avantgarde uno & duo

Hi Glai,

I've owned Duos for the last four years and I currently own Avantgarde's new Meta Primos. Prior to owning the Duos I owned the fantastic sounding Hales Transcendence 8 loudspeaker. I have three friends who own Duos, two friends who own Unos, and one friend who owns Solos. I've also listened to three different Trio set-ups. The strengths of the Avantgarde line of loudspeakers are: life-like dynamics, transparency, uncolored, speed, focus, dynamic contrast, dynamic shading, imaging, they bring out all the raw emotion in recordings. The weaknesses are: not easy to set-up, very easy to make them sound bad, very picky about amplification (very revealing of amplifier noise), you almost have to use tube amplification, and bass integration with horns. The Duos better the Unos in the midrange. The Duo horn goes down 170 hz where the Unos midrange goes down to 220 hz. IMHO the Duos are slightly warmer/richer sounding compared to the Unos. If you liked the Duos with a Cary 805C, then you'll love listening to them with a good 45, 2A3, PX25 or 300B SET amplifier. Avantgarde is one of those products that some very vocal people love to hate. Most of it comes from the Do it Yourself (DIY)community and some of it comes from resentment of the high price tag. They are not perfect but I like them. Take care!

Gotta love horns, makes me hornie

the unos and duos are unique and a conversation piece, but not the equal of the khorn or the belle as horns go.

OH man, this is gonna get good...lol

I do agree that Avantgardes if not properly set up will not preform to it's fullest. I think it would be safe to say "that all goes for any speaker". That being said, it would be very sad to say that those trios that I've heard was not properly setup or maybe they were, who knows--it was not my listening room. All I can remmeber is that the fellow who had them had an easy 150k of gears in that room. If you guys claim that my bad experience with AV was due to bad setup--then I would really like to hear them in a listening room with the right gears. I travel a lot and I will be in the Jersey, New York city area a week from now. Is there any dealers of Avantgardes in that area where I can have a listening session. Maybe my feelings for these speakers will change after all. Unless they are not properly setup again.