Audiovector Avantgarde Arreté LE, The fifth in the series

Corpaw's new listening room

• Audiovector surprises us once again with this new speaker in the Mi3 series, the Avantgarde Arreté LE.

• Price: €6,950

• Specialists' rating: 6

• Text: Ramon Sendra

Rarely does one have the chance to enjoy a whole day of such an interesting experience as the one I found myself in. Patrik Alvergard will be opening (if he hasn't already, given the time lag between my writing these lines and your reading them) his new headquarters in Vigo. This is Corpaw, the Spanish distributor for two interesting brands: Supra and Audiovector. These new premises have a very interesting attraction: a superb listening room of more than 40 m2, which is the distributor's "pride and joy". Patrik has been working on it for almost a whole year, and we had the opportunity to be the first to enjoy it. The reason was the new Audiovector Mi3 Avantgarde Arreté Limited Edition, which make up the fifth upgrade step of the Mi3 series, although it also gave both of us an interesting day combining acoustics, listening and enjoyment, which is what our hobby is all about. In any case, I would like to share with you the fact that Patrik has trusted us almost blindly over this past year, listening to our opinions and applying some changes, which he compared with the suggestions he received from Audiovector's acoustic engineers in Denmark, who also helped with the project free of charge.

The room, as you may be able to see in the photographs accompanying this article, strikes what is in my view a very successful balance between a welcoming, warm look and a fairly linear sound, albeit with some improvements needed, above all in the low frequencies, but not to be dismissed. In any case, and to leave this subject and focus on the new loudspeakers, I must give high praise to the enormous effort Alvergard has made to achieve a space that is competitive from an acoustic point of view yet pleasing to the eye. All without having to resort to specialized materials, simply by following some basic notions of acoustics and patience, a lot of patience.



THE FIFTH MI3S



One of the things that appeals to me most about Audiovector is the "scalability" or upgradability of its speakers within their series. For example, talking about the Mi3 means talking about floorstanding speakers (the Mi1s, for example, are the alternative in monitor or bookshelf speakers). The Mi3 series starts with the basic model, called simply Mi3, followed by the Super, then the Signature and, until now, the Avantgarde SE. Thanks to Corpaw's excellent willingness, we have had the opportunity to test all its speakers (even those in the Mi1, K Series and Si6 series; of the latter, as it happens, there is another excellent review in this same issue by our contributor Luis Llana).

The advantage of Audiovector is that you can buy, for example, a basic Mi3, whose retail price is really affordable. Then, when your ears ask for more or when you have money again, you can upgrade the same speaker to a higher model. Although you don't need to climb the steps one by one, you could "jump" to the Mi3 Super, paying only the cost of the new materials plus labor and shipping. This cost is always lower, much, much lower, than buying a finished Mi3 Super. Besides, what would we do with the basic Mi3?

As I said before, until now we could upgrade the entire series up to the Mi3 Avantgarde, which already incorporated some of the features of the higher series, the superb and excellent Si6. Personally (which includes a certain dose of subjectivity), on price and notable improvements, my recommendation has always been the Mi3 Signature, since the Avantgarde, although better, lost out in terms of value for money. But now Audiovector adds a new step: the Mi3 Avantgarde Arreté LE (LE for Limited Edition, so hurry up and upgrade your Mi3s). Will this speaker be better than the Avantgarde? And more interestingly, will it keep up the top-rating streak that the lower models do achieve?

The Audiovector people are really pleased with their new offering. They say the first auditions with loyal customers have resulted in an upgrade rate of almost 80%, a record for the firm. For them, the Mi3 offers "sound quality superior to any other product we have launched on the market in this category".

Being the latest in the series, some of its features did not surprise me. For example, it uses the same (identical) drivers as the Si6 Avantgarde Arreté, so it easily outperforms its younger sisters. The bass driver stands out for its speed, which should mean agile, deep bass. It also comes with a midrange driver and the well-known AMT or ribbon tweeter.

As with any multi-way speaker, special attention must be paid to the crossover. For this model, Audiovector uses the same technology it developed for the Si6, namely NCS (Natural Cristal Structure). This solution tries (and in fact succeeds) to overcome one of the specific challenges of crossovers: minimizing any degradation of the sound while perfectly splitting the signal for each of the ways. To this end, the firm manages to reduce resistance and thus increase performance in the form of greater transparency and dynamics, partly due to the improvement in the molecular structure of the copper. The inside of the enclosure, an aspect Audiovector also takes almost excessive care over, uses an acoustic absorbent based on nanopores. This novel high-tech acoustic absorption material allows air to move completely freely inside the cabinet while still providing sufficient absorption of standing waves and echo effects. Translated into more everyday language, this means very good dynamics are maintained, allowing the most precise and "minute" details to be reproduced.

