THE
NEW ADVENT VS.
THE ORIGINAL ADVENT.
In
designing a speaker for use in the
real world rather than for “ideal” or
laboratory performance conditions, one
of the most important factors is that
the quality of recordings and broad-
casts is part of the overall environment
in which a speaker must operate.
And the most important limitation on
total, reliable speaker performance
since the beginning of the high-fidelity era has
been the
high-frequency
limitations of recordings and broad-
casts. Noise and distortion effects
present-on records in particular-
have placed a limit on the total amount
of high-frequency energy that it has
made sense to try to secure from a
tweeter.
Almost twenty years ago, for
instance, some of us now at Advent
were involved in a live-vs.-recorded
test of an “idea1" tweeter design that
could, and did, sound identical to the
live source. But this same tweeter was
absolutely unlistenable for actual
playback of recordings, particularly LP
records. It mercilessly revealed the
tremendous residual noise and distortion (from
tape hiss, cutter
limitations,
vinyl imperfections and other factors)
present on recordings at high
frequencies.
By the time we designed the original
Advent Loudspeaker in 1969, tremendous
improvements had been made |
in recordings and broadcasts. But there
were still important limitations, and
the total high-frequency energy output
of the Advent was carefully balanced
to suit that reality and match well with
the mixture of new, not-so-new and
old LP's in most people's record
collections.
In the 1970's, however, two very
important improvements have been
made in the high-frequency capabilities
of recordings and broadcasts:
The
almost
universal adoption of the
Dolby system and other noise reduction measures
for recordings has
reduced background tape hiss and
residual “hash” at high frequencies by
a tremendous amount. The entry of the
Dolby system into FM broadcasting is
also beginning to be felt.
A
new
generation of record-cutting
equipment has made it possible to put
more essentially undistorted output
onto records in the 10,000 Hz region.
And a new generation of phono cartridges has been
designed to take
advantage of the opening for cleaner
high-frequency response.
These factors add up to more
recoverable, usable high-frequency
content in source material than ever
before-more clean sound above the
noise and distortion in the recording
process.
With these improvements, and
influenced by the fact that most people’s record
and tape collections
now
date mainly from the early 1970’s |
onward, we decided to change the
high-frequency capabilities of the
Advent Loudspeaker. Also involved in
the decision was the knowledge that
we could make use of developments
like ferro-fluid damping for the
tweeter to come up with a higher-
output design of very high reliability
at very little added cost.
The New Advent Loudspeaker,
then, can radiate significantly more
energy at 10,000 Hz than our original
design -more than enough to reveal the
cleaner high-frequency output on
records. The audible difference is
subtle on most recordings Ca slightly
more open and defined quality) and
most noticeable on recordings that have
a heavy content of brass, snares, cymbals, and
other demanding high-
frequency material.
We don’t believe that the difference
is great enough to make more than a
tiny percentage of present Advent
Loudspeaker owners want to trade in
their speakers. (We don’t design any of
our speakers, including the least
expensive, to make people want to
trade them in after the honeymoon,
however long, is over.) But the change
is the kind we think should be made
in a speaker designed to compete in the
"best" category without compromise.
And we think it will be appreciated by
today’s and tomorrow’s speaker and
record buyers.
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