⌈ AVATAR AUDIO – a company run by CEZARIUSZ ANDREJCZUK, offers mostly loudspeakers. Their design concept differs from widely used today, even though – from the technical standpoint – there is nothing unusual about it. These are concepts from 1950s and 1960s although in an extreme form. We are reviewing the second model from the top, Number 2, with Bamboo cabinets with a changed crossover. ⌋

he aforementioned concepts are an iconic feature of the Avatar Audio brand and they define their loudspeakers. It’s about using drivers produced in the 1950s and 1960s, with paper membranes and rigid suspensions. It's a three-way, two-module design, with all cone drivers, including the tweeter. We wrote about it many times, so there is no need to elaborate on it.

The Bamboo version, i.e. with a cabinet made of multi-layer bamboo panels, is already the third incarnation of this model. The shape of the cabinet was modified as well as the material from which it was made. More important were, I think, the changes introduced by its designer to the crossover. Because Cezariusz is an obsessionist, so to speak - and probably I've called him that before. His obsession is to match each crossover to specific speaker units, and improvement of its parameters even the smallest one of impedance, capacity and inductance. He winds and unwinds the coils, adjusts the length of the connection cables, tuning all the elements up as much as possible.

But this is Cezariusz we are talking about and Avatar Audio speakers - and each design must be refined down to the smallest detail. Which does not mean that it is perfect. If this were the case, the first version ever would be still unchanged and offered to customers. And this is not the case - every now and then, when the upgrades accumulate, Avatar Audio presents a newer version. Interestingly, the name never reflects the newer version as the model is always called "Holophony Number Two". Therefore, the addition of "Bamboo", which you can see by the name of the latest version is... my own invention, and the owner of the company is slightly frustrated with it :)

CEZARIUSZ ANDREJCZUK
Owner, designer

The currently offered Holophony is the new version of Number Two. It differs significantly from its predecessor with an improved crossover, that is responsible for at least 70% of the sound quality of the speakers. Over the last six months, I tested several hundred variants of the crossover, gradually leveling the frequency response, that is, increasing the neutrality of the presentation. It turned out that with the extreme resolution offered by the drivers I used, the required accuracy of the parameters of all components exceeds the measurement capabilities.

The picture shows what’s left after several months of research conducted just for one elements of the crossover for the tested Number Two - a capacitor for the tweeter. I only had to create (by combining 3 pieces) over one hundred capacitors of values varying by 0.01 μF in order to listen to them in hundreds of combinations with coils and resistors for the midrange woofer. At the same time, the required coil accuracy was 0.0015 mH, i.e. an unmeasurable value - only the auditory evaluation remains.

The combination of a midrange driver and a tweeter was the most difficult task in my 10 years of work on the crossover for Holophony Number Two. They have to sound like one driver and at the same time "disappear" from the listener's perception, resulting in a sound completely detached from the speakers, and yet lively, precise and musical. I hope that I finally achieved this goal ▪

| HOLOPHONY NUMER DWA BAMBOO

Holophony Number Two has a double-body cabinet made of solid bamboo. It is a 5-layer plywood with a thickness of 27 mm, oiled. Around the tweeter there is a black felt that prevents sound reflections. Cabinets have 3 additional 3 terminals to ground speaker baskets. The set includes isolation feet: ball feet on the bottom and magnetic feet under the upper cabinet. For additional payment, we offer magnetic feet (2 x 5 pieces) underneath.
source: avatar-audio.com

The reviewed loudspeakers are based on an earlier version of this model. However, they are not covered with felt sheets, feature a changed crossover and, above all, different cabinets. Now it is a multi-layered bamboo - eco-friendly material with great mechanical properties, and thus sound. It is a three-way, three-driver speaker, composed of two modules - medium-high frequency and low-frequency ones. They are connected by short jumpers, but the manufacturer emphasizes that for him a better solution are bi-wire speaker cables. As always - you have to check for yourself and choose a better variant yourself.

The shape of the upper module is the same as in the previous version of the Two. Its sides are not parallel to each other, which is to prevent standing waves inside the cabinet. At the top there is a cone-shaped driver with a paper diaphragm with a diameter of 100 mm. It is recessed slightly into the housing so that it is in line with the midrange driver located below. The horn was lined with soft material to suppress reflections. The midrange driver is really big, it has a diameter of 200 mm and a paper diaphragm.

