Avantgarde Horn Speakers

[Big Dog RJ]

Great stuff Mars! great stuff indeed...
That view reminds me of my home back in Colombo! Now I'm in bloody Australia living in a shoe box with big Quads!

Just kidding, Australia is a great country, and I plan to move around. Therefore, eventually I will have that special big room for the system. I really like your set up because it blends with the rest of the living room. This allows for music to flow freely and not get sort of stuck in one place. So when you're sitting at your dinning table or relaxing out in the front, you can still get pretty good sound. This is exactly what is great here. I do not like enclosed boxed up places that make the system squeal... music has to breathe along with the performers. Ask Nina Simone and she'll tell you all about it "you're pushing it, don't push it, just relax and let it flow and it will come together..." the legendary Nina.

Hey I just noticed you're from Poland, my room mate in Chicago was from Poland! Lucas Micosz. Great chap, tremendous athlete; didn't love music much but loved to play computer games till bloody 3am, wouldn't let me sleep.

By the way, why do you want to upgrade for heaven's sake? I would just sit back and enjoy the music with what you've got right there!
I have listened extensively to the Trio Omega's and older Tri Classico series. Yes, I can definitely see that your room would be an excellent set up for the massive Trio's. But with the sound from these Duo's I don't see why it would be justifiable to upgrade.

What's lacking in your system that is making you want to upgrade?
RJ

 

[marslo]

RJ,

Thank you, I am glad you like it.

I could not agree more with you - when music plays , thanks to high efficiency of Avantgards, one can hear music everywhere at home. My wife likes to do some meal in the kitchen ( quite big as well, yes we live in the country side ) and listen to the music. And even now I am typing from my desk on the second floor and hear Claire Martin singing downstairs ( Linn 24/192).

I have a dedicated room for HT and there are no windows at all, just doors . But I prefer listen to my gear in the living room with a glass of red wine, looking outside .
My another aim is to find the best price/sq ratio with my gear , nowadays good stuff became ridiculously expensive. I believe horn/set combo is one of best solutions.

Great to hear that your room mate was from Poland, I am sorry you could not sleep


Now last but not least - you asked very good question . Why do I want to upgrade for heaven's sake ?
Well , I am not lacking anything in my system . I realised that the only thing is (our common ? ) disease which modern medicine cannot still succesfully treat - audiophilia nervosa. I will try to drink more wine, maybe it will help.
Cheers

m

 

[Big Dog RJ]

Yes mate,
that's it, I would enjoy more of that wine and just relax to the Avantgardes because I think the balance is just right with the Ayon amp you already have.

Like I said before, I have heard so many Horn systems and top of the line from Avantgarde as well, the sound was annoying! Mainly because their amplification did not match! And they could not understand what the problem was, until they heard the smaller powered amps, and mostly SET designed.

Funny thing about my room mate, after he used to play very violent war games on his computer, he ended up being a minister in the local church, ha!
Must drop him a line, haven't spoken to the silly bugger in ages.

Ok mate, you have a good and enjoy that music!
Cheers, RJ

 

[Blazar]

I currently am running Avantgarde Duo Omega Speakers with the Pass Labs XA30.8 (the new Point 8 series) and it is a hell of a set. I love it so much that I have convinced myself to blow the extra money and go for the Avantgarde Trio Omega speaker pair. Horns definitely produce the sound I like (big and over the top). I also like ribbon tweeter / planar speaker sound but they are not as magnificent sounding to me. "Monitor" type speakers such as B&W 802 Diamond which I have owned and Wilson Audio style speakers built around a dome tweeter are certainly accurate but do not feel as live or "real" to me as how horns project sound.

There is no way I will spend the money on their subwoofers which are outlandishly priced for what they supposedly do... Heck, even the trio's are crazy pricey for what they are. I have a set of 4 subwoofers that I custom built (one pair of 15" Dayton drivers each) which are capable of truly GREAT bass when coupled with appropriate room and EQ adjustments with measurements. Anyone who thinks they can get proper bass out of floor standing "main" speakers has simply gotten lucky with their room shape OR simply happen to get lucky with the bass frequencies they mostly enjoy OR they have no clue what they are doing. The custom subwoofers generate an impressive amount of perfect bass (much more than just about anything on the market). They are powered by a Lab Gruppen PLM 10000Q which puts out an outlandish 2000 plus watts per channel x4 and has built in professional grade detailed PEQ adjustments.

I plan to setup the subs at the natural bottom crossover frequency of the Avantgarde trios. I didn't like the fact that the Avantgarde Duos required their own low bass powered drivers and then additionally I need to use a subwoofer anyway. The Trio Omega lower crossover will do really well with the non-localizable "subwoofer" setup that I have with a crossover at around 120hz. A purist will be concerned with this type of setup of the subwoofers but I have time-aligned each of the sub drivers and they do sound stunning.

This is my first post in this forum but other stuff I have written can be found in AVSforum under the same username. I look forward to sharing my comparision of the Avantgarde Duo Omega vs the Trio Omega.

 

[marslo]

Hi Blazar,

Very interesting indeed. I read the review you mentionned in AVS forum . I am also fan of avantgarde's horns but I am rather a "tube" guy.
I never had the opportunity to listen at home the Pass amplifiers as we have no offical distributor in Poland. I auditionned however a XA power amp from Avantgarde .
Did you compare these two XA amps - Pass 30.8 and Avantgarde XA series?

 

[Blazar]

As a company, I trust avantgarde to build products that will work as intended. My experience so far has been quite good.

I seriously considered the avantgarde amp but it certainly would not be considered affordable and it is not found on the used market in the USA.

I would love to try and compare with the Pass Labs product that I own but I don't think there is a mechanism in place for this to happen unless the Avantgarde acoustics factory will send me one to try.

It would be HARD to resell the XA in the USA, which also makes me hesitate. I have almost always "broken even" on amps over the years by utilizing the resale market.

Since they specifically designed the XA series amp to work with their speakers, i have little reason to doubt that the XA is phenomenal and with an exceptionally quiet noise floor.

 

[marslo]

As a company, I trust avantgarde to build products that will work as intended. My experience so far has been quite good.

I seriously considered the avantgarde amp but it certainly would not be considered affordable and it is not found on the used market in the USA.

I would love to try and compare with the Pass Labs product that I own but I don't think there is a mechanism in place for this to happen unless the Avantgarde acoustics factory will send me one to try.

It would be HARD to resell the XA in the USA, which also makes me hesitate. I have almost always "broken even" on amps over the years by utilizing the resale market.

Since they specifically designed the XA series amp to work with their speakers, i have little reason to doubt that the XA is phenomenal and with an exceptionally quiet noise floor.

That is exactly what I experienced during the listening . Compared to my Crossfire III amp the XA from Avantgarde is dead quiet. But with ss amp I miss the holografic and palpable reproduction of SET . On the other hand the bass control is much better with ss amp IMO.

 

[Blazar]

I find the pass xa30.8 is quite holographic for a Solid state. Pass has more experience building class A than just about anyone and they test on high eff. Speakers.

I cant tolerate poor bass or mid bass response of set amps... It would really annoy me.

 

[Vermin]

Seriously, theres no other tube amp that can come close to a BorderPatrol S10 on the horns. It's both dynamic, fluid and musical.
Ive tried ALOT on both Uno's, Duo's, and now the Trios. i have ended back to BP three times now. But my latest trick is an active system with Bryston driving the bottom end, only to be able to play even louder.

 

[LL21]

Seriously, theres no other tube amp that can come close to a BorderPatrol S10 on the horns. It's both dynamic, fluid and musical.
Ive tried ALOT on both Uno's, Duo's, and now the Trios. i have ended back to BP three times now. But my latest trick is an active system with Bryston driving the bottom end, only to be able to play even louder.

