What's Inside
Technology
Since inception, AVID has placed energy flow at the heart of all its designs. Every system creates vibrations, those you want and those you don’t and the key to good sound reproduction is separating those vibrations at source, making sure the ‘bad’ vibrations have a path-of-least-resistance to an ‘energy sink’ where it can be harmlessly eliminated. With Avid’s turntables this resulted in the massive Acutus sub-chassis and for Avid’s loudspeakers, Avid developed the Tuned Mass Technology (TMT)™ damping system, which tackles the problem of unwanted energy at source.
Through extensive experimentation, Avid found that having a suitable mass loosely coupled to the drive unit creates an effective path for this unwanted energy. With all other paths now ‘High Impedance,’ the easiest path for energy flow is to the TMT™ damper. Being decoupled, the damper can freely vibrate, dissipating any energy internally resolving the problem BEFORE it even leaves the drive unit, so the cabinet is less affected than ones without this technology. The benefit is instantly obvious with a clean, focused sound, greater clarity to the music and vocals becoming etched within a transparent soundstage.
Cabinet
Cascaded directly from Avid’s Reference Four, the front baffle is precision machined from 20mm thick aluminium plate, the drive units clamped to the baffle using Avid’s exclusive metal compression plate, equally pressurising the complete circumference rather than the traditional less rigid screw fixing. Utilising Avid’s Tuned Mass Technology (TMT)™ damper, unwanted drive unit vibrations are removed at source, minimising cabinet distortion, immediately lifting a veil of distortion, and leaving crystal clear sound. The rear baffle which supports the crossover, is also made from aluminium, helping with the overall stiffness of the cabinet.
The cabinet is hand crafted from 18mm moisture resistant MDF, each component part precision machined using a 5 axis CNC and hand assembled. With extensive internal bracing, internal air pressure is easily controlled, so dynamic sound quality is preserved. Maintaining the reflex ported design principle, this is implemented in a vertical, downward firing position under the cabinet. This design allows for a low frequency response and makes the loudspeaker amazingly room tolerant and easy to accommodate in any small to medium-sized room.
Drivers
EVO uses a 4” Tweeter employing Acuflex™ Technology, a specially engineered damping compound is applied to the soft silk dome of the tweeter creating a diaphragm that exhibits controlled cancelling break up, or accurate flexing, meaning each break-up mode is counteracted by another in the opposite direction. This cancellation of break-up modes leaves nothing, but a pure and natural sound. With a powerful Ferrite vented magnet and 1⅛” diameter Hexatech™ aluminium voice coil, it is rigidly coupled to the front baffle which is purposed machined with an Improved Dispersion Recess (IDR) design, a shaped inset which increases the high-frequency output of the off-axis response.
Built into the Uniflow™ aerodynamically designed basket, the 6” Bass driver offers an awesome bass performance and utilising Avid’s Tuned Mass Technology (TMT)™ damper to remove unwanted vibration, the Damped Polymer Composite Cone remains distortion free. Unlike other loudspeakers that suffer from vibration issues and try to mitigate the problem using trendy cone materials, AVID have resolved the vibration issue at source, just leaving a stunning clarity of sound.
Both Bass and Tweeter exploit the External Voice Coil (EVC)™ Technology, a design that moves the magnetic drive system to within the voice coil, eliminating stray magnetic flux by effectively directing all the magnetic energy to the voice coil, improving heat dissipation, and reducing cone breakup for a flawless performance.
Crossover
Crossovers are a hidden component within the loudspeaker, dividing unfiltered audio signals from the amplifier and suppling each driver with the signal range it was designed to reproduce and is essentially the brain of the loudspeaker. Limiting the number of parts in the crossover reduces distortion with component selection and quality control being vital to achieve the best sound. Essentially there are three types of components within the crossover design: Capacitors, Inductors and Resistors. The importance of selecting the correct specification and value of each component cannot be understated, each working in unison to obtain the highest performance. After using sophisticated computer simulation to establish these values, final component selection is done through extensive listening tests.
Exclusively employing ClarityCap™ capacitors for all EVO loudspeakers, their CopperConnect™ technology dramatically reduces grain boundary crossings and signal path resistance and using higher rated voltage versions greatly reduces Equivalent series resistance (ESR) allowing the capacitor to achieve new levels of audio performance. Air Core Inductors offer significant subjective audible improvements over less expensive alternatives. AVID inductors are wound with 1.25mm self-bonding enamelled wire on air core plastic rectangular bobbins. Using this heavy gauge wire achieves a lower DC Resistance (DCR) for better Bass control and was chosen purely on the basis of superb sound quality.
