Does Avalon speakers have a house sound?


If so, how would you describe it?

I heard someone describing them as "a litle brittle in the highs and thin in the mids". Is that so?
jdec
I don't even want to THINK about how a violin would sound on them.

A friend of mine with the biggest best ones played a bunch of jazz on them, including trumpet works. My ears rang for 3 days. Like violin, trumpet has a very difficult set of overtones to reproduce. Most speakers cannot capture both the "drive" and tone without adding loads of ear-splitting distortion.

Sorry, but coloring up speakers with cables and amps adds distortion (as pleasing as it may be) which heavily masks true detail. Might be listenable, but I prefer real low distortion sound to convince me I might be at a performance, not tonally pleasing mush that has had the life sucked out of it.

Often Avalon owners use tubes to make the sound warmer. ( coulor it more) Some don't like this at all. But don't forget at the end it is Always about a personal matter.

About details: These days I use a Onkyo PR-SC5509 preamp processor with Audyssey Pro. I measure at total different places and hights compared to the Audyssey way. There way is ok, but was not that concincing. I have done many many tests with it. Now I can get more details out of recordings than almost any other pre amp. You hear words endings nog with ease. Ending on sssss or tttt or th. You even hear breathing on recordings you thought you knew well. This year I was on a big audio show were I was the absolute sound. On monday I went with my own music listening to other expensive highend sets. There was a lot of details missing at all the sets I listened. Brethinh and words endings were gone. Even mu stage was wider and deeper than most. My 3-dimensional touchable image was superior to the average image of other expensive highend sets.
I owned the Pass Labs XP-20 for 2 years. Now I have a wider and deeper stage with the PR-SC5509. More dynamics and even more detail. Separation of voices and instruments is even beter. More touchable and loose from other parts of the recording.
Let's remember that detail alone is a dangerous thing to judge by: just hook up a tweeter used in your favorite speaker and compare the detail of the tweeter to the entire speaker. Immense detail. Mostly due to the lack of other lower frequency sounds to mask that detail.

Or, use an eq and give a rise above 6k. Again, loads of detail. But, only due to an exaggeration of frequency response. Learning how to use an eq would teach a lot of audiophiles why many speakers sound the way they do.

My last post sounds like Avalon bashing, it's not, they are better than most speakers available.