Avantgarde UNO set-up tips needed

You can also buy Jim Smith's book and DVD and do a very thorough job yourself... Excellent references for a lifetime!

www.GetBetterSound.com

As a long time omega duo owner I would like to comment re the speaker need to be cranked up to sound good. Most likely your amp is the culprit. I guess it is a medium powered ss amp which is NOT made to drive high efficient horns. I heard trios with 300 WAC tenor amps. Sounded good at extreme high levels. At moderate levels sounded like a cheap system. In case you decide to keep the UNOs you may want to try to good quality set tube amp!

Paul,

Which uno's do u have? Nano, 2.1, 3.1...?

Hi Paul

Ok, first thing is that these speakers take FOREVER to fully break-in. If they don't have at least 500 hours on them, imaging will not be perfect. These types of drivers essentially don't move at all. I thought mine were great until I had them a year and suddenly one night, I experienced teleportation. It’s been that way ever since. The midrange's excursion is minuscule so it takes tons of play time for it to properly loosen up. I bet most AG dealers have no idea how good they can sound because they don't use them enough before selling them. You basically have to live with them for months to discover their true capabilities.

Now having said that, the main problems you are hearing are not due to lack of break-in. Whart and Duomike are exactly right: you are hearing your electronics. And you don't like them as much as you thought! Hopefully you won't take it personally but your brain will constantly try to trick you in believing this is not true. It has happened to me many times. These speakers are capable of extreme resolution and dynamic range - levels that go beyond the design considerations for most amplifiers/preamps/sources. When this is the case, the flaws in the amps' designs will become apparent for the first time. Once you have tried several combinations of electronics with the Nanos, you will hear how significant the differences are even when you're only changing one component. People who think all amps sound alike have never experienced properly-setup Avantgardes.

Which leads me to my final point, and Whart mentioned this too: You need to experiment with your sub settings. Freq of 9 is definitely too high for your room and it will cause an imbalance, especially with the speakers that close to the back wall. My room is a similar size and I generally use Volume 5.5 and Freq 5. Even one little tiny click will be an audible change. I recommend you turn Freq down to 3 and then very gradually raise it back up until it sounds right and stop there. The sub settings can accommodate a lot of rooms/positions when they are set right – that’s one of the beauties of having adjustable bass, so take full advantage of it. The electronics play a role in the optimal settings, but it is minor compared to the room’s impact.

Contrary to popular belief, tubes are not a requirement with AGs. In fact, one of my favorite amps on my Nanos is a 450W solid-state amplifier. If you do go with tubes and can find an amp that uses the EL84 power tubes, you should definitely give it a try. Lovely tube. Kora of France made a lot of magnificent amps that used it, Manley Labs does too, some older VTL, and of course Tom Evans. The Nanos will tell you very quickly which amps have “magic” and which don’t. There is no other way to predict it. This does not mean they have to be expensive – they simply need to be designed by people who truly know what they are doing.

Keep us posted on the evolution!
Arthur

First, I should thank you all for the thoughtful replies. Whart and Arthur
thanks for taking the time to write such long posts. Whart, you have even read
my past comments on my virtual system threads. Thank you very much!

I will start by saying that after following Whart's advices things have improved
quite a bit. I am already very happy with the sound I am getting from the
UNOs! The most important thing I did was to toe-in the UNOs even more than
they were before. Now the "shooting" direction of the horns
intersects in front of me – a meter or so. (Initially, I have followed the
directions in the Avantgarde manual and made almost an equilateral triangle
between speakers and my listening chair, with the horns "shooting" directly at
me. As mentioned, in this configuration some instruments, e.g. double bass
and drums, had a much larger size than in reality. To correct this, I have
played quit a bit with the toe-in, unfortunately in the opposite direction - that
was my feeling after looking at the dispersion drawings in the Avantgarde
manual.) I have also moved my rack with electronics so now it does not sit
between the speakers anymore.

Regarding my electronics, my experience is the Accuphase electronics work
very well with Avantgarde speakers. It is certainly not an uncommon
combination here (in Europe). A few year back I went to an Avantgarde show
organized by a dutch dealer. He was using Audio Note electronics, but when I
told him I have an Accuphase class A integrate at home, he has immediately
switched the AN electronics with Accuphase without any fear of compromising
his demonstration. He knew it is a good combination, and indeed it was - I
had a wonderful audition.

Accuphase class A integrated amps and power amps play very well music even
when using 1 watt or less so. My "problem", however, is that I
have changed all my electronics in the last month. This has screwed up quite
a bit my reference sound. I moved from an Accuphase class A integrated to
separates, i.e. C-2410 pre-amp and an A-45 power amp (45 Class A watts
into 8 ohms). I have even changed my cd player to a much more expensive
sacd (also Accuphase). These changes brought about a much blacker
background and also a much faster and detailed sound - this with my old
speakers (Micro Be + REF Stentor 3). The UNOs made these things even more
apparent. It is not difficult to imagine that a "slower" and
"fatter" sound can at first sound better balanced.

On top of all these changes, I have spent two days measuring the sound
response of my room with the UNOs in it looking for the position that gives
me the best bass response. As some of you know, one has to crack up a bit
the volume to get a good signal for the microphone. Listening for two days at
80 - 90 dBs for hours is tiring for one's ears. Consequently, the last
statements made in the end of my initial post were not entirely accurate. That
is, after taking a listening break of two days (but letting the music play all this
time) the system sounds very nice and very well balanced - also when played
at 60 - 70 dB, which is the level of most of my listening sessions. (I use a
Radio Shack digital level meter - C weighting.)

I still have a week (till next Thursday) to decide whether or not I will keep the
UNOs, but I am already 95% sure I will. As most of you have mentioned,
further improvements can be achieved when playing with speaker cables,
connections and power cords. Also, like Arthur was pointing out, burning in
the speakers (my electronics are probably also not fully burned in yet!) should
bring further and significant improvements. I also did not play at all with my
Accuphase DG-38 room correction system.

Thanks again guys!
Paul