However, there are a lot of sub-woofers on the market – and a lot of sub-woofers that do a pretty impressive job of delivering sheer grunt for less than a grand. Which is where we once again depart from audiophile sensibilities and re-engage with our post-separates customer base, a customer base that (for a large part) measures the width of the bottom-end more enthusiastically than the quality. Stand in a dance club and the low-frequencies pummel you, rendering concepts such as pitch, shape, decay and instrumental texture almost wholly irrelevant – replacing them with power, pulse and projection, qualities that even a basic audio sub-woofer can provide, delivering something approaching that all-important physical element without costing the earth.
Combine that low-end grunt with the clarity, articulation and dynamic range of the Colibri and suddenly you’ve got both a potent domestic speaker system and a nascent party animal with club-like potential. What’s more, hang it on the end of a WiiM Amp or any one of its competitor clones and the whole lot lands for less than €10K – a complete system with bandwidth and maximum SPLs to obliterate a similarly priced budget separates set up. Sure, it isn’t going to match the overall coherence, neutrality or technical performance of the separates with their multi-driver tower speakers, but when it comes to detail, dynamics and simple unadulterated fun, it’s going to leave the conventional audiophile approach in the dust. It will match the mid-band resolution and transparency of the best ‘phones; it will easily outclass the best club PA; it will do a stonking job on games consoles, movie soundtracks or concert video streams. In short, for the vast majority of young adults today, it’s going to do more, with more of their music, more of the time. Way more than any anal-retentive, minimalist, hair shirt, less is more separates system. By going the mass-produced front-end/mass-produced sub route, AvantGarde are offering a core investment in the loudspeakers, one that can grow with their owner’s budget and ambitions. At the same time, the Colibri is engineered to make the most of those mass-produced products, further increasing their appeal.
Watching and listening to audiophiles at the Munich show where the Colibri first saw the light of day, it was pretty obvious that they just didn’t get it. As an audiophile, you might not get it either. But hey, don’t worry – you’re not supposed to, even if the Colibri might just save – or at least contribute to saving – the audio industry. Music systems will survive – just maybe not as we know them. As old-school music consumers we may not understand or agree with the analysis behind New Audio Logic, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from it. The Colibris are in for review: or rather, two reviews. One will cover their intended application. The other will see what happens if you hook them up to a conventional high-end rig. But one thing’s for sure: either way it’s going to be fun – which is pretty much the whole point!
