This speaker is a pure pleasure for your ears.

Beautitully craftetd speackers with a musical but also very neutral and analytic sound. Ultrawide an precise soundstage.

Bass ends at 40 Hz

I use these speakers since almost ever! I like the shape and the pure sound of them. The bass is tight but not very low. Since a few years, I drive them together with a REL Stentor III sub-bass system. With that ultra quick sub-bass, combined with the image and transparent sound of the avatars, the musical experience is of thet kind, that I dont have to look around for other equipment.......

My phono is thze brinkmann balance with SME V. Brinkmann Pre-Pre to ML Nr. 38

Beautiful,little speaker I ever owned.Very clean , quick and tight sound ,best suited for ,say , nice jazz. For large scale classical music , you need it's bigger brother ( Radian maybe). "Cause it tends to get a little congested at a top end (At least when I play it really loud in my living room)
This lil speaker is the proof that hi-end audio gear doesn't have to be ugly. When the dealer set up the speaker in our living room my husband was pleasantly surprised.( He was expecting ugly black boxes)

Excellent imaging, beautiful tonality, very musical, excellent finish, easy to setup

Can be a little full in the mid Bass. Tend to sound congested at high listening volumes

The Avalon Avatar is a beautiful piece of art. The quality workmanship that goes into making the cabinetry is the very best in the industry. The components and drivers are also topnotch. Avalon speakers are the very best you can buy.

If you buy them new, be very patient, they will take a long time to break in (over 300 hours). The wait is worth it. Don't be fooled by the smallish size of the Avatar. They need power to really show their best qualities. I would suggest at least 100 watts / 8 ohms. Also, having a good amount of clean power will minimize the congestion at high levels of playback.

Make sure you have an excellent front and and very neutral interconnects and speaker cables. I used a Wadia W16 CD player as a front end and a couple Pass Labs Aleph 2 monoblocks amplifiers (100 Watts Class A). My interconnects were Cardas balanced Golden Cross interconnects and speaker cables (biwired - makes a big difference with these speakers).

The setup is not difficult at all. What you need is to find the right distance from the back and sidewalls that will minimize the midbass region. As far as toe-in a little goes a long way with Avalons. They like to almost be pointed forwards. They will also image a lot better if you follow these directions. Please put them on spikes (they will also benefit mucho from this) The treble will smooth out and you will notice more detail. The grill clothes must be used with the Avatars as they are an integral part of the difraction minimization mechanism. If you leave them off, the sound will be bright and difuse.

Also, keep in mind that although the Avatars WILL play quite loud, they are still medium/small speakers. You can't expect full range and full dynamics out of them. If you use them within their designed limitations, they can be MAGICAL.

If you love music, this is one of the speakers to consider.

This is the smallest model in the Avalon floorstanders line. Its bass is one of the highlight : extra clean, deep, and tight. Of course, the special mid and high that Avalon is well known of. It excels in almost any music and you got to listen to these speakers to believe it.

* See other reviews of associated equipment.


Associated equipment :

Krell FPB-200 amplifier,
Proceed CDD transport,
Proceed DAP d/a converter,
All Cardas Golden Cross balanced interconnects and double runs (external bi-wire configuration) speaker cables,
Madrigal MDC-1 balanced digital cable,
Black Diamond Racing Cones.

image, deep

bass strength

very good loudspeaker

Similar Products Used:

bw 802

Excellent speaker, I had this speaker for almost three years. The best I heard from this unit waswhen it was powered by a Gryphon DM100 amp.
On the plus side you get an excellent soundstage presentation, clean bass reproduction and low
cabinet coloration.
On the minus side, you loose the lower freq. range (below 35Hz I guess), you need to use a high power solid state amp
and they tend too the analitical side of the musical spectrum.