Who has heard the new Avalon's?

You missed my point. But given your tone of voice, I won't waste any more time on it.

Is this a replacement for the Eclipse Classic? But with two woofers, it's more like the old Radian.

The Classic and the Ascent (and the Radian and Monitor, I think) were the original designs of Avalon's founder, Charles Hansen, now of Ayre. Every model since then has been designed by someone else and so it is reasonable that the design objectives may have changed. Consumers wanted more bass, hence the ported designs.

I pretty much agree with you. I used to own the Eclipses and I read that book cover to cover several times. I always felt, however, that its arguments about the bass were a bit specious--he said something about the Avalon approach conveying what the musician intennded instead of some artificailly enhanced bass. Oh really? A rock musician intends for you to feel the bass, and I rarely did with the Eclipse. And as much as I love what a .5 Q bass sounds like (tuneful to the max), the quantity of bass I got from my Eclipses was ultimately unsatisfying.