- Thread Author
- #1
Avantgarde Acoustic are renowned and admired worldwide for their eyecatching horns and magnificant sound. From Lautertal, a small German village with a population a shade over 7,000, comes great things. Founded in May 1991, Avantgarde thrive on the philosophy of "purity meets performance" to ensure every loudspeaker is of an exceptional standard. As a family owned company, they are driven purely by passion, inovation and commitment, and never compromise quality for a position in the stock market. This means you can rest assured that each product is the best it can be. Avantgarde's speakers span the full range of an audiophile's dream, featuring active, passive and semi active speakers as well as bass units.
But what is it about the speakers that gives them such an impressive sound? We spoke to Armin Kraus to discover the technology behind each horn, and learn how a "what if" idea became the new golden standard. A quick warning before you read on - what Armin has to say is suited for the most technically minded, with an irrefutable attention to detail!
Avantgarde opted to create horn loudspeakers as they were the “silver bullet” of speaker design – the “natural choice” in fact, as they get rid of the most tedious problem in speaker design: overcoming the membrane’s inertia. But how does that work?
“By reducing the membrane displacement by a factor of 30-50, therefore magnifying the membrane's sound pressure by a factor of 30-50, excursions of 1 cm are reduced to 0.2 mm. It should be easily comprehensible that a membrane that only moves for a fraction of a millimetre must be faster and more precise than a membrane that has 50 times more distance to travel for rendering the same signal.
“The University of Aachen, a world-renowned institute of acoustics, confirmed: this rids the membrane of 90% of linear distortion directly related to the membrane excursion.
“Plus the dynamic behaviour is vastly improved due to less "stress" on the moving parts of a driver. Again Aachen University confirms that the dynamic range is increased by a factor of eight, meaning that even the subtlest of contrast in speed and intensity of the music played is rendered in an almost life-like authenticity and finesse.
“Audiophiles love good staging and focussing, giving a 3D imaging. With our spherical horns’ controlled dispersion – a 60 degree core angle, not just a narrow torch-light beam – our design makes sure that 85% of what left the membrane is reaching the ear of a normally seated listener directly, and much less of the same signal is warped and altered by reflections from room boundaries, which would make it much more tedious for the brain to "retrieve" the original signal.”
Avantgarde Acoustic’s philosophy is one of “purity meets performance”. But how is that channelled through the horn design?
"Purity refers to the intelligence of creating simple things. Matthias', our engineer, has a motto which clearly reflects this: "perfection through reduction!”
"In other words, he means: "I would rather put my work into fulfilling that motto, instead of wasting it for disaster control with systems of unnecessary complexity."
"Purity also refers to the way we approach the visual design, giving the products a "face", while avoiding making it an eccentric "mask". The Zero speakers are the latest and certainly most eloquent example, that's why it wins prestigious awards all around the globe.
"Performance perfectly describes our goal of truly "delivering" on all fields. Because everything we do is subject to recreating the most thrilling and life-like musical experience in a home that is possible today. And it as well describes how profound and radical we pursue that goal when it comes to material choice and production methods. Using elaborate machinery where possible, and using skilled craftsmanship where necessary.
"A good example for the integral philosophy "at work" may be our horn funnels: producing them in a high-tech pressure-molding process from a precisely composed ABS resin is Purity in terms of a perfectly "reduced to the max" shape and design, and Performance in terms of using the very best material and production method, no matter how costly, for achieving an unparalleled precision."
When everything Avantgarde is fine tuned to perfection, how was it ensured that the horns and cases were the optimum size for the drivers used?
"Regarding the horns, it was the other way round. At first the desired and realistic frequency range was determined. Then variations were computed that allowed us to simulate the effectiveness of various driver sizes. And only then the details of the drivers could be fleshed out and elaborated.
"For the subwoofers it was indeed the powerful drivers that were devised first, and Matthias finally used computer aided design and his own (priceless!) experience for designing exactly proportioned and appropriately sized cabinets. All of this always with bearing in mind that certain parameters could still be adjusted by the "feed forward" compensation applied via our powerful 400/500/1000 Watt DSP amplifier modules.
What is it about the materials used to manufacture them that optimises the sound?
"We apply a lot of material science, and Matthias is possibly one of the few engineers in our business who is not just an "applicator" but is able to understand the fundamentals of both electrical/electronic and physical realities. Thus we are in the fortunate position of having our own driver designs available.
