The Absolute Sound awards Avalon Best of Show!

After every major hi-fi event they are always plenty of excellent show reports to read and take in with many of them bestowing awards on the best sounding room and I’m thrilled to announce that The Absolute Sound have awarded the Avalon Saga Signature the best cost no object loudspeaker!

I’ve been an Avalon dealer for over 9 years now, they were in fact the very first speaker I retailed when I started Audio Therapy in 2017. I’ve sold a large number of their speakers since then, but to be fair most of what we have done has been from the lower reaches of the Avalon range, the Saga Signature as featured at the show are priced at around £240,000 a pair in the standard Avalon finishes.

As is often the case the technology they implement in their larger models end up getting trickled down through the range to the more affordable models.

This was a large system which featured a Kalista Dreamplay Streamer / DAC, a Studer Tape Player and an Acoustical Systems turntable, amplifier was Doshi and the system used Purist Audio Design Cabling, Stillpoints Isolation, Entreq Grounding and Acustica Applicata Room Treatment.

I mentioned in my show report that this was one of my favourite rooms of the whole show and I’m delighted that a major publication like The Absolute Sound felt the same way.

This was from my show report:

For me this one of the most complete, engaging, and invisible-sounding systems at the whole show. It was a large room and the Saga Signature certainly appreciated the space with incredible imaging, air, and space. At one point, when I was in the room, the track Queen Mary by Francine Thirteen was playing, and it was possibly the highlight of the whole show for me. The bass articulation, depth, scale, and texture was absolutely sensational.

This following is from Jonathan Valin of The Absolute Sound:

Which brings me to the latest iteration of a classic from another favorite brand, the $290k Avalon Acoustics Saga three-way, four-driver floorstander (one ¾” diamond-diaphragm tweeter, one 7” ceramic midrange, and two 13” composite woofers). Housed in Avalon’s unique, artfully angled cabinet, the Saga offered up the most neutral tonal balance yet on Ahmad Jamal’s “Autumn Leaves,” generating an extremely open, seemingly boxless soundfield peopled with unusually natural-sounding images of piano, double bass, and drumkit. Powered by Doshi’s marvelous tube electronics and sourced by my reference Kalista Dream Play DAC/server/