The woofer section features a large, solid cabinet, whose shape differs slightly from that of the previous version. The idea was that the wave coming from the module above could be better dispersed. The housing has a large 300 mm woofer with a paper membrane. Both it and the other two drivers are NOS ones from the 1950s and 1960s. Nominally, both cabinets are closed, but the woofer has a rear-mounted plug that can be removed in order to use bass-reflex support. The manufacturer kindly suggests not to do it, because the result will be more bass, but it will be slower.

Next to both speaker terminals you will find also ground terminals - they lead to drivers’ baskets. It would be best to ground them, or at least connect an artificial ground to them. Tannoy, has been promoting a similar solution for years. The speakers do not have any grills.

An important construction element is the anti-vibration system. In the tested version, both modules were placed on magnetic feet, which Avatar also used in higher models of anti-vibration platforms. They provide the effect of magnetic levitation, decoupling the speakers from the floor and their modules from each other using a magnetic cushion - the slightly pushed speaker sways sideways. These are the most beautiful loudspeakers made by Avatar that I’ve ever had in my room.

| HOW WE LISTENED TO IT

The Number 2 in the bamboo case was brought to me and set up by Cezariusz, their designer and Avatar Audio’s owner. His friend helped him to bring them up to my room - they are packed in three large MDF boxes; two midrange-tweeter modules share one box, and each of the bass module has its own.

They were set up so that their axes crossed a bit behind my head. When I listened to them later, I corrected it in such a way that I leaned them back a bit more and sat closer to them than usual. As a result I got an absolutely homogeneous sound panorama.

The high efficiency of these speakers could suggest that their best partner will be a tube amplifier. And OK, this is a good choice, because the Ayon Audio Spirit V amplifier, operating in a triode mode, in Class A (40 W per channel) sounded great with them. But the powerful transistor amplifier will bring out the best from them.

Before we get to the point, let me say that: this is the best, the most beautiful and with the highest build quality loudspeaker by Avatar Audio I've reviewed. But, on the other hand, it's also the most expensive and - next to the original model 'Two' - the largest speaker of this company that I had at home.

The basic features of the sound that we get from this exotic, for today's audio, design is perfectly fluid presentation. It very rarely happens that the sound from several drivers is so well "stitched together" that it sounds as if it was played by single wide-range driver. I will go even a step further and say that even wide-band drivers have a more irregular frequency response and they usually sound as if they were two drivers playing - low-midrange and tweeter, which is due to the uneven frequency response. And the Avatar Audio Number 2 Bamboo offers a very well-balanced sound.

Secondly, we can get a sound that engages and inspires - for example, to search one’s own music library for the next album to listen to. Engaging us in the world of Holophony works like that - with proper speaker setting and proper position of the listener relative to them, we feel as if we are slipping into the sound bubble, or as if we are putting on giant headphones. This is a phenomenon known to me from other speakers, but it is rarely as intense as with Number Two.

That’s what happened, for example, with the Jean-Michael Jarre’s Oxygene released by the Mobile Fidelity. When visiting Cezariusz mentioned that it is one of the albums with electronic music that he listens to and values for both, sound and music. I agree with him totally. The Avatars played it in a very transparent and attractive way. Attractive meaning in a rather light, smooth, almost effortless way. In this case the lightness of the sound means primarily a lack of compression, not lacking in terms of richness.

These are not speakers that build large and dense sound plans at the very bottom of the band, I’ll get back to that in a moment, but they do not cut any bass either. Let's stop for a moment with this aspect of sound. Because the way of forming the instruments' bodies is very characteristic for the Avatars and to a certain extent they share it with loudspeakers with a wide-band drivers. So it's a completely different way of playing music than with classic design speakers with heavy driver with long throw membranes.

The sound they deliver is something like a landscape. Regardless of whether we listen to the piano solo or the amazing record of Vladimir Horowitz, Horowitz at the Met, or a vocal with a big band, say Chet Baker and Baker's Holiday, or finally extensive, dynamic music, such as from the Dire Straits Brothers in Arms, another Cezariusz favorite album - in each and every case, regardless of the material, the sound is wide, there is no clear foreground and it is slightly withdrawn behind the line connecting the speakers.

