AVI vs...? bake off anyone?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Wrong! All active crossover circuits are more harmful to the music than JUST ABOUT ALL (apart from the daft feckin' BBC type ones) passive crossover circuits. Active is a pro solution for pro USAGE reasons, not for musical reasons.

[Lindsayt]

They're not interested in an alternative or traditional way. Their decision to junk all the separates audio gear was made years ago and they want as near to a one-box fix as possible, without the baggage and pricing surrounding the likes of B&O, who do make some good stereo stuff under the styling and silly price tags. Bose is regarded as cheap stuff posing as expensive (although their AV sub-sat systems worked well in smaller UK rooms I thought). Lastly, the pro active speakers under £500 just don't look right in a well healed non-enthusiast domestic living room. To cap it all, Ash's rantings and half truths about *all* separated gear and the generic term 'legacy' tends to suit their mindset, as their separates systems are legacy to them.

Ash isn't totally wrong, passive speaker crossovers are (usually) the spawn of the devil and it does take a dedicated designer to juggle the components about to minimise their sonic and measured damage in my view, not just construct one with low wattage rated parts, measure its intrusion and then slag them all off as a result of this one low-powered exercise as was done a few years ago. But you never make a successful company by being nice about the competition I think, so you either slag 'em all off, or take a superior patronising stand instead... in my opinion obviously.

AJ's marketing is similar to IT's LP12 from the 1970's to 1980's.

It's reverse engineering marketing. Look at ALL the features in your product, good, bad or indifferent and talk about them as if they are THE BEST way doing of things, and everything else is worse. Back up your claims with some surface logic. Make your product good enoigh for enough people to fall for the marketing and you'll have commercial success.

So:

LP12 - belt drive. Belt drive is the best because it isolates the motor from the platter. Don't mention the wobbly suspension and stretchy belt.

AVI active - active crossovers are the best because they have 150 times less distortion and the amplifiers have 300 times more control over the drivers (provide link to some vague experiment done with 10 watt 1 khz sine waves). Don't mention how many op amps are in the signal path in our active crossovers, what voltage passes through them at 35 db listening levels and what the resultant THD+N is likely to be through them as a result.

AVI active - 2 ways are best, because that's what 95% of modern speakers are. Don't mention how heavy the moving part of the mid-bass unit is when compared to certain classic vintage 3 way midrange drivers.

AVI active - Modern cone and dome. Better because it's modern and speakers have been developed over the years. Compression drivers with horns have 10 to 15 times as much distortion. Don't mention that the 10 to 15 times distortion is some figure that's been made up / taken completely out of context.

AVI active - all in one solution. Legacy hi-fi is a rip off because the biggest single cost of an amplifier is the case. Don't mention how good an amplifier you can buy on the 2nd hand market for how little money.
Etc, etc, etc.


I've come to the conclusion that the crossover is one of the least important parts of a hi-fi system to me. I've not been able to find much correlation, if any, between the type of crossover and how realistic a system has sounded.

[Copperblue]

AVi, Royd Abbot, Doc Mod Allison6, Cube2. That sounds like a good contest, wish it wasn't too far for me.

Yeah sounds like a nice selection. It's only a train journey away... A long one mind!

AVi, Royd Abbot, Doc Mod Allison6, Cube2. That sounds like a good contest, wish it wasn't too far for me.

Yeah sounds like a nice selection. It's only a train journey away... A long one mind!

Royd Abbots in the right room and system would be hard to beat. Owned Eden's and Sorcerers and loved them. Should have kept the Sorcerers......... still having discovered the delights of Shahinian speakers (after quite a few false dawns) I can't complain too much.

[jimbob]

My friend who has the abbot's loves them and rates them above my Allison's. I find them a bit bright but they are still fantastic.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Well Jammy you wanted a failure to give the other reviews credibility, you have it. Darius hated it, and we have had problems with a tweeter coming unsoldered in transit, but even so it shouldn't sound the way he describes it. But that is the point - honesty and opinion.

[Lindsayt]

If the tweeter has come unsoldered in transit, I'd expect ANY system to sound very bad as a result.

There's no way that any meaningful listening tests can be done on ANY system with such a part not working.

[darius-lpv]

HI all.. I've set up everything as per Richard instructions and bass performance is poor... uncontrolled, slow and all over the place, almost random. I was curious to hear Cube 2 bass performance myself especially after reading this statement: " Designed as a semi omni to integrate with the room acoustic instead of fighting it the way normal speakers do." Some of the finnest active speakers I've heard can be placed right against the wall and never have any excess of bass and bass is tunefull and tight at the same time, this is not the case with CUBE, they behave more like typical passives that needs to be move away from back wall in order to avoid bass boom etc. Can someone explain then how I should read this: " integrate with the room acoustic instead of fighting it" ?
I can't comment on soudstage, vocals etc as the tweeter is dead..

[jammy395]

As Lindsay says no point assessing anything till tweeter is sorted.....
Whats the rest of yer system Darius.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

For the bake off I supplied an AP50 and cable with the Cube2s. Source I don't know.

[Lindsayt]

This reminds me of when I've been tooling around with actively bi-amped Bozak Symphony speakers.

If I listen to music with the upper frequency amp off, it sounds really bad. Like listening to a fairground from a quarter of a mile away. It makes the bass drivers sound as if they have very little fidelity whatsoever.

Listen to music with the bass amp off and it sounds crazily thin. Like a hyper-exagerated transistor radio. Or my son listening to music on a worse, thinner sounding version of his phone's inbuilt speaker.

With both amps on at the same time it all comes together.


It also reminds me of when I first got my EV Sentries. I knew before I bought them that the bass surrounds were shot and 1 tweeter was blown. Replaced the bass surrounds and whilst waiting for a tweeter diaphragm to arrive from the States I tried them. Didn't sound good. There was a channel inbalance with a murky sound.