Todd's AG Trio G3 System -- it's about time

[Germanboxers]

I am a little confused on how we should define the time alignment of horns - due to the horn reflections the length of the sound path from the central zone of the horn could be very different from that of coming from a border reflection.
Do we have any picture showing ray tracing in an Avantgarde horn?

That's an interesting point. I had assumed that part of the design ethos of horns, or at least spherical horns, is that for the limited frequencies the horns handle, they expand out in a uniform way and do not reflect inside the horn. I again assumed that the goal was laminar flow, or at least as non-turbulent as possible. I could be completely wrong...just guesses or assumptions on my part.

 

[Kozak170]

Hi I heard them in the 6m x 5m room and also in the AG factory room which is pretty big. As I mentioned in the previous post, with most full range horns big space would get you more, but if I were in the market for a AG trio, I would go ahead with the 6m x 5m room I heard them in and be happy. Of course I would be happier if it were 10m x 5 or 7m.

Avantgarde's room has a ceiling height of 4.2 meters! Do Horns also benefit from a higher ceiling like typical box/cone speakers?

 

[bonzo75]

Avantgarde's room has a ceiling height of 4.2 meters! Do Horns also benefit from a higher ceiling like typical box/cone speakers?

I don’t think horns, front firing like Trios, will have issues. They will get better with space in the front, and you can use some pull out from the back but I am fine if they are not pulled out from the back either. SBNX mentioned he had them toed in but he should also try them straight firing. In the 6m x 5m room the bass horns were in the corners while in AG factory they were in the middle. So I think they are flexible.

 

[sbnx]

Another video talking about coherence and bass articulation with height adjustment. Forgive the obvious math mistake as i was pretty tired when I was doing the video. This one has a music clip for those that assess speakers over youtube.

 

[gleeds]

I was able to visit Avantgarde in Munich. While their main room was not exactly ideal for listening, the Trios were impressive to behold , although not connected. Their impressive young General Manager Ralf Steinhilber walked me through development of iTron amplification and their view that this represents a major advance in their generational speaker design and as importantly points the way forward. Consider me impressed that such an established firm would be so bold as to develop such a sophisticated and surprising horn system. There were other impressive examples of top European firms adapting active technology to push the state-of-the-art in sound and domestic adaptability. No doubt tubes and horns will always hold a special place for me. I may indeed purchase such a system for my personal use down the road (in particular Sam Winewski's, Destination Sound Vista horns and SE45 monoblocks, however this well executed application was impressive and exciting to see.

 

[sbnx]

What matters from a time-alignment setup is that the top of the tweeter horn is 48.5cm farther away from your ear than the top of lower midrange horn as Todd explained in the video. Here is the page from the manual that explains it.

All, I would like to make a point of claification on the tweeter distance. I had just assumed that I misread my manual based on this picture that was pasted in the post above. But I went back and looked at my copy of the manual and it clearly says -- "Center top rim of tweeter horn". Perhaps there are a few versions of the manual out there.

I can also attest to the fact that setting the 48.5cm distance by measuring from the top is the superior sound. This is what initially made me go back to the manual. I knew something was wrong. Why was I getting 48.5 and the sound was off?? Sure enough switching to measuring from the top and setting the 48.5 was much closer to the correct sound.

 

[sbnx]

Made some serious progress last night. I finally got to spend 4 straight hours on dialing in the left speaker as my wife had an event to attend. That combined with all of the other exploration I had already done got me a good way down the road. I have reached a point where I am hearing some unwanted "noise" between the notes. It is just not as quiet as it should be which is trucating the decay too soon. This could stil be, and likely is, further pushing the setup. It is driving me crazy trying to get rid of it. So, I want to explore a few things to see if it will let me hear better what adjustment I need to make.

I want to experiment with a few things related to noise. I want to plug the Nordost Qkore into the iTron and assess it's impact. I also have a few of the CAD ground control boxes I could experiment with. I think these are going to help. Additionally, the iTron amp has 3 adjustable gain switches. These are the ones that move the overall gain up or down. 1 switch is +/- 1.5dB, 1 switch is +/- 3.0 dB, and 1 switch is +/- 6 dB of gain. This is a perfect match with the L10's capability of adjusting the gain. The L10 has +/-6dB gain adjustment in 0.5dB steps. I am going to try turning up the L10 gain by 3dB and turning the iTron gain down by 3dB. I think this is going to be a favorable noise combination.

 

[andromedaaudio]

You re a professional .
Those bass riffs sounded good in your test vid.

 

[adyc]

Just a question. Can you change a new sofa to bring the ear level to tweeter level or at least reduce the raking.

 

[sbnx]

You re a professional .
Those bass riffs sounded good in your test vid.

Just an enthusiast. A professional would come in and have the whole thing setup and optimized in a day or two.

 

[sbnx]

Just a question. Can you change a new sofa to bring the ear level to tweeter level or at least reduce the raking.

