(A Bi-amplified Acoustic-Suspension Speaker System.)
The Powered Advent Loudspeaker.
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In designing products at Advent, we take pains to sort out real improvements from those that have more to do with selling equipment than with buying it. Our aim is to make exceptional products not exceptionally expensive or complicated or space-hungry ones.
We have felt for quite a while that the only really meaningful advance beyond the loudspeaker performance level represented by the original Advent Loudspeaker, and more recently the New Advent Loudspeaker, might lie in the integration of a speaker and power amplifier.
The more we investigated that possibility, the more we could see advantages both in absolute performance and performance-per-dollar that would not come easily (or at all) any other way.
The Powered Advent Loudspeaker is the result of two years' investigation of speaker-amplifier interaction. It is a two-way acoustic-suspension speaker system with built-in bi-amplification.
Like the New Advent Loudspeaker, it covers the full audible frequency range, including the final half-octave of bottom bass supplied by very few speakers at any cost. It also offers:
- Very high acoustic output as much output as a New Advent Loudspeaker driven by a 300 watt-per-channel amplifier. That is a level generally provided only at some sacrifice of frequency range (especially bottom bass) in large multi speaker systems. The Powered Advent Loudspeaker will provide enough sound to satisfy any likely need for extreme levels in a home or studio listening situation. In reasonable multiples, it will also fill theaters and large dance--floor spaces--offering a level of sound quality that is still largely unknown in those settings.
- An exceptional listening ease that is the product of very low audible distortion. This audible ease is probably the speaker's most important characteristic. It is evident at all listening levels, particularly the highest. And it very much resembles the open, unstrained "non-loud" quality that we have experienced before only in the best full-range electrostatic speakers.
- Increased ability to tailor low-frequency and high-frequency response to the requirements of varying source material, room conditions, and speaker placements. The frequency response controls in conventional passive-crossover systems can contour a speaker's sound only by taking part of it away. In the Powered Advent Loudspeaker, the contour controls can boost as well as cut. The under-100Hz bass control provides up to 6 dB of boost at 30 Hz. The high-frequency control provides a range of ± 4 dB at 10,000 Hz, with a gentle slope (beginning at about 3,000 Hz) that is ideal for handling the requirements both of rooms and recordings.
- A unique sub-sonic filter that prevents nonmusical material such as record warp pulses, turntable rumble and acoustic feedback from causing distortion and wasting low-frequency amplifier power. This filter reduces response at 30 Hz by only 1 dB, but is down by 24 dB at 5 Hz.
- The reduction in IM distortion it achieves has a great deal to do with the system's exceptional listening ease.
- Unique protection both of the dual amplifiers and the loudspeaker drivers. Four separate circuits protect against tweeter or woofer damage, output transistor failure from overdriving or short-circuiting, and amplifier overheating.
- Three of these circuits are analog computers, and all offer two-stage protection first the triggering of a warning light, and then, if the listener doesn't correct the situation, shut-down. It remains possible to override these safeguards and do damage in some instances, but it takes effort or concentrated inattention over a considerable period.
- The ability to be driven by a preamp or tuner-preamp (such as the tuner-preamp section of the Advent 300 Receiver) or directly from the speaker terminals of a receiver or integrated amplifier.
- A size (almost the same as the New Advent Loudspeaker's) that fits comfortably into a living room.
- A price, $450*, that represents the least expensive way to achieve the level of performance that we feel people are looking for in "ultimate" sound equipment.
*Suggested price, subject to change without notice.
Bi-amplification and Integration.
For several years, bi-amplification has been suggested as a better way to power separate drivers in a speaker system. But most of the people who have advocated it have presented it as a way to avoid conventional crossover limitations which actually aren't all that serious in their effect on speaker performance.
The real potential of bi-amplification, which can be fully achieved only if the dual amplifiers are integrated with the speaker system they drive, is in the reduction of various distortion products at high volume levels.
When an amplifier is driven into clipping by the demands of mid-bass or mid-range musical material, audible distortion occurs in the form of harsh spurious harmonics at higher frequencies. But when separate amplifiers are used to drive a woofer and tweeter in an integrated system, effects of the clipping caused by the demanding mid-bass or mid-range material will not be reproduced by the tweeter and its amplifier.
This design prevents a sense of strain or compression on complex, heavyweight musical material. And it removes what is probably the biggest present obstacle to full-tilt enjoyment of reproduced sound by involved, demanding listeners who want full frequency range, clarity and convincing tonal balance at all listening levels including the loudest.
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There are speakers that offer some of the advantages of the Powered Advent Loudspeaker, but we know of none that combines all of them. We think you will have no trouble hearing what this genuinely new kind of speaker system has to offer. And we hope you will listen to it critically and at length.
If you would like more information before or after hearing it for yourself, please send us the coupon.
Thank you.
To: Advent Corporation, 195 Albany Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139
Please send information on the Powered Advent Loudspeaker, and a list of Advent dealers.
Name, Address, City, State, Zip
Advent Corporation, 195 Albany Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139.
(Audio magazine, Oct. 1977)
Also see:
Advent loudspeakers (ad, Dec. 1972)
Advent "Smaller" Loudspeaker (Equip. Profile, Dec. 1972)
Advent New Vision Series loudspeakers (ad, Apr. 1991)
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