I am confused, very.
Courtesy of Ashley James I listened to the new ADM's which he very kindly demonstrated in his home after showing us the distribution part of AVI.
I recently listened to the original 9's at darren's (who's opinions and knowledge are missing on this forum) and again had them for direct comparison at Ashley's place. - The one bugbear I had with them was a very lean bass and slight lack of 'emotion' the upshot of which was tremendous transients, clarity and openness.
Well, the successors are more open and clear as the air on a (very) frosty morning. EVERYTHING is laid bare and that treble ... amazing, at any volume, even one that approaches live music levels courtesy of those powerful amp modules ...
... but ... I'm still not totally sure if I could live with the 9.1s permanently even though I'm coming slowly around to the fact that I probably could. You see, for all the 'realism' (read ... 'as the sound engineer intended') a lot of recordings are shall we say 'compromised' just to be kind. Unless the recording is good such as some jazz we listened to, the result can be brutally brittle and flat sounding. Not a fault of the speakers just a sad reflection on how often engineers downmix sound to sound 'good' on your average midi system or whatever.
We then listened to the original 9's with one of AVI's subs which went some way to restore a little warmth and obviously add some bass and slam. But it also interfered with the transparency and speed of the sound. In all fairness, it was set up more as a movie system than hifi though.
So they dont always make for comfortable listening where you just want to be emerged in music though they can easily do that given a decent recording and they still lack (to me) a certain 'loudness' especially at lower levels which happens to be where a lot of my listening takes place but for a near live presentation at volumes capable of rattling floors (without sub) they are amazing. I simply have never heard a system that would come close in that respect for that money or even 2.5 times as much!
Just my original doubts hold me back to buy them immediately. Perhaps I like a bit of distortion/clipping/inability of an amp to completely control drive units ... a bit of warmth. I dont know.
But, and I think this is important, listening to normal (passive) speakers after the AVI's is severly flawed now. I feel like I can only hear some of the detail, bass is slower and I miss the amazing transparency. I will audition some more stuff this afternoon but I am confused.
Perhaps an AVI active floorstander with modular pre-amp (or upgradeable DAC) would come close to the perfect coned speaker system even though it bump the price up and does'nt fit into the 'life style' product range of compact tiny speakers. It would probably destroy the market for amp/speaker combinations for many thousands of pounds but as with the 9.1's, many dealers would be reluctant to stock/sell them simply because there's no possibility to cash in on selling 'upgrades' on the piggyback of the product not least because of the incredible reliability that comes with it.
Again, many thanks to AJ of AVI, a very passionate and helpful man with a love for classic cars.
Courtesy of Ashley James I listened to the new ADM's which he very kindly demonstrated in his home after showing us the distribution part of AVI.
I recently listened to the original 9's at darren's (who's opinions and knowledge are missing on this forum) and again had them for direct comparison at Ashley's place. - The one bugbear I had with them was a very lean bass and slight lack of 'emotion' the upshot of which was tremendous transients, clarity and openness.
Well, the successors are more open and clear as the air on a (very) frosty morning. EVERYTHING is laid bare and that treble ... amazing, at any volume, even one that approaches live music levels courtesy of those powerful amp modules ...
... but ... I'm still not totally sure if I could live with the 9.1s permanently even though I'm coming slowly around to the fact that I probably could. You see, for all the 'realism' (read ... 'as the sound engineer intended') a lot of recordings are shall we say 'compromised' just to be kind. Unless the recording is good such as some jazz we listened to, the result can be brutally brittle and flat sounding. Not a fault of the speakers just a sad reflection on how often engineers downmix sound to sound 'good' on your average midi system or whatever.
We then listened to the original 9's with one of AVI's subs which went some way to restore a little warmth and obviously add some bass and slam. But it also interfered with the transparency and speed of the sound. In all fairness, it was set up more as a movie system than hifi though.
So they dont always make for comfortable listening where you just want to be emerged in music though they can easily do that given a decent recording and they still lack (to me) a certain 'loudness' especially at lower levels which happens to be where a lot of my listening takes place but for a near live presentation at volumes capable of rattling floors (without sub) they are amazing. I simply have never heard a system that would come close in that respect for that money or even 2.5 times as much!
Just my original doubts hold me back to buy them immediately. Perhaps I like a bit of distortion/clipping/inability of an amp to completely control drive units ... a bit of warmth. I dont know.
But, and I think this is important, listening to normal (passive) speakers after the AVI's is severly flawed now. I feel like I can only hear some of the detail, bass is slower and I miss the amazing transparency. I will audition some more stuff this afternoon but I am confused.
Perhaps an AVI active floorstander with modular pre-amp (or upgradeable DAC) would come close to the perfect coned speaker system even though it bump the price up and does'nt fit into the 'life style' product range of compact tiny speakers. It would probably destroy the market for amp/speaker combinations for many thousands of pounds but as with the 9.1's, many dealers would be reluctant to stock/sell them simply because there's no possibility to cash in on selling 'upgrades' on the piggyback of the product not least because of the incredible reliability that comes with it.
Again, many thanks to AJ of AVI, a very passionate and helpful man with a love for classic cars.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram