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AVI DM10 - Active System

FL390 said:
With new investors apparently taking a hand in the company, the marketing approach may possibly change for the better................or not.
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And the source of the information about new investors? And might news about new investors give the punters more confidence and help shift the stock in the shed of a company that is running down? Of course I have no knowledge and little interest in what is going on internally at AVI but this type of thinking would seem to be part of the cost in opting for an "audiophile cable" marketing approach and becoming an unreliable source of information.

FL390 said:
Regardless, I'm quite tempted to buy a pair of these DM10's, even though they're unseen and unheard by me as yet.
Then again, should I fork out the extra for the Dynaudio Focus 200XD's ???
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That will depend on how you value things. My thinking as someone without money to burn would be that the sound quality from a small 2 way is going to be limited and so paying thousands of pounds for a pair does not make much sense. I would possibly look at the KEF X300A, a pair of Sonos Play 5s,... (I know little about these systems) around the £500 - £800 mark. If the AVI was effectively perfect in being from a reliable company, had approaching the best sound quality than can be extracted from a small 2 way, supported all common digital sources including a slot for a CD and looked attractive then I might be persuaded to double the budget.
 
h.g. said:
And the source of the information about new investors?
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Quote from the (choose) guru/satan himself, on the WHF thread.....
"For the record I'm seventy now and semi retired, so not involved in the day to day running of the company, which has new investors and new agents around the world.

Seventy year old, semi retired director of AVI"

h.g. said:
...That will depend on how you value things. My thinking as someone without money to burn would be that the sound quality from a small 2 way is going to be limited and so paying thousands of pounds for a pair does not make much sense.......
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Those small studio monitors I heard a while back and my mate's small Harbeth's (he has their larger ones too) must be rubbish then?
Seriously though, by "limited", are you mainly referring to bass extension?



 
One has to wonder if the (choose) guru/satan himself tweets his stool movements.
 
I'd love to be semi-retired: Drive halfway to work, then back home.

One can dream...

Joe
 
But what if your semi-retirement started when you left work - you would get halfway home and then return to work.....
 
FL390 said:
Those small studio monitors I heard a while back and my mate's small Harbeth's (he has their larger ones too) must be rubbish then?
Seriously though, by "limited", are you mainly referring to bass extension?
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To some extent but it is mainly the inability to play low frequency transients cleanly at standard listening levels. What some audiophiles might describe as "dynamic" rather than "correct" when listening to speakers with adequately sized drivers to cleanly drive a room. I prefer to listen to music around standard levels where it comes alive and not quietly in the way quiet a few audiophiles seem content to do. When faced with a few months of not being able to play music at standard levels I forced myself to adapt to the unnatural and less comfortable experience of listening to music on headphones rather than suffer listening to speakers quietly.
 
h.g. said:
When faced with a few months of not being able to play music at standard levels I forced myself to adapt to the unnatural and less comfortable experience of listening to music on headphones rather than suffer listening to speakers quietly.
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I take it you realise listening to headphones at high volume is as good a way of permanently losing your hearing ability as any known to man?!

PS Huge speakers and safe levels here. Best of all possible worlds! The effortlessness and ease of a 12" or 15" driver is evident at any listening level, and once one gets used to it it is hard to live without. I do love little speakers too, but only in the extreme near-field and at low level - I tend to recreate the classic studio mixer-bridge positioning with mini-monitors, that's what they do best IME.
 
Tony L said:
I take it you realise listening to headphones at high volume is as good a way of permanently losing your hearing ability as any known to man?!
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Yes. I don't like quiet but I don't like loud either except for one or two tracks under certain circumstances. Standard levels (cinema or sensible studio levels) which can be listened to all day without significant concern for ones hearing. Not that I have the opportunity to listen all day but one lives in hope.
 
Since getting ginormous efficient speakers in a ginormous horn-loaded box I've never listened to music at lower volume levels.

It's odd, because I could pretty much replicate a Who concert of cilia destruction at home if I wanted to, but I now rarely listen at levels above 75db, give or take.