Yes. In post 36 of this thread I added a table showing rake angle needed as a function of both listening height and distance. Raising my ear by 2-3” would cut the required rake to less than 2 degrees. I could add blocks under the sofa legs and add a little step stool for my feet to rest on.
One thought is that raising the ear height will also affect the acoustic interaction with the room. e.g. floor boince and vertical room mode. Of course these can be worked around.

 

[sbnx]

A funny story -- So in the above post I said I wanted to try the Nordost Qkore and experiment with the gain settings. So, I got home from work yesterday evening all excited. I plugged in the Qkore to the iTron grounding post and turned on the iTrons to get them warming up. I went to the gym while everything was settling in and warming up. When I returned home I sat down for a good listen expecting some greatness. What happened? Well, I fired up Beethoven piano concerto 1 and boom! WTF. The sound was dead and lifeless. I know it couldn't have sounded this bad when I left it the night before -- could it??. I tried a couple other pieces and dead, dead, dead. I was thinking how can this be. It is like the Qkore has a giant straw and is sucking the life out the music. So what else to do except unplug it and see what happens. Still dead sounding. Hmmmm. did something shift? So I go back to the beginning and start the process of understanding where it is wrong. So it happens that I switch to a song that I know is phase inverted so I click the button and then I immediately see the problem. The phase was inverted on Beethoven and the others when it wasn't supposed to be. Whew. set the phase correct and Listen again and all is now good. Back to the good baseline sound. So how did the changes go?

After the initial crisis, I now started with the gain adjustment. I listened a few times to the first major piano runs in Beethoven Piano Concerto 1. I then flipped the switch to turn the iTron gain down by 3dB and adjusted the L10 up by 3dB and listened again. As I expected the piano keys were much more crisp and dynamic. But the sound is a tad strident. Maybe too much gain. To me what this does is adjust the rise time (or leading edge) of each piano strike. This definitely cleared out some space between the notes.

I then went back and connected the Qkore to the iTron ground post and listened again. Wow, Wow, Wow! This cleaned things up a great deal. It seems that what the Qkore does is clean up the trailing edge -- more decay; more silence. Interestingly it also cleaned up the lower piano register a good bit. This makes some sense as the lower notes are "bigger" and really benefit from the extra space.

The sound is still a touch strident. I am positive a few more speaker adjustments are needed but there is still more to play with. I switched from Global to local feedback on the L10. This seemed to help a lot with the stridency and overall I think I like the sound of the local feedback setting better. I need to setup a shortcut key on the remote so I can switch back and forth more quickly to get a good grip on what all this does. I could also back off the preamp gain some and I am sure that will dial back the stridency. I also have not added any grounding boxes to any of the front end equipment yet.

The new settings exposed the fact that I needed to pull the speakers in toward the center just a touch -- about 1mm or less. After this and the requisite toe-in adjust and the timing is even better. Things are starting to get there. Slowly.

 

[Germanboxers]

All, I would like to make a point of claification on the tweeter distance. I had just assumed that I misread my manual based on this picture that was pasted in the post above. But I went back and looked at my copy of the manual and it clearly says -- "Center top rim of tweeter horn". Perhaps there are a few versions of the manual out there.

I can also attest to the fact that setting the 48.5cm distance by measuring from the top is the superior sound. This is what initially made me go back to the manual. I knew something was wrong. Why was I getting 48.5 and the sound was off?? Sure enough switching to measuring from the top and setting the 48.5 was much closer to the correct sound.

View attachment 110631

Interesting...the manual I just received uses the language you circled above, whereas the manual I had downloaded a couple of months ago used the language I posted earlier. Glad they made the clarification, though honestly, the original language made sense to me, if perhaps a little less precise than preferred.

 

[Kozak170]

A funny story -- So in the above post I said I wanted to try the Nordost Qkore and experiment with the gain settings. So, I got home from work yesterday evening all excited. I plugged in the Qkore to the iTron grounding post and turned on the iTrons to get them warming up. I went to the gym while everything was settling in and warming up. When I returned home I sat down for a good listen expecting some greatness. What happened? Well, I fired up Beethoven piano concerto 1 and boom! WTF. The sound was dead and lifeless. I know it couldn't have sounded this bad when I left it the night before -- could it??. I tried a couple other pieces and dead, dead, dead. I was thinking how can this be. It is like the Qkore has a giant straw and is sucking the life out the music. So what else to do except unplug it and see what happens. Still dead sounding. Hmmmm. did something shift? So I go back to the beginning and start the process of understanding where it is wrong. So it happens that I switch to a song that I know is phase inverted so I click the button and then I immediately see the problem. The phase was inverted on Beethoven and the others when it wasn't supposed to be. Whew. set the phase correct and Listen again and all is now good. Back to the good baseline sound. So how did the changes go?

