Mods for Avantgarde speakers

sdrsdrsdr, the avantgarde construction is a bit flimsy for speakers so expensive. the new g2 series looks more solid. no doubt any damping helps the sound. before you change the internal wire just make the effort to solder all internal connections, also on the driver side. makes a nice improvement in clarity and costs basically nothing. if you can try the harmonix rf 999 cones. once one of my audio buddies came to me place and asked me to remove the cones. he was shocked at the differences and said this is crazy and I'm not using the avantgarde subs at all. If you can try to find a way to put the tweeter 15-20 cm back for time alignment. this makes a huge difference!!
happy tweaking

Duomike,
I'll try the solder. I never did think the way the wire was fastened was adequate. Did you find moving the tweeter back you were able to sit closer. What is your seating distance. How did you support the tweeter.

I recommend reading "Get Better Sound" by Jim Smith. I just finishing reading this book and very much enjoyed it. Jim Smith was the original distributor for Avantgarde USA. He has probably set up more Avantgarde speakers than anyone. His would be another good opinion on proper time alignment of the tweeter.

sdrsdrs, look forward to hear from you about the soldering tweak. this clip on connectors are bad for sound, not only in speakers but electronics as well!
had some wooden blocks built for the tweeters which I have put on the 225 subs which allow me to move the tweeters back in small increments. half cm matters if you get to the optimum point. the closer you sit to the speaker the further you have to move the tweeter back (if you are sitting on tweeter axis). have a look at the last uno nano review in stereophile, the step response. at 1,5 meter distance the tweeter signals arrived 0,75 ms too early which is around 26 cm!!!
I think with the trios you have to build your own stands for tweeter and mid horns so that you can individually move them back for proper alignment. not an easy task but no doubt sonically very rewarding!

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I have always wished that the factory speakers were time aligned. However, that discussion never went very far with the guys in Germany (whom I still greatly admire and count as friends, btw).

As such, it was a testament to how good they were in other areas that they could still be as musically involving with such disappointing driver alignments.

Over the years, I privately tried a variety of techniques to accomplish it (time/phase alignment of the treble horn to mid horn).

I managed to make it work, but I was never clever enough to completely overcome the additional issues of reflection from the treble horn, as more of its direct wavefront would be striking the bell of the mid horn.

Not only that, it was butt-ugly!

The general market would have been negatively impacted with my "solution".

So I finally gave up, because - even if it worked - even if it could be made to look less home-made, I couldn't get the factory to consider it as a serious discussion.

Probably because they'd been down that road many times previously.

One other observation - the closer you sit, the more noticeable this aspect is (sonically, and unfortunately - visually - as well).

At ear-to-tweeter driver distances of less than 10-11 feet, anything you can do to get these disparately placed drivers to "hang together" sonically is a good thing.

Certainly front-to-back tilt and/or speaker height become critical.
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