Marginal gains and wishful thinking!
By Roy Gregory
Trickle down. It’s one of those coded phrases that’s close to the hearts of audio manufacturers and customers alike. Yet, like its close cousin, ‘Something for nothing’, it is an article of faith that often under-delivers and occasionally actively misleads. I’m sitting looking at a pair of Avantegarde Uno SD loudspeakers. On paper and in the flesh – at least visually – you could make the case that this is one of the clearest, purest examples of ‘trickle down’ to be found anywhere in the entire audio world: and in truth, you wouldn’t be wrong. The question is, what does that information actually impart? What does it tell us about the Uno SD, what do we assume it means and what does it actually mean in reality.
The technological similarities between the Uno SD and its big brother flagship are pretty obvious. You don’t need to be Crick, Watson or Rosalind Franklin to understand that the Uno SD shares essentially the same DNA as the mighty (and mightily impressive) Trio G3. From the large diameter, brightly coloured spherical horns to the less apparent but just as singular drive-unit technology, from the fully active topology to the inclusion of the iTron current drive amplifiers on the mid and treble, the tick-box list of features is in virtual lockstep. Even the DSP control system for the active bass unit is derived directly from the Uno’s bigger brothers. So, you might conclude, in terms of style and material content, you can’t get much closer than this to a Trio ‘writ small’. But that’s exactly the problem. Using the terms Trio and ‘writ small’ in the same sentence is a crime against musical and sonic sensibilities (as well as common sense)…
There’s no such thing as a free lunch…
The Trio’s are big and bold. They do effortless scale, awesome dynamics, thunderous bass and even their astonishing delicacy and resolution is delivered with a confident clarity, purpose and authority. That performance is founded on and fundamentally depends on the combined virtues of their wide bandwidth, effortless scale, astonishing 109dB sensitivity, full-range horn topology and the incredible dynamic range that results. There’s nothing small about the Trios or their performance and suggesting that performance can be scaled, especially into a speaker that costs around a tenth of the price of a fully-loaded Trio stack, takes wishful thinking into the realms of sheer fantasy. If you really think that the Uno SD is a Trio G3 (or even a slice of the Trio G3) on the cheap, then think again. Likewise, if you’ve heard the Uno SD and think that it tells you anything about the Trio, then you are frankly delusional.
After all, how exactly do you set out to ‘scale’ the Trio’s performance envelope? You can’t lop off the top or seriously curtail the bottom and, as soon as you significantly impact sensitivity or bandwidth you’ve fatally undermined the package, the balance of virtues that makes the Trio so great. Sit the Trio G3 and the Uno SD side by side: Look at the numbers and they flatter to deceive, but look at the physical reality and the difference is obvious. The Uno SD is a hybrid system that couples horn-loaded mid and treble drivers to a reflex ported bass unit. Not only that, the bass cabinet is a fraction of the size of the Space Horns used with the Trio. It simply cannot move the same amount of air or match the dynamic range of the Trio. But look at the numbers again – in isolation rather than comparison – and the Uno offers seriously potent performance potential. Indeed, in some ways, the Uno SD’s biggest challenge might be posed by unrealistic expectations: It isn’t a Trio-lite and shouldn’t (and doesn’t) need to apologise for that fact. Instead, the Uno SD is very much its own creature with its own distinct strengths and identity. Compare it to the Trio and it comes up way short. But compare it to a speaker/amplifier pairing at around its own price and that’s a different story. Just as the Trio crushes its price peers and seriously challenges far more expensive speakers, for the right listener, the Uno is going to crush all-comers amongst its immediate competition. Soin reviewing or assessing the Uno for purchase the questions become, if it isn’t a Trio-lite, what is it and, are you that listener?
Living on credit…
In so many ways, the Uno SD really is the perfect example of trickle down. The issue lies in the way that terminology has been appropriated by marketing departments and reviewers as a suggestive form of shorthand – a suggestion that end-users are all too willing to adopt. The Uno SD might represent a trickle down design, but presenting or viewing it in that way is less than helpful. Indeed, I think it would be a mistake. Instead, perhaps it’s the perfect example of just how easily the trickle down label can mislead or be misunderstood by customers. Trickle down suggests, hints or promises that you are getting the benefits of the flagship at a fraction of the price. What it actually means is that an affordable product shares technology, features or design DNA with its flagship – which depending on the situation, could mean a whole lot of different things, with different levels of significance. After all humans share an awful lot of DNA with chimpanzees. Whether or not that is significant depends entirely on the question you are asking.
