 11 and 16 represented the number of drivers in the panel.
One could imagine that EA-12 was equipped with two midrange drivers and a tweeter in a D'Appolito arrangement and another 9 speakers were handling the bass.
I have actually started designing such a panel, but have not built it just yet...
Then I thought the EA-11 would drop one of the midrange driver to make it more affordable, then the EA-16 would go back to a more complex D'Appollito and more bass drivers: That would have been far too obvious in Alain's mind...
Alain has since sent me a copy of the reviews published on the EA-12 in 1985 and then the EA-11 in 1986, both in the now defunct magazine HiFi Stereo and I just found out researching this article a defunct reviewer as well (for those of you reading French, here is a link http://www.homecinema-fr.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=173595141).
Ghislain Prugnard was a good journalist and his reviews quite thorough and fair.
We are very sorry to hear of his passing away (over a year ago in March 2010).
Back to the EA-!2, as you can see on the photo, this is a large panel measuring 1560x540x70mm, with a faceted front baffle.
It is very thin at 70mm, just enough to support the small drivers all in line in the centre of the panel - I believe 5", 12cm drivers and my guess, from Audax who were the manufacturer of choice for us young designers at the time.
The tweeter would have been a Scandinavian 25mm fabric dome, but again this is a guess (Maybe Alain will finally unveiled more details on his designs over time...).
One thing we know is that it is essentially a two-way design with a crossover at 5kHz
These speakers have the most beautiful image I have heard until the later release of the Martin Logan. They also have an extremely good transient response and timbre accuracy, all coming from using the same drivers from bass to midrange and small light membranes - my guess again here in paper, as kevlar was still to come to prominence...
They were not trying to go very low (my guess is that they would roll off gently with a 6dB/octave slope from 100 Hz), but to get the most accurate rendition of the different instruments and their location in space.
Obviously, they would work better with the simplest (and best...) recordings, and were particularly brilliant at reproducing percussions (Alain has a passion for jazz...) and could withstand quite a wide dynamic range as they were very efficient at about 90dB/1w/1m.
They were also beautifully finished, should I say handcrafted to the highest standard.
Alain does not have a pair anymore, and this is the only missing piece in his collection.
If you own a pair and wish to sell them, get in touch via our contact page, and we will work out a very interesting deal for you - it is such a good deal I wish I own a pair...
Anyway, stay tuned, as we will soon talk about the EA-11, EA-16 and more