Avantgarde Omega Duo G2 Review

booaaaa -- Wed, 12/29/2010 - 02:46

anyone familiar with the omega duos? any comments on its plus and minuses?

nasvictor -- Wed, 12/29/2010 - 08:23

I recently listed quite long to both the Duo and the Uno, and finally traded my Living Voice's in and bought a pair of Unos. The UNO's were more intimate than the DUO's. You sit closer to the music. I noticed no horn colouration and unless you sit a meter for the loudspeaker you can integrate the horns with the woofers.
Both loudspeakers are extremely dynamic and extremely open, especially in the mids and highs. They are so revealling that you need a good setup cause you will hear everything. Listening to a Mahler symphonly, it's easy to pick out the individual instruments, without loosing the overall picture.
The combine wonderfull with my 300B tube amplifier from Italy, but I also heard them on a Audio Note Meishu and a Accuphase E-560 with good results.
You can get the horns in differents colours to match your room and since you can change the crossover frequency I was able to set them closer to the back wall then my previous speakers. Both speakers will work in room starting from 20 square meters.
Minuses from my experience, the burn-in time is very very long and I may want to neutralize the highs/mid a little by picking a Furutech FS Alpha loudspeaker cable for instance instead of the current 47 Labs OTA cable.
Anyway, since they are so "extreme" (in a good sense) you need to listen to this speaker, cause you will hate them of love them.
Me, I love them.

nasvictor -- Wed, 12/29/2010 - 08:26

Just a few extra notes, they combined also quite well with Manley, but were a terrible combination with Bryston

booaaaa -- Wed, 12/29/2010 - 10:19

thanks very much for the info. thats one thing that i find the AG's weakness to integrate the mid highs with the woofers. somehow i cant get it to sound fully integrated but again maybe the burn in time is very long. hope things improve over time. tx again Vic

nasvictor -- Mon, 02/14/2011 - 16:15

I hear and read that a lot, that people don't get the AG's to intergrate. Remember that on the back of the speaker you can set the crossover frequency and the volume of the subwoofer. They did this to integrate the speakers into almost every listening environment.
It's a difficult job, cause these speakers are so tranparent that you will notice ever movement. Remember that the midrange horn has no crossover! You will hear everything that is physically possible
I had a problem that the sound of the right box was arriving slightly earlier to the listening chair that the sound of the left speaker. After some measurement it turned out that the right speaker was half an inch closer than the left speaker...
This is one speaker that you can test the skills of your dealer with. A good one will leave you happy, a bad one...well you can guess.
For the DIY just check former AG importer Jim Smith's Get Better Sound book. The best audio book I have ever read, with a good explanation how to setup speakers.
One last thing, try unshielded powercables...

booaaaa -- Mon, 02/14/2011 - 21:44

On the integration problem i guess time is of the essence. with time and patience in tweaking the xover points, you can get it close. although i still think the amp supplied to the subs is probably not as good as the amps driving the mids n highs.
I had a similar problem on imbalance n going nuts about it. i am having a problem of the left box actually sounding louder? causing the imaging of vocals to be off center. i have to admit the room is not accoustically great. the left box is closer to the left wall while the right speaker does not have a right wall!! haha. might that be the case? staging to the right is not focused like the one on the left. correcting this with physical position of the left speaker results in an annoying off center visual.