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Anybody else heard the Avalon Acoustics Isis?

I spent a delightful afternoon on friday listening to the Avalon Acoustics Isis speakers. These retail for $62000.00, so I was expecting a high level of performance, but was still surprised at how wonderful these speakers were at creating the sound of real music.

Even though this was in a store environment with electronics that are not my favorite cup of sonic tea, current Mark Levinson gear, the Isis's offered the following:

1) I'm quite enamored of the type of soundstage and natural layering that planer dipolar speakers provide, my home reference are MG-20's, the Isis was one of the few box enclosure speakers that offered this type of illusion regarding space. They just did not disappear, but offered this very natural 3D imaging without making individual players sound like "cutouts" against a background, but layering in a very natural way that sounds more like live music.

2) Great macrodynamics and resolution without sounding etched or in your face, and this was with electronics that I personnally don't find to be very musical! I would want to hear these speakers with a great tube pre and SS amps like Pass Labs XA's.

3) The whole sonic presentation was seemless, again reminding me of what great planer speakers have to offer, with a quick and rock solid bottom end.

I have listened to Wilson's, Kharma's, B&W's, Magico's, Dali's reference speakers on other occasions, and I was not as impressed as I was yesterday. Am I trading my MG-20's for the Isis's, no but if you have a chance to hear them I think you find it a very enjoyable experience.
teajay

Showing 1 response by samuel33

samuel33
53 posts
 
Branimir, you say that you prefer the Rockport Altair than Avalon Isis ; where have you compared them ?

Because I don't know a place where you can find both.

So I can imagine you have compared them in differents rooms with differents electronics and with your auditive memory : quite tuff to have an opinion with all this parameters, non ?

By the way with which amp/pream have you heard them ?

You forget to mention the problem with the omnidirectional MBL : music is recorded with microphones so the illusion can be restitued with directional speakers, so with mbl this trick doesn't work anymore -except if walls are far, far from the speakers- so the image stereophonic is quite problematic.
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