"Frankly speaking, a lot of what we finally use originally comes from an intuition, and only during the development process it eventually proves itself to be working as brilliantly as hoped for.
"Our Soft Mesh membrane may be the perfect example: A radical "what if…" idea at first, then put into "trial & error" practice, refined many times, and finally crowned as the new golden standard of midrange membrane technology."
But what is it about the speakers that gives them such an impressive sound? We spoke to Armin Kraus to discover the technology behind each horn, and learn how a "what if" idea became the new golden standard. A quick warning before you read on - what Armin has to say is suited for the most technically minded, with an irrefutable attention to detail!
Avantgarde opted to create horn loudspeakers as they were the “silver bullet” of speaker design – the “natural choice” in fact, as they get rid of the most tedious problem in speaker design: overcoming the membrane’s inertia. But how does that work?
“By reducing the membrane displacement by a factor of 30-50, therefore magnifying the membrane's sound pressure by a factor of 30-50, excursions of 1 cm are reduced to 0.2 mm. It should be easily comprehensible that a membrane that only moves for a fraction of a millimetre must be faster and more precise than a membrane that has 50 times more distance to travel for rendering the same signal.
“The University of Aachen, a world-renowned institute of acoustics, confirmed: this rids the membrane of 90% of linear distortion directly related to the membrane excursion.
“Plus the dynamic behaviour is vastly improved due to less "stress" on the moving parts of a driver. Again Aachen University confirms that the dynamic range is increased by a factor of eight, meaning that even the subtlest of contrast in speed and intensity of the music played is rendered in an almost life-like authenticity and finesse.
“Audiophiles love good staging and focussing, giving a 3D imaging. With our spherical horns’ controlled dispersion – a 60 degree core angle, not just a narrow torch-light beam – our design makes sure that 85% of what left the membrane is reaching the ear of a normally seated listener directly, and much less of the same signal is warped and altered by reflections from room boundaries, which would make it much more tedious for the brain to "retrieve" the original signal.”
Avantgarde Acoustic’s philosophy is one of “purity meets performance”. But how is that channelled through the horn design?
"Purity refers to the intelligence of creating simple things. Matthias', our engineer, has a motto which clearly reflects this: "perfection through reduction!”
"In other words, he means: "I would rather put my work into fulfilling that motto, instead of wasting it for disaster control with systems of unnecessary complexity."
"Purity also refers to the way we approach the visual design, giving the products a "face", while avoiding making it an eccentric "mask". The Zero speakers are the latest and certainly most eloquent example, that's why it wins prestigious awards all around the globe.
"Performance perfectly describes our goal of truly "delivering" on all fields. Because everything we do is subject to recreating the most thrilling and life-like musical experience in a home that is possible today. And it as well describes how profound and radical we pursue that goal when it comes to material choice and production methods. Using elaborate machinery where possible, and using skilled craftsmanship where necessary.
"A good example for the integral philosophy "at work" may be our horn funnels: producing them in a high-tech pressure-molding process from a precisely composed ABS resin is Purity in terms of a perfectly "reduced to the max" shape and design, and Performance in terms of using the very best material and production method, no matter how costly, for achieving an unparalleled precision."
When everything Avantgarde is fine tuned to perfection, how was it ensured that the horns and cases were the optimum size for the drivers used?
"Regarding the horns, it was the other way round. At first the desired and realistic frequency range was determined. Then variations were computed that allowed us to simulate the effectiveness of various driver sizes. And only then the details of the drivers could be fleshed out and elaborated.
"For the subwoofers it was indeed the powerful drivers that were devised first, and Matthias finally used computer aided design and his own (priceless!) experience for designing exactly proportioned and appropriately sized cabinets. All of this always with bearing in mind that certain parameters could still be adjusted by the "feed forward" compensation applied via our powerful 400/500/1000 Watt DSP amplifier modules.
What is it about the materials used to manufacture them that optimises the sound?
"We apply a lot of material science, and Matthias is possibly one of the few engineers in our business who is not just an "applicator" but is able to understand the fundamentals of both electrical/electronic and physical realities. Thus we are in the fortunate position of having our own driver designs available.
"Frankly speaking, a lot of what we finally use originally comes from an intuition, and only during the development process it eventually proves itself to be working as brilliantly as hoped for.
"Our Soft Mesh membrane may be the perfect example: A radical "what if…" idea at first, then put into "trial & error" practice, refined many times, and finally crowned as the new golden standard of midrange membrane technology."
