Please talk me out of buying the Avalon Eclipse

For all the time you've wasted on this thread, you could be enjoying the damn speakers already!

@celo

The Avalon Eclipse is a splendid speaker. And it has one trait, almost NO other speaker has (I owned it back in the 1990s, along with the Ascents) and that is, a vanishingly low "grain." With the right amp, the view into the soundstage will feel as though you are hearing a microphone feed at the Metropolitan Opera. In other words, NO GRAIN. I had it with a Jadis Defy 7, and one friend would have (figuratively) murdered me, so much did he like it. The grain is so non-existent that if it were a film, it would be Kodachrome 25, the Holy Grail of photographic slide films (Holy Jesus was that a fine film). Too bad so many people arrived on the planet too late to even know about the era of slide film (which is STILL far better than digital).

You will have to have an amp with no grain (and that’s almost NO amps) to hear this effect clearly. The only other speakers I’ve heard with no grain are the (defunct) Sound Dynamic RTS 3s. They sounded so much like Avalons, I couldn’t believe it.

I hope you bought these. One thing, they do bass very well, but do not have the most "concussive" bass. Others have noted this, too. For me, it was less evident, because I had - at the time - a Versa Dynamics 2.3 turntable. The Versa’s low bass was astounding, so the Eclipses still sounded quite dynamic (just not exceptionally detailed from about 60 hZ down) The Avalon (even the Ascents) lose some of their definition in the midbass, but don’t let that deter you. They are fantastic speakers, and I’ve heard (and reviewed) quite a few far more expensive speakers. I did not have a 150 watt amp, as Atmasphere suggests (who, I assume, that is Ralph Karsten, the designer of Atmasphere). I found the 100 watt Jadis Defy 7 fine, but I also had a Goldmund Mimesis 9 amp, which was 175 watts and finally, my VTL 300s. Frankly, the Eclipse works extremely well (some would say "better" - and I would be one of those) with tubes, but many people don’t use tubes any more (too bad for them!). He liked the Eclipses better than any version of my WATT/Puppy system, my Goldmund speaker system, or even my Infinity speaker system. I agree with him, but only due to that non-existent grain structure (even the WATTS sounded like 100 speed film, which has a grain structure). Only the Kodachrome had absolutely zero grain.

They are magical if you are the kind of person who goes to live UNAMPLIFIED concerts and knows what live music sounds like.

Thanks everyone who has expressed their ideas. Unfortunately, I just found out that one condition I had is not going to happen. We were going to go to TN for the holidays, and I was going to make a stop (still some drive but not 12 hours)! to get the speakers. This trip is cancelled. Oh well, it did not happen. I guess it was not meant to be. Thanks again.

In that case, @gbmcleod and everyone else raving about them were high as a kite. These speakers suck. Forget about them. 

😄. Yeah, don't know what you could have been thinking. Chalk it up to temporary insanity. Complete garbage.