Does Avalon speakers have a house sound?

I've been listening to a pair of older Eidolons for over six years now so I'm extremely biased. I replaced a pair of Paradigm Studio 100 v2 and the difference was so dramatic it's now very difficult listening to other speakers who's time and phase is not addressed.

I should also point out that my audiophile ear was so childish when I auditioned Eidolons in stores and at shows they always seemed sleepy by direct comparison. I simply didn't know what I was hearing.

I was constantly listening to my system and not the music with the Studio 100s v1s and v2s. After a few years of constant dissatisfaction with my system I began going through amps and preamps with changes but with no success in musicality.

The switch to the Avalon Eidolons was nothing short of magic. Even my family was stunned by the difference but far more importantly the rightness and musicality of their presentation and at any volume level. The Paradigm's had a rather loud volume sweet spot.

After living with the Avalon's it's easy to hear systems that are and are not doing the rightness thing.

If there is a house sound I would assume its the rightness and musicality. There may be a model that might be brittle or thin but I've never heard anybody comment on that before. I would easily assume those would be a consequence of issues upstream.

As to cabling I did some brief auditioning but have settled on a Cardas Golden Reference system loom because they provided the best top to bottom cohesiveness and may very well be the brand of internal wire used by Avalon.

More aptly, what speaker brand doesn't have a house sound?

Omsed ["Sorry, but coloring up speakers with cables and amps adds distortion (as pleasing as it may be) which heavily masks true detail."]
Can you tell me what brand of cables add distortion?


James63, if your looking for more robust bass performance you might check out the Avalon Compass, Opus, or the higher end Time models. You're not going to find a great deal of Avalon reviews in Stereophile since the US is not their main market.

Which brings me to BOL who's self profess claims of his three dimensional hearing abilities are such that 'manufactures ask for his opinion'. Bol is a biased audio dealer who never fails to lead you to believe he pretty much knows everything audio, in his mind anyway. His compulsion to respond to almost every reply in a thread he has participated in with wordy contrary negativity that often has nothing to do with the original posters question is plain weird. "They are not bad speakers." but (this is were all of his speaker responses end) Monitor Audio's (with their time and phase inadequacies) are way better, 3D and absolutely accurate.

If the Eidolons were at all brittle in the upper frequencies Avalon would have been hammered by the press years ago when they used Spectral/MIT electronics for their 2C3D demos which showed the possibilities of vast sound staging possibilities of dynamic box speakers. Soon after the Avalon faceted enclosure became, and still is, one of the most copied design aspects of dynamic speaker design. I'm sure Avalon uses solid state to voice their products and the majority of Avalon users use solid state with great results.

If they are mis-positioned within a room, reflections could easily cause issues in the upper frequencies. The synergy between the speaker and the rest of the system is such a subjective matter of taste I find many of these claims made here regarding all Avalon designs a likely result of inexperience.

I'm an extremely satisfied Eidolon user and working Musician. I won't deny my Eidolons took a great deal of time to properly locate in my room and even then a more experienced user visited and eliminated the slight toe in and moved them about six inches closer together resulting in a deeper sound stage and the speakers total disappearance in the room. "Dead end," hardly.

Fortuitously, this labor day weekend I played a recorded digital file solo Violin track recorded the week before for the Musician who performed it. He was floored by the playback from my system which includes Carver tube, Cardas, Avalon Eidolons. He said he could even hear his A string going off which he didn't hear at the studio. A search for higher end Avalon speakers (Eidolon on up) discussions will yield a majority of positive responses with many users trading up.

Personally, I never found the Eidolon an exciting speaker at show and store auditions. By comparison they seemed sleepy. Within minutes in my home system their cohesive single source presentation was immediately noticeable followed by their time and phase accuracy. House sound? After some time with my Avalon's I can immediately hear time and phase issues with many other speakers. And yes Bol, that includes your Monitor Audio. To be fair and since replacement tweeters are no longer available for the original Hansen designed Eclipse, I have suggested Monitor Audio speakers to those on extremely limited budgets. Monitor Audio does offer very good performance for their modest price.