2024 Golden Ear: Avantgarde Trio G3 Loudspeaker

$109,000–$175,000/pair

For the better part of my 54 years as an audiophile, I have avoided horn-loaded loudspeakers owing to horn colorations. Then I had the opportunity to audition a pair of the latest version of Avantgarde’s Trios, the company’s flagship all-horn system, in a private home, set-up, adjusted, and tweaked to the nines, with four (!) of Avantgarde’s massive horn-loaded Spacehorn woofers, buttressed by the biggest REL sub-bass system. One of the principal things that separates electronically reproduced music from the real thing is that in live music, the tone, the timbre, the basic character of voices and acoustic instruments do not change with changes in level. To a degree almost unique in my experience, this is also true of the Trios. In a large but not immense room I heard without question the widest dynamic range I’ve ever personally experienced from a home-audio system, also the freest and most effortless. At the other end of the loudness scale, tonal drop-out at very low levels is absolutely nonexistent. The Trios are probably not completely free from horn colorations, but such as may exist never intruded upon my enjoyment, appreciation, or involvement, which was total. Indeed, the overall tonal balance struck me as falling within the bounds of what I call “acceptable neutrality,” yet with a degree of life, vitality, vividness, presence, and tactility all but unprecedented in my experience of home audio. When Jacob Heilbrun concluded his review by stating that Avantgarde “has set a new benchmark for performance,” he was not overstating. When I first auditioned the Trios, I was impressed—long before the end, I was blown away…and still am. (346)