Avantgarde Uno's and duo's

To my ear, the primary difference is that the lower x-over frequency of the Duo
makes the woofer integration a bit tidier. As to room size, the horns on both
the Uno and the Duo have limited dispersion and can be used near the
boundaries in smallish rooms. Personally though, I prefer either speaker when
it's pulled away from the walls a bit since, IMHO, the imaging improves.

Again, IMHO, if the sub integration on the Uno works for you, the Duo may not
justify the extra $.

Marty

In a smallish room, the Uno can work very well - but one should still sit at least 10' from the horns for best integration. In the Uno, the subs have to work up to the 220Hz cutoff of the mid horn, whereas the larger Duo mid horn goes down to 170 Hz.

Pedrillo, the above two responses have summed it up well. The main problem with Avantgardes is that they do not sound good unless you sit a fair distance away from them - this is because the drivers are spaced so far apart. Sit any closer than 3m (9ft) and the speaker loses coherence. You can hear each horn as a seperate source. This problem is worse with the Duo's since the horns are spaced further apart. If your listening room does not allow you the space to sit far from them, then I would forget about either Uno or Duo and consider some other speaker instead.

The other problem with Avantgardes is that they are really DIFFICULT to set up. When I auditioned the Duo's, the dealer was unable to get them to sound right in his small room. Nothing he tried seemed to work, they still sounded incoherent. He just could not get the subwoofer to work with the horns. Very disappointing, given that he was the dealer.

They are very revealing of upstream electronics. If you use a second rate amplifier, the results could be disastrous. As I found out the same day with the dealer trying several different amplifiers.

But ... get them in the right room, with right electronics, and you have a killer speaker. Remember, good sound is 1/3 gear, 1/3 room, and 1/3 YOU. Good luck with your quest :)

What amp are you using? If you don't need the high efficiency of the horns you may be much better off with a dynamic speaker that would be more cohesive in sound and take up less room space.

Blessings, Bob