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None of this ought to suggest a diva who only sings on a very rigid diet. Even more cavalier setups create quite respectable results but proper attention does deliver added percentage points. Enter sound to get to the meat of any review. In this case longer exposure elicits less commentary about the speaker’s sound and more about the quality of one’s collection. Its recorded attributes are conveyed at an occasionally unusually high clip.


The target audience are listeners well past their Sturm und Drang period whose ears are calibrated for nuance. That’s tied at first to the bass tuning which prefers the expressivity and timbres of acoustic instruments to the dull staccato bass of techno à la Love Parade. Because my inner 16-year old is alive and well, one of my favorite tracks includes a number from the Marseille DJ crew Chinese Man and their Groove Sessions. "I’ve got that tune" resamples the vintage Washboard Rhythm Kings’ "Holding my honey’s hand/Hummin’ to myself".


The beat accelerates, the key modulates up. Against the obligatory Hip-Hop killer bass the tune evolves into a very danceable yet melodically interesting and fetching number - though the Avantera wasn’t all that fond of the killer bass. At genre-appropriate levels I wanted for a bit of pressurization and control while transients softened to wrinkle their collective cyborg nose. If Hip-Hop figures high in your music diet, better look elsewhere.


Which doesn’t imply that the Avantera is bass shy. Far from it. Extension is impressive and aside from robotic synth bass all other demands are happily met. The finale of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez [DG] exhibited all the requisite scale and even majesty. Towards the end the composer throws away the leash on the orchestra and the Avantera released the audience into the dark of night with truly massive impact of symphonic grandeur. Despite such sheer impact the sonic image remained nuanced. Instruments neither blurred in space nor tonally. I could easily hone in on individual performers if so inclined. This did not require the type of exclusionary focus that would lose sight of the emotionally bigger picture.


Solo piano exhibited the same qualities. Frédéric Chiu’s reading of the Lt. Kijé Suite transcriptions for Harmonia Mundi shows off the instrument with plenty of body. Many speakers favor the piano’s right hand over the left. The Avantera isn’t merely craftily tuned, its low strings are as dynamically engaging as the high ones. This is supported by a tonal balance which abandons the treble lead of earlier Audio Physic designs. Subjectively the Avantera’s tonality is actually a tad subdued rather than bright and fresh.

Where the Virgo directly on axis still registered a very mild emphasis toward the upper reaches of my remaining hearing, the Avantera completely eliminated that. The treble is so clean and effortless that some listeners at first might suspect a hair of undue civility. Which isn’t the case. It’s simply too transparent to register any longer as treble per se. For sadly obvious tribute I just had to cue up Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. At the end of "Me & Mr. Jones" there’s a barely touched cymbal which always causes me melancholy. The Avanterra went for my heart strings with realistically metallic decays whose extreme resolution was achingly subtle rather than splashily coarse.