Acoustic Research AR303A Speakers / Modern Version AR3. The AR 303 is the flagship of that line. It is almost exactly the same size as the AR-3a and has essentially the same driver complement, although the drivers are all newly designed for much better performance than was possible with the technology of the 1960’s. It has a 12-inch woofer, a 1-1/2-inch dome midrange driver with the distinctive “fried-egg” appearance of the original (it’s protected by a metal grille), and a 3/4-inch dome tweeter. The crossover frequencies have been changed slightly, from 550 Hz and 6.5 kHz to 650 Hz and 5.5 kHz. In the AR-3a the midrange and high-frequency drivers were mounted diagonally across the upper part of the speaker panel, but in the AR 303 they are vertically aligned on one side of the panel (unlike the AR-3a, the AR 303 is made in mirror-image pairs). We played some CD’s of organ music that included the lowest frequencies (down to the 20- to 30-Hz region) – ideal demo material for evaluating subwoofers. It was not much of a surprise to find that, like its predecessors, the AR-303 does not need a subwoofer at all, unless you are more concerned with shaking the room walls than with what the music sounds like. The AR 303 can deliver a clean, ear-popping output all the way down to 20 Hz.