My first encounter with an Audiovector loudspeaker was at the 2019 Toronto Audiofest. Driven by colorful (both sonically and visually) Alluxity electronics, the R 3s sounded pure and very fine. As I sat listening to the R 3 Arretés, the R 8 Arreté, their big brother, sat quietly in the corner, seemingly pleased with the performance of its smaller sibling.
I ended up reviewing the R 81 instead of the R 3, which in retrospect hardly seems fair: It was the R 3 I heard that day, the R 3 that attracted my attention and got me interested in the brand. I didn’t hear a peep from the R 8 Arreté—although I do recall being impressed by the larger speaker’s gorgeous, glossy wood finish, which Audiovector calls Italian Walnut Burl Piano.
The R 3 is a 2.5-way bass-reflex speaker. Its high-frequency driver is an air-motion transformer (AMT). Its two front-firing 6.5" drivers, with carbon-fiber/aramid fiber/synthetic wood resin cones, appear identical but have different motors: “The magnet strengths, the coil windings, the suspension parts—spiders and roll surrounds—are meticulously matched to optimize the exact function of each driver, bass, mid bass, bass/midrange, etc.,” said Audiovector CEO Mads Klifoth in an email. (Mads’s father, Ole, is the designer and also the company founder.) The two drivers overlap at the lowest frequencies, but only the upper driver directly crosses over to the tweeter. The lower crossover frequency—the lower driver’s upper rolloff—is specified as 320Hz.
Not unlike an auto company, Audiovector offers many of its loudspeakers—all but the top models—in various trim levels. The R 3 is available in Signature, Avantgarde, and Arreté. While they share a common cabinet, in some ways the three speakers are quite different from each other. The Signature, for example, has a soft-dome tweeter, while the Avantgarde and Arreté have AMT tweeters—different ones. All are 2.5-way speakers, with the same woofers and midrange drivers, but each of the three models has different crossover frequencies and power-handling abilities.
Audiovector likes to present its technologies in discrete, branded nuggets, which it calls “Concepts,” each with a nifty logo. I admit that at first I found this perhaps a bit slick, but when I started paying close attention, I realized that most if not all of Audiovector’s Concepts correspond to something not just real but unusual—even, in some cases, surprising, such as what at first glance appears to be a power cable, on a fully passive speaker (more on that in a bit). The key to understanding Concepts is to recognize that Audiovector does a few things differently than other loudspeaker manufacturers, then wraps it up and ties it with a bow.
At least two of those Audiovector concepts focus on what I’ll call, more casually than they do, the pursuit of relaxation—a concept I endorse in lifestyle as well as in loudspeakers. Some high-mass loudspeakers can seem a bit, well, constipated; they seem to struggle to let go … of the music. Audiovector speakers are designed to address that issue—to let go of music lightly, to let the music be. The most obvious “Concept” more important with speakers than it is with turntables because, by design, speakers are exposed to far more energy than a turntable is.