After the initial crisis, I now started with the gain adjustment. I listened a few times to the first major piano runs in Beethoven Piano Concerto 1. I then flipped the switch to turn the iTron gain down by 3dB and adjusted the L10 up by 3dB and listened again. As I expected the piano keys were much more crisp and dynamic. But the sound is a tad strident. Maybe too much gain. To me what this does is adjust the rise time (or leading edge) of each piano strike. This definitely cleared out some space between the notes.

I then went back and connected the Qkore to the iTron ground post and listened again. Wow, Wow, Wow! This cleaned things up a great deal. It seems that what the Qkore does is clean up the trailing edge -- more decay; more silence. Interestingly it also cleaned up the lower piano register a good bit. This makes some sense as the lower notes are "bigger" and really benefit from the extra space.

The sound is still a touch strident. I am positive a few more speaker adjustments are needed but there is still more to play with. I switched from Global to local feedback on the L10. This seemed to help a lot with the stridency and overall I think I like the sound of the local feedback setting better. I need to setup a shortcut key on the remote so I can switch back and forth more quickly to get a good grip on what all this does. I could also back off the preamp gain some and I am sure that will dial back the stridency. I also have not added any grounding boxes to any of the front end equipment yet.

The new settings exposed the fact that I needed to pull the speakers in toward the center just a touch -- about 1mm or less. After this and the requisite toe-in adjust and the timing is even better. Things are starting to get there. Slowly.

Thank you for the very helpful and informative explanations, Roy, like you, considered the effect of Qkore with iTron to be significant, and also found the lowest gain on iTron is the best for adjusting noise performance of driving Ch pre.
Do you use a separate Qkore grounding box for each speaker? And which Qkore connectors did you use with iTron, mono ground or electronics ground?

 

[sbnx]

Give credit where credit is due. Roy did a great job of exploring the Trios when he had them. I got the idea of lowering the iTron gain from his review. He was right about these things having a significant impact. I think he might have dropped all of the gain switches down so the iTron was at -10.5dB of gain. I might have to play with that some too. I did not independently try just lowering the gain by -3 and listening and then raising the gain the L10 by +3 and listening. For sure, the technically correct way is to lower it and get the impact of that. Then slowly increase the gain on the L10 assessing that. I just jumped right in the deep end.

 

[caesar]

...

To me there is one correct position for the tweeter. I don't trust where they put the tweeter at a show to serve as a guide. I don't think there is one person that likes listening to a bright speaker. And they want people to like what they hear. So they can adjust the tweeter position and use it like a "tone control" of sorts. Push the tweeter back and the upper end gets dull and muted. This is exactly what I heard at both demos.

Hi Sbnx,

Wow, that sensitive, huh? And I imagine you tried a variety of tweeter positions on yours...

makes one wonder how avantgarde determined the position of the tweeter in previous models

 

[caesar]

Avantgarde's room has a ceiling height of 4.2 meters! Do Horns also benefit from a higher ceiling like typical box/cone speakers?

Speaking theoretically, there would be different bass nodes and thus potentially different issues of controlling the bass affecting overall transparency

 

[caesar]

Just an enthusiast. A professional would come in and have the whole thing setup and optimized in a day or two.

You are very humble.... How many of these "professional" guys like this do you think exist in the hobby? Most of the experienced guys setup by ear, to their taste.

 

[caesar]

Yes but I think they are not very helpful at least it is true for the MBL dealer in my area. I ask him how to integrate or place 101X bass towers relative to main speaker. And how to use all the buttons in the bass tower. He has no clue.

That sucks. In North America, we are lucky to have Jeremy Bryan. He and his team always do a kick ass job of setting up speakers at shows and Consistently get great sound.

 

[caesar]

IMO, after 20 years of happy Trio ownership, I have found 25m2 is nothing like being a big enough room for them as I don't think it allows the drivers to integrate properly & still image properly. After setting them up in three rooms I think around 40m2 must be a bare minimum.

I have found there are a number of factors to balance out. Although they all interrelate, in my head I make the following broad observations:
- As said above, Rake is all important and deals with tonality...
- Distance apart and toe in mostly sorts imaging. (FWIW I don't favour an equilateral triangle, I like to be further away than the width between the speakers.)

But I have found the challenge with Trios is to get the above more or less right then look to how well the broadly acceptable sound integrates between the drivers - I think its a case of being far enough away from them so they integrate properly in that specific room.

In my experience moving further away from them can make the overall cohesiveness of the sound lock into place, but then the toe in or rake or even distance apart may need tweaking. Like setting up a cartridge, everything affects everything else and altering one parameter means you have to go back and revisit the others.

Maybe I'm just sensitive to how well the drivers integrate.
Basically I suppose I am agreeing with SBNX that they have to be positioned really precisely.

Hi Chop,
What do you think the older Trio models give up to the latest generation?

Also, what amps have you heard with Avantgardes and which are your favorites?
Thanks in advance