Does size matter?

[Joe]

At a tad under £25,000 per pair, you'd need to be a rich dad.

[Rare Bird]

I wouldnt give those a second look for 20 quid Joe

[Joe]

I was thinking maybe £50 tops myself till I checked the price.

[Rare Bird]

I'm not being funny but they look like a Sonic disaster to me.

[Marco]

I wouldnt give those a second look for 20 quid Joe

Well that's 19 quid more than I'd give for them!

Marco.

[tfarney]

The speakers pictured above are active midfield monitors from Adam.

Objectively, Ash is absolutely correct that the 9.1s are "better" than all previous AVi products. They are, as I've said, very well-designed and well-implemented active systems, and offer clear gains in speed, dynamic range, distortion, noise floor, channel separation, etc. over not only previous AVi kit, but any system that is attempting to push amplification through the unknown load of any given speaker systems' passive crossovers and any given set of drivers' impedance and efficiency characteristics. The science is not hard to find and I'm sure AVi found it for themselves, through measuring and testing, and benchmarking against other products, including their own legacy speakers, as they developed the 9s and 9.1s.

Subjectively? Well, that's subjective, isn't it? As I've said, they may not be your cup of tea.

Tim

PS - Yes, you can make active systems from existing components, with the amps outside of the speaker enclosures. Doing so misses a couple of advantages - reduction of cabling, engineered matching of individual amps to individual drivers - but we are picking nits at that point, many of the very best studio monitoring systems are custom designed and installed, and use outboard power and crossovers and, all told, can cost nearly half as much as a pair of Wilsons . TF

[Marco]

Hi Tim,

Those are all good points. You know how my mind works by now, so objective observations mean bugger all when it comes to a highly subjective experience like listening to and enjoying recorded music in the home. It's only how a system sounds in the final analysis, to my ears, that matters to me - anything else can get filed in the bin.

It would be interesting to set-up two AVI systems at a show: a computer-based one using ADM9s, and a 'legacy' one consisting of their top 'Laboratory Series' gear (CDP and amps), with the big 3-way floorstanders they made (sorry, the model number escapes me), all set-up on proper equipment supports, etc, using the same music to demonstrate, and let the people attending decide which system they preferred, judging purely on the sound quality/musical presentation of both systems only.

Hey, you could even do it blind, with both systems covered up or behind something to prevent any bias!

I suspect that the results would be fascinating (people could vote on a piece of paper which system they preferred, 'A' or 'B' and the votes then counted up at the end of the day). This would give a good indication of how far AVI gear has genuinely progressed (or not) in terms of subjective audio performance.......

Marco.

[tfarney]

Hi Tim,

Those are all good points. You know how my mind works by now, so objective observations mean bugger all when it comes to a highly subjective experience like listening to and enjoying recorded music in the home. It's only how a system sounds in the final analysis, to my ears, that matters to me - anything else can get filed in the bin.

It would be interesting to set-up two AVI systems at a show: a computer-based one using ADM9s, and a 'legacy' one consisting of their top 'Laboratory Series' gear (CDP and amps), with the big 3-way floorstanders they made (sorry, the model number escapes me), all set-up on proper equipment supports, etc, using the same music to demonstrate, and let the people attending decide which system they preferred, judging purely on the sound quality/musical presentation of both systems only.

Hey, you could even do it blind, with both systems covered up or behind something to prevent any bias!

I suspect that the results would be fascinating (people could vote on a piece of paper which system they preferred, 'A' or 'B' and the votes then counted up at the end of the day). This would give a good indication of how far AVI gear has genuinely progressed (or not) in terms of subjective audio performance.......

Marco.

That would be interesting, but you, understanding how my mind works, know I would only find it interesting if it were blind ! Actually, I'd love to see two sets of tests - sighted and blind, and compare the results. Now that would be interesting!

But as interesting as we might find it, I know AVi did extensive testing during development, including listening tests, and I doubt they would care to invest valuable trade show space on further testing of a product they no longer sell.

I've never heard any of the big AVis, though I'm sure they were good. Even better, I suspect, matched with AVi components. But consider the source -- I'm convinced that the best synergy, by far, is engineered synergy, as long as you have a good engineer, of course. While others are seeking balance and searching for the proper matches, I'll be listening to music, through components balanced and matched by design.

Tim

[MartinT]

can cost nearly half as much as a pair of Wilsons

Ah, but have you heard what Wilsons can do? Their new Sophia 2 are extraordinary. Mind you, so is the price and when I think that my Ushers were considerably cheaper then I got an awful lot of speaker for the money.

[DSJR]

You'd need the active sub though, to make it fair..

Please remember Marco, the amps in the ADM9.1's wouldn't work properly driving any other speakers via a length of speaker cable and to get the 6.5" driver to work "full range" probably means high-pass filtering below 40hz or so for all I know (my ATC100A's were bandwidth limited below 20Hz as it was with a 12" driver).

Also, DAC's don't need to cost the earth, as Ash has stated and Stan (amongst others) has proved.

Three way speakers can have problems, the art is in the tuning of a properly sorted design. As I said before, the lower crossover point is fraught with phasing and distortion problems as there is usually a wide overlap between the drivers. Tannoys had problems with the mid to treble transition and iffy switches which got in the way which Marco's revamped crossovers (and Tannoy's own from mid eighties onwards) would have sorted.

This is where a visit to AVI would be useful, as Martin could show the copious notes he's made during the design of all their products.


Tim, why is it that I becaome devil's advocate on here and the HDD forum? I'm slated for being a vintage zealot on one, yet am taken to task for not fully "understanding" valvey/vinyly thinking on here I try to understand both ways of thinking and tailoring my little stereo to get the best from both...