A little history...

[flez007]

Many of you know that Avalon was started by Charles Hansen, who then went to start Ayre Acoustics, what some people does not know is that Jeff Rowland owned the company for some time after Charles sold it, and many dealers who carried JRDG products were friendly asked to consider Avalon as an option for their customers. Avalon's current owner is Neil Patel, who bought the company in 1989 and has designed all of Avalon's speakers ever since.

In my opinion, the best Avalon speaker from that first stage of the company was the Avalon Eclipse (I owned two of them) which was the middle model from two smaller designs (the Avatar and Monitor) and the larger Ascent. I own a pair of Ascent IIs right now, they sound better than my two previous Eclipses, but the Eclipses were the best balanced, all room-purpose speaker that delivered an incredible soundstage re-creation that made Avalon so famous for.

 

[flez007]

Shortly after the Ascent was launched, another Avalon product came into scene, the Radian, and then the Radian HC, that was one of the first speakers in the market that carried the "High Current" denomination. I liked the Radian, but I always leaned more towards the more integrated and musical Eclipse and Ascent models.

Besides the great soundstage recreation that Avalon speakers had (and still represents one of the main differentiators in the marketplace) another interesting feature was their low Q (I will say more about the Q factor shortly), that relates (my words) to the bass driver capability to "recover" during its excursion - Q factor is as low as 0.5 for almost all models, to the ear this means a very fast and controlled bass definition, while making the speaker a little more room dependant.

 

[flez007]

The Avalon Eidolon followed the first Avalon saga in their speaker line, and has been the most succesfull models from this Boulder, Co. speaker manufacturer. The Eidolon took the place of the Ascent as its flagship model, sporting additional cuts to the diamond cabinet that Avalon has been famous for in order to improve its already great soundstaging capabilities.

Many versions of the Eidolon followed, and is currently an existing option on its catalogue.

Compared to the Ascent and Eclipse models, the Eidolon sounds to my ears a tad more open, particulary in the bass region, handles more power and is easiest to drive.

 

[amirm]

Boy, very nice looking cabinet! Being a woodworker I first look at that, before anything else .

Related though I see the slanted surfaces to reduce diffraction but there are still some sharp corners left. I realize it is hard to maintain that wonderful look if one goes to machines curved surfaces but do they not still worry about some diffraction effects?

 

[flez007]

I am not that sure to declare that it was Avalon one of the first speaker manufacturer that took special care for cabinet work besides great sound engineering Amir, there were other fine examples like Sonus Faber and Harbet to name a few.

Regarding the diamond cut of Avalon speakers, it is also worth mentioning that they requiere far less toe- in than standard square-box speaker designs, I remember one afternoon where both Jeff and Neil were fine-tunning my Ascents at the dealer showroom, it was quite funny having Neil convincing Jeff of a difference of 2 degrees of toe-in from an almost 90degree position of the speakers.

 

[RBFC]

Boy, very nice looking cabinet! Being a woodworker I first look at that, before anything else .

Related though I see the slanted surfaces to reduce diffraction but there are still some sharp corners left. I realize it is hard to maintain that wonderful look if one goes to machines curved surfaces but do they not still worry about some diffraction effects?

It would be interesting to see if the INSIDE of the cabinets mirror the outside geometry....

Lee

 

[flez007]

It would be interesting to see if the INSIDE of the cabinets mirror the outside geometry....

Lee

 

[microstrip]

Many of you know that Avalon was started by Charles Hansen, who then went to start Ayre Acoustics, what some people does not know is that Jeff Rowland owned the company for some time after Charles sold it, and many dealers who carried JRDG products were friendly asked to consider Avalon as an option for their customers. Avalon's current owner is Neil Patel, who bought the company in 1989 and has designed all of Avalon's speakers ever since.

In my opinion, the best Avalon speaker from that first stage of the company was the Avalon Eclipse (I owned two of them) which was the middle model from two smaller designs (the Avatar and Monitor) and the larger Ascent. I own a pair of Ascent IIs right now, they sound better than my two previous Eclipses, but the Eclipses were the best balanced, all room-purpose speaker that delivered an incredible soundstage re-creation that made Avalon so famous for.

Jeff Rowland made the same mistake that Krell would make many years later - an amplifier manufacturer carrying a line of speakers. Although this can seem a synergistic move - Avalon speakers were known to sound great with Jeff Rowland electronics - this creates terrible problems with distribution and marketing. Once you have this solid connection, other manufacturers will boycott mixing their speakers and electronics with the paired ones. I remember reading a Jeff Rowland interview about this matters when he sold Avalon to Neil Patel.

The Eclipses sounded great with Audio Research tubes. One of the nicest sounds of an orchestra I have listened to included a pair of Eclipses with ARC Classical 120s with an LS2 in small room ~15 square meters. The speakers and room completely disappeared and the string tone had a beautiful lush and continuous quality. The Ascent IIs are great but really needed power - the big Atmasphere MA2s were just enough to have a great almost holographic sound.

 

[flez007]

Another interesting fact - My second pair of Eclipses were a second-hand transaction, first owner was President Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) who had them with a pair of Rowland 9s, EAD CD player and a Wadia DAC - the local dealer told me that he used it lightly (hence, an almost new condition) - I wonder what President Obama use in his listening room.....

 

[DaveyF]

Fernando, that's easy...LOL. The BOSE super system with special White House approved Bose 901's...

 

[c1ferrari]

Fernando, that's easy...LOL. The BOSE super system with special White House approved Bose 901's...

Oh, you're naughty, Davey...lol

 

[flez007]

I have not mentioned other models from Avalon Acoustics, particullary one that has received little ink in the Audiophile community and deserves proper attention IMHO, the Avalon Monitor, great for small places, Home Theater implementations or for a second system.

 

[flez007]

The new Avalon line has a large number of options, with two very recent introduction (the Time and the Idea), plus the well-known Eidoleon, Indra, Ascendant and Isis (complete line can be visited at their website) - I have just heard the Idea at RMAF and liked it a lot (a micro-review is posted somewhere else here), I was told that the Asian market remains as its main revgen region.

 

[flez007]

I heard some weeks back a pair of Avalon Time speakers with top-of-the-line MBL gear ( just digital) at a friend's place down here - the system was still breaking-in and cables were a provisional implementation yet, but sound was glorious, open, dynamic an very detailed without loosing the musical factor - something interesting was to corroborate the house-sound of Avalon since, in a way, they sounded to me like larger Avatars with improved capabilities!