Joe
 
Tony L said:
PS Huge speakers and safe levels here. Best of all possible worlds! The effortlessness and ease of a 12" or 15" driver is evident at any listening level, and once one gets used to it it is hard to live without. I do love little speakers too, but only in the extreme near-field and at low level - I tend to recreate the classic studio mixer-bridge positioning with mini-monitors, that's what they do best IME.
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When I started taking an interest in hi-fi pretty much all proper hi-fi speakers had something like a 12" woofer and I cannot recall people going on about "dynamic". Not necessarily much deep bass but then records didn't have much deep bass either. The view of something like the LS3/5A speaker to quote the BBC report was:

"There is a need to monitor sound programme quality in circumstances where space is at a premium and where headphones are not considered satisfactory. Such circumstances include the production-control section of a television mobile control-room, where the producer responsible for the overall production of the programme needs to monitor the output from the sound mixer but at levels lower than those used for mixing."

Perfectly sensible. Then the audiophile thing happened and high fidelity, physics, common sense and a lot else went out the window and audiophiles started using LS 3/5A type speakers in their living rooms and claiming the highest of sound qualities.
 
h.g. said:
Perfectly sensible. Then the audiophile thing happened and high fidelity, physics, common sense and a lot else went out the window and audiophiles started using LS 3/5A type speakers in their living rooms and claiming the highest of sound qualities.
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Both are good IMO. I'm currently sitting less than a metre away from a pair of lovingly restored JR149s playing a Mozart string quartet and they really sound fabulous. I could easily want for no more. I'm certainly not here to slag off little speakers, they can sound truly magical on their home ground (i.e. an intimate near-field context).
 
So ash's retiring, I look forward to seeing the new directors listed in the company details...




Of course there's no new directors listed at companies house. Ash's so good he's managed to get people to invest in the business without giving up any control or giving them a seat on the board. Bravo.




I wonder when the lies will stop....
 
h.g. said:
Perfectly sensible. Then the audiophile thing happened and high fidelity, physics, common sense and a lot else went out the window and audiophiles started using LS 3/5A type speakers in their living rooms and claiming the highest of sound qualities.
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That's not how I remember it. Before the LS3/5As appeared, music lovers who liked classical music had to put up with dreadfully coloured loudspeakers (unless they had the space for ESLs). Typical speakers of that era made bass voices boom as thought they were in a wardrobe, and soprano voices sounds like a cat being garrotted. The LS3/5As absolutely raised the bar for low colouration, especially on voices, and so were ideally suited to classical music lovers, especially those who lived in modest houses and who were happy listening at modest levels. Nobody claimed the highest of sound qualities, just that violins sounded like they actually might be violins. People who wanted thump thump bass and overdriven Les Paul guitar could look elsewhere, and had plenty of choices.
 
AndyU said:
Nobody claimed the highest of sound qualities, just that violins sounded like they actually might be violins.
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There are endless numbers of audiophiles claiming high sound quality for speakers with inadequately sized drivers on every audiophile forum in existence. There are a number in this thread which is what prompted the comment.

Violins don't sound like violins in the room using a stereo signal with any sized conventional speaker. This is for the simple reason that violins beam a lot of their sound upwards, we have learnt this is what to expect from a violin in a room and a pair of stereo speakers beaming the sound directly at us is not a good approximation. Now there are things that can be done to help with the sound of violins like pointing the speakers at the ceiling but this then knackers the sound for most of the other instruments.

The LS 3/5A uses a 1" tweeter and a 5" midrange in a sealed cabinet. An older conventional hi-fi speaker was likely to use a 1" tweeter, a 5" midrange and a 12" woofer (more likely to be 2 x 8" woofers these days). Why would simply omitting the woofer and requiring the midrange to cover both the midrange and whatever bass it might be able to provide quietly lead to improved sound quality?

A booming room at low frequencies has little to do with speakers beyond whether the speakers can cleanly generate the required SPL and where in the room they do it. This is no different today than it was then. If you want high quality bass then control the room response because it dominates the low frequency sound quality.
 
Many people who liked classical music found at the time that speakers like the LS3/5A and Spendor BC1 gave them a more natural, credible and pleasing musical experience than most of the contenders. There are quite probably other variables apart from the number and size of drive units that influence sound quality.
 
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