By Lam Seng Fatt
Horn speakers that are tuneable to suit the acoustics of your listening room – that’s what the latest Avantgarde model, the Duo XD, offers.
Jerome Andre, who is in charge of International Sales for Avantgarde Acoustic, was at My hifi shop in Jaya One, Petaling Jaya, last Friday to launch the speakers and demo the latest technology used in them.
Jerome said the Avantgarde Duo XD comes with Digital Sound Processing (DSP) software which the dealer will use to tune the frequency response of the speakers according to room acoustics.
“Our dealers are trained to use the DSP software and they can also do a sweep of the room acoustics with a microphone and send the readings to Avantgarde in Germany where our engineers will finetune the DSP settings for that particular pair of speakers.
“These settings can be stored in the speakers via USB and there are several presets available,” he said.
Jerome said the mids and highs of the Avantgarde speakers are very directional since they are horn-loaded and are not affected by wall reflections, but the bass is always problematic. That is why Avantgarde designed its DSP software inhouse to cope with the bass loading of any room.
He said Avantgarde is ahead of the pack regarding using DSP for finetuning room acoustics and agreed that it is becoming a trend. Linn has launched its Space Optimisation software while FM Acoustics has launched a new preamp which handles room acoustics in an analogue way.
The new Avantgarde Duo XD speakers use two 12-inch drivers per speaker driven by the XD-1000 power block, which is a Class D 1,000-watt amplifier.
The new feature of the XD series is a control panel, featuring a display and an elaborate 3-button operation that not only facilitates easy and precise adjustments of basic functions, but also accesses new advanced functions.
Jerome said the DSP can be adjusted per channel – for e.g. the right channel can have one set of frequency response if the wall next to the right speaker is not that reflective and the left channel can have a different curve to cope with a more reflective wall.
“Separate gains can also be adjusted for each channel,” he said.
The DSP feature is to enable listeners to add “salt and pepper” to the sound so that the “taste” is to their liking. “The food is still the same,” he said. The DSP is to enhance the taste of the food.
During the short demo, it was evident that the DSP was quite effective in evening out the tonal balance of the speakers and removing the detrimental effects of imperfect room acoustics. It was also evident that the new shapes of the horns and new speaker designs have removed the brightness from the upper mids – which were evident in earlier models – and the Avantgardes actually sound quite smooth.
A short video clip of Jerome adjusting the frequency response of the Avantgarde Duo XD speakers using the proprietary DSP software. Shot on a Canon DSLR with a Rode VideoMic Pro.
The Avantgarde Duo XD retails at RM144,380. For more information, contact Issac Ho of My hifi shop at 03-79321883 or 016-5550516
