Thread: PSI Audio AVAA C214

Originally Posted by crwilli

I am curious if any fellow members have these unique Bass treatment products or have demo’ed them? My only experience was that they were in one room at the ‘23 Munich show but I wasn’t able to dissect their contribution beyond the room sounded great.

This is a pretty positive review from Tom Martin.

PSI Audio AVAA C214 Active Bass Traps Review - The Absolute Sound

It makes me interested in finding a demo I can hear in my room.

AVAA C20 - Active Bass Trap - PSI Audio

I've been using the AVAA C20 for the better part of a year. I can say it is quite powerful in its ability to absorb unwanted bass modes and works as well as Tom Martin reports. And because they are active, they are far less obtrusive in the room.

However, in our listening space (which is a multi use area of our home and not a "dedicated' listening room), it took some time to find the best location to accomplish this.

As with any bass trap, passive or active, the AVAA needs to be placed in close proximity to the bass mode(s) you wish to treat. Often, but not always, those modes are in the room tri-corners. If your speakers are located near a corner where a bass mode exists, be careful to keep the AVAA as far from the speaker as possible (I'd suggest at least 2 meters). If too close to the speaker, the AVAA will affect the perceived bass performance of the speaker itself. If you are already using passive bass traps in the corner, I would suggest removing them prior to adding the AVAA.

After a lot of experimentation, I discovered the most significant bass mode was in the right rear corner of the room (as one faces the speakers on the "front" wall). Ultimately, the best performance in our listening area was achieved by stacking 2 AVAA C20's in the right rear corner.

As with other bass traps/absorbers, I have found 2 or more work best but, of course, that comes at a cost in both dollars and space. Fortunately, because these devices are active, they are far more efficient than passive bass traps. In fact, after I added the AVAA C20's I removed all the ACS tube traps I was using previously.

Interestingly a friend of mine in the audio business recommended the AVAA active bass absorbers after a listening session at my home. After doing some further reading on the subject I found that pro audio companies seemed to have more information about the PSI Audio AVAA products. At that point I stumbled across Vintage King Audio who had some used demo units (this is before the C214 was available). They were still expensive but Vintage King allowed me an opportunity to try them out prior to purchase. Worked out very well in the end.