Finally, as is now usual in the Danish company's upgraded models, our guests also include the ARA (Audiovector Room Adaptation) system, which improves this speaker's frequency response when the acoustics of the customer's listening room present many acoustic problems. Even so, we are talking about speakers whose retail price is close to €7,000, so this ARA system (which we saw recently in a review two issues ago) should not be a dominant factor for the Mi3 Avantgarde Arreté LE.



TESTED



What do these speakers bring to the series? Nothing more and nothing less than a huge step toward the superb Si6, but at a much lower price (much less than half). Obviously there are notable differences between our guests and the Si6 (which I was also able to try in the same room, but whose more in-depth analysis I leave to Luis Llana). Focusing on these Mi3s, I can confirm that the leap is superb. For example, in my judgment the stereo image, and therefore the performance of the distinctive ribbon tweeter Audiovector uses, reaches a spectacular level that the Mi3 Avantgarde does not exploit so efficiently. This is obviously related to the better midrange performance provided by the superior drivers of characteristic design (with the distinctive diffuser that identifies them). Voices and details coexist in perfect harmony, offering the listener a wealth of fine detail that is not so common in other more or less similar speakers.

Perhaps due to lack of break-in or the particular nature of the room, I found the bass slightly overblown, although it was able to reproduce some spectacular low frequencies with excellent precision. Dynamics, therefore, are not a problem but rather a key characteristic, as these speakers offer an excellent ability to build a precise, vivid stereo image which, no less impressively, is rich in detail and spaciousness. The qualitative leap is undoubtedly worth it.

Audiovector offers us a loudspeaker that crowns, for now, the Mi3 series. On the one hand, the new Avantgarde Arreté LE comfortably surpasses what I heard from the Avantgarde, fully justifying its retail price and making me forget some of the shortcomings I found in the previous model. In this way, you can get even closer to the sensational Si 6 without having to make a larger financial investment. The Mi 3 Avantgarde Arreté LE becomes a versatile, effective and also surprising contender.

Corpaw's new listening room

Patrik Alvergard, the owner and driving force behind Corpaw, became involved in the distribution of high-end audio products (he currently distributes Audiovector and Supra) almost by chance. He came to Spain and fell in love with the country, and with someone else. He swapped his life in Sweden for the relatively warmer one of Vigo. When he settled, he discovered that it was not easy for him to find or buy the brands that were familiar to him in his own country, so he changed his job as a shipbroker for that of distributor. He started out at home distributing Supra cables and then, when he decided on Audiovector, he acquired his first premises. Right now he is about to officially open his new office, whose obvious highlight is its impressive listening room. It is more than 40 m2, acoustically treated in a very precise and patient way, sparing no resources or materials but without wanting to lose a certain visual appeal. Everyone from Audiovector's own engineers in Denmark to us at CEC magazine has collaborated on the work. Patrik did not hesitate to ask us endless questions, above all related to the field of video. When I visited his premises, we spent much of the morning fine-tuning the room's acoustics. This task, obviously, will almost never be finished, as there are always improvements, though ever more subtle ones that usually only become apparent after hours and hours of listening. Corpaw will make very extensive use of its room, basically to demonstrate the versatility and unique characteristics of the products it distributes, offering specialist dealers not only an incomparable setting in which to hold such auditions but also an almost unique space for improving sales staff training. The room also has the appeal of having been designed without the need for complex technical materials, very similar to what we can achieve in our own homes. Corpaw thus becomes one of the distributors able to offer the best facilities to its customers, now that it finally has a superb and very well treated listening room of its own.

Audiovector Avantgarde Arreté LE, The fifth in the series

Specifications

Configuration: 2.5-way with bass reflex port. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Sensitivity: 92 dB/W/m. Power handling: 350 W. Frequency response: 29 Hz-50 kHz. ARA: Included, affects the frequency response between 200 and 500 Hz and between 1,500 and 3,200 Hz by 3 dB.

Distributor: Corpaw (info@corpaw.es).

Price: €6,950