An Advent Guy

See Harry Pearson's review in The Absolute Sound archives for the stacked pair. Mine sound better due to the capacitor replacement.

That I will do. In the meantime, here's J. Gordon Holt's review of a single pair of regular Advents from Jan. 1976.

I worked at an audio store at that very time. We carried Advent, ESS, JBL, Infinity, Dahlquist, and Ohm loudspeakers. Our upscale speakers--Dahlquist DQ10, Ohm F, ESS AMT-1b, etc. all cost around $800/pair and were in the dedicated high end room. When I asked our manager why we didn't have a display of double Advents in the high end room, he said, "Because then we wouldn't sell anything else.'

Check out the Stereophile measurements of the Smaller Advent. It is commendably linear from 200 to 15KHz, even for today, although treble response drops like a stone above 15KHz. The +5dB bass hump centering on 60 Hz is no worse than most small speakers today.

I worked at that store in SoCal in 1975 and 1976. We had so many people coming in wanting Marantz or Pioneer receivers powering JBL speakers, and we tried to show them the Yamaha/Advent combo as an alternative because we felt that the Yamaha's superior speed and lower distortion combined with the Advent's smoothness and linearity would provide more long term satisfaction.

I bought a pair of the original "smaller" Advents at a yard sale for $20 and I was extremely impressed. I loaned them out, however, and an amp failed and gave them pure DC. Since there was no sound the amp was left on until smoke started coming out of the cabinets. The heat from the woofers started the insulation on fire inside the cabinet and filled the room with smoke. Too bad because those speakers sounded really good.

Advent speakers (along with AR and KLH) really implemented the "acoustic suspension" principle, where the enclosed air provided the "spring" for the woofer. Hold one of those old drivers in your hand and see how the cone flops around when you move it. On one occasion I had reason to replace the woofer in a KLH12 system. The woofer free air resonance was individually measured and marked on the cone. 14 Hz. It's hard to find a woofer today at much less than 30Hz. You can still buy a speaker system with an "enclosed" cabinet, but I don't think any are truly "acoustic suspension". Some kind of hybrid I guess. The air spring is much more linear than any mechanical suspension, and leads to low distotion.

My main system is a golden oldie - Infinity RSIIb. Best sounding speaker (to me) that I have ever heard. I'm in the process of rebuilding them with external crossovers with Mundorf caps, Northcreek and Solen inductors, Cardas litz wire, cabinet bracing, etc. and I'm thinking they will be even better after that! Oh and very pretty,too:

[img]http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk22/magalettab/KEFandRSIIb006.jpg[\img]

I love my 4 L 100s. One pair has been completely reconed with all JBL parts and tricked out in the crossover which smoothed it out somewhat and actually made it even better sounding. Yes, they're "old school" but thats OK. It is what sounds good to you that counts and many people forget that basic truth.