Tall, cool and (musically) refreshing!
By Roy Gregory
At the end of Ice Cold In Alex, our intrepid heroes line the bar, eyeing the beers they’ve just crossed the Libyan desert to reach. When the Avantgarde Mezzo, finally turned up, that was the image that flashed, unbidden into my mind. Since the company unveiled the totally re-engineered Trio G3 with its ground-breaking iTron active amplifiers, the Mezzo, one model down in the line, has been a mirage, floating enticingly just out of reach, while various Uno and Duos have come and gone. It’s been a long, long wait, which inevitably leaves space for questions: will it be as good as you expect? Will it actually deliver on the promise? Well, it’s finally here and I’m finally able to scratch that itch…
It’s strange how often reality gets inverted. Most audiophiles will be aware of the Avantgarde Trio, with its separate horn arrays and horn-loaded subs, as demanding of space as it is impressive. Most will be familiar with the Avantgarde Duo, its two trumpets vertically aligned above and supported by a conventional box sub-woofer, a compact approach that presents a different set of challenges. But somehow, the model in between – previously the Duo Mezzo, now just the Mezzo – gets overlooked, despite actually promising the best of both worlds. Its footprint might be bigger than the Duo GT’s, but its space demands are broadly similar. It might only carry two of the distinctive Avantgarde spherical horns, but the substantial box they sit in/on is also horn loaded, making this a full-range horn rather than a hybrid (at least in terms of driver loading). On paper, this is the Trio you can actually accommodate (and afford), the Duo without the bass integration challenges (but still with bass). All of which should make this the most interesting model in the range – at least for the majority of serious listeners.
I covered the installation and set-up of the Mezzo in an earlier piece <https://gy8.eu/blog/inter-mezzo/> so I’m not going to cover those things again here. However, some of the developmental niceties bear repeating, while further experience has helped those initial impressions evolve.
Any way you slice it, the Mezzo certainly ticks a lot of boxes. It combines a fully active capability (using the superb iTron current drive amplification) with the proven mid and treble drivers/horns from the Duo GT. It combines a full-range horn output with a vertically disposed driver array, an arrangement that’s far easier to work with than the Trio with its offset tweeter and displaced bass cabinets. When it comes to set up, it offers the latest low-frequency control software and other user-friendly niceties. It has two bass drivers per cabinet compared to the Duo GT’s one, driven by twice the bass amplification. But, it also sees a substantial increase in price, from €57,500 to €89,700. Given that – on paper at least – the two systems offer exactly the same bandwidth, sensitivity, mid and treble drivers/horns and essentially the same iTron electronics package, that bass cabinet clearly warrants some serious attention.
Filled-out footprint…
Viewed from the front, the Mezzo’s base cabinet (yes, the spelling is intentional) is wider but offers a similar overall appearance if squatter form factor compared to the slimmer column of the Duo GT. Yet I remember being surprised by the substantial bulk of the Duo GT when it first arrived – a massive step up in volume and visual density over earlier ‘space-frame’ Duos. The bass cabinet, which once sat as a separate box, supporting the skeletal structure that carried the mid and treble trumpets, now extended up, wrapping around the tweeter horn and visually connecting to the lower arc of the midrange trumpet. But sit the Duo GT next to the Mezzo and it looks positively slender in comparison. The Duo GT’s midrange trumpet blooms above its narrow, supporting column. The Mezzo’s base cabinet has swollen to the full 670mm width of its Duo-identical midrange horn, effectively doubling the frontal aspect of the speaker, even if its actual space demands are not dissimilar. It’s also 160mm/6” taller. It’s a bit like standing a left tackle face to face with a linebacker: the footprint might be roughly similar, but the physical presence is very different indeed. There’s no getting away from the fact that visually (if not practically) this is a far bigger speaker than the Duo GT. Having said that, to these eyes at least, it looks more planted, more balanced and more attractive.