With Baker I could clearly hear that these are speakers that distribute energy in a classical way, characteristic for the speakers from 1930s, 40s and 50s. With my Harbeths, but also with 99% of speakers made today, we get mass, full, tangible foreground and clearly presented bodies. Holophony speakers sound as if the mass was not there. And yet it is. It's just that the mass is "distributed" across the whole band, not focused in the lower midrange. Perhaps thanks to this feature the presentation is so "continuous". There is also a nice bass here, because not only Jarre sounded very well, but also Aquavoice from the Silence. None of this albums lacked bass.

The Avatars have one more feature that you can love them for - resolution. They are so fast and transparent that they really disappear from the sound, leaving us with accurate information. Interestingly, you can easily hear how the noise changes - background noise, room’s, tape’s, microphone’s, etc. These differences are almost always equalized, and here they are at your fingertips. I am not saying that we should listen to the noise, but it is a part of the recordings, extremely characteristic one, that tells us a lot about the recordings themselves and their sound.

Anyway, with the reviewed speakers differences between two versions of the Popol Vuh Hosianna Mantra, one from 2012 on the SHM-CD and the other, new version on CD from 2018 were extremely clear. The older one was heavily noisy, and the new almost completely devoid of noise, and yet it was more natural, more vibrant and deeper. The older version sounded a bit "plastic", as if it had a limited frequency response.

Plus-minus
| All that I'm talking about is rare and valuable and with the Bamboo version Number 2 it achieves a very high level, almost crazy high :) One of the things that has changed is the greater versatility of these speakers, because they will play popular music, and classics, and jazz, and electronics. But these are still columns with some limitations imposed by the drivers used in them. Let's not pretend otherwise.

We will not get three-dimensional bodies with them. This is a more pastel, fast, slightly ethereal sound - a bit like analogue master tapes (Avatar) in relation to vinyl records (the rest of the world). To get from them what I am talking about, you have to put some effort in their positioning, both in relation to the walls and us in relation to them.

For me, they sounded the best directed almost straight ahead and when I was quite close to them, and far from the wall behind me. Actually one should sit further away from them than I could in my room, or higher - I had to sit for listening in such a way so my head would be on the same height as the axis of the tweeter. If you do not meet these requirements, the sound may be too light or even too piercing. It is never too sharp, it is absolutely not the direction, but it may become emphatic.

The depth of the stage is great, but spreading the layers within it, understood as differentiating the size of the instruments due to their distance from the microphone - and from us - is barely suggested. As I say, the depth is excellent, we have a long perspective, but I did not get the illusion of depth with the air around the instruments in my system, it was a depth united in one big "picture".

And finally - these are speakers that do not forgive poor recording quality, especially those with high compression. Five Miles Out by Mike Oldfield, a track that I listened to along with Cezariusz, sounded just poorly, with "holes" between instruments. Loudspeakers of classic design try to fill these holes with a slightly „fatter” sound, and the Avatars do not use such "fillers". It's not about all rock and pop recordings, because most of them will sound really cool. But some will disappoint, there will be no excuse for them.

| SUMMARY

Within the limits of their design assumptions, the Holophony Number 2 Bamboo are outstanding loudspeakers. They are fast, clean, coherent, dynamic, have a nicely weighted low midrange and bass, but without muddying them. Their resolution is exceptional, even compared to single wide-band driver speakers. They are versatile, because they will present all their qualities with both, Master CD-R straight from the studio, and with the regular releases of albums of such bands as Pink Floyd or Dire Straits.

At the same time, they are so different from the mainstream products, they offer such a different sound that they will not appeal to everyone, no matter who we are talking about. They are merciless for lower quality releases and to let them shine you have to think seriously about accompanying high-end system, acoustic room treatment, etc. Each of you must therefore weigh the pros and cons. If the pros prevail, you will get the sound to die with.

Technical specifications (according to the manufacturer)

Drivers:
• tweeter: ø 10 cm (4”)
• midrange: ø 20 cm (8”)
• bass: ø 30 cm (12”)
Nominal power: 20 W
Impedance: 4 Ω
Sensitivity: 97 dB
Frequency range: 23-20 000 Hz
Dimensions: (H x W x D): 1160 x 350 x 480 mm
Weight: 35 kg/each.