Hi...nice full-room photo of your system. Any chance you could post a larger version of it here? I wanted to check it out, but in your profile, it is too small to really appreciate. I have only heard Cessaros properly, and Avant Gardes briefly. Would love to hear more horns and learn, but have not had much opportunity.

 

[Vermin]

Hi...nice full-room photo of your system. Any chance you could post a larger version of it here? I wanted to check it out, but in your profile, it is too small to really appreciate. I have only heard Cessaros properly, and Avant Gardes briefly. Would love to hear more horns and learn, but have not had much opportunity.

Here's one


Avantgarde has been my choice for the last 8years and i haven't yet heard one single reason to change that. Even though ive heard some real expensive systems and extremely well built DIY horn systems i still mean that this is the holy grail for me.

 

[LL21]

Thanks for posting...stunning. Absolutely stunning. Enjoy!

Here's one
View attachment 17889

Avantgarde has been my choice for the last 8years and i haven't yet heard one single reason to change that. Even though ive heard some real expensive systems and extremely well built DIY horn systems i still mean that this is the holy grail for me.

 

[Garth]

...

 

[marslo]

Congratulations Vermin, very nice room and impressive system

 

[Vermin]

Thank you all

There are no doubt that this system needs space to really unfold its potensial. Im not there yet when it comes to acoustic treatment and such, there are still things to be done. But with a busy job and a little daughter things just takes time. But the road to greatness is just as exiting.

Actually had a pair of Duo's in this room until about a year ago, supplemented with two pairs of Defintive Technology subwoofers where i used the built in crossover together with the original CTRL225 Avamtgarde bass speakers.
That really shook things up, the Duo subs then got cut at 80hz and the subwoofers took the extreme job downhill from there. As a result you could concentrate on making the Duos sing from 80hz and up, that is a really fun area to have a couple of 10inch drivers.

 

[Blazar]

For subs I currently have 10000 watts of power running via a Lab Gruppen 10000Q PLM amplifier to my custom made 15"x8 drivers (4 sub cabinets). These produce a staggering amount of bass with about as decent of an in-room response as you are ever likely to achieve. They will be mated to my new Trio's coming in.

There is a ship carrying my Trio's across the Atlantic Ocean right now coming in before thanksgiving.... will post more with pics once it is all setup next month.

 

[LL21]

For subs I currently have 10000 watts of power running via a Lab Gruppen 10000Q PLM amplifier to my custom made 15"x8 drivers (4 sub cabinets). These produce a staggering amount of bass with about as decent of an in-room response as you are ever likely to achieve. They will be mated to my new Trio's coming in.

There is a ship carrying my Trio's across the Atlantic Ocean right now coming in before thanksgiving.... will post more with pics once it is all setup next month.

congrats...look forward to it.

 

[astrotoy]

My wife isn't normally too aware of the changes in equipment in the listening room. For example, she didn't notice when I swapped out my Acoustat 2+2 for Quad ESL63's. However, when I put in my Duo's, she did say "Aren't those new speakers?" She didn't say anything when I later added the 3 Solos for center and rear channels.

Larry

 

[microstrip]

Here's one
View attachment 17889

Avantgarde has been my choice for the last 8years and i haven't yet heard one single reason to change that. Even though ive heard some real expensive systems and extremely well built DIY horn systems i still mean that this is the holy grail for me.

Impressive system. Although enormous it looks comfortable and warm looking. Do you listen to a lot of Grieg music on it? One of my Grieg favorites (and I often use it as a test for natural sounding ) is the Grieg: Songs recording with Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg.

 

[Vermin]

Impressive system. Although enormous it looks comfortable and warm looking. Do you listen to a lot of Grieg music on it? One of my Grieg favorites (and I often use it as a test for natural sounding ) is the Grieg: Songs recording with Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg.

Thank you!
Actually, my favorite classical record of all times are a Grieg play. Peer Gynt by Øyvin Fjeldstad and The London Symphony Orchestra. Decca SXL2012
Probably the most dynamic record i own and the music really has an impact. I highly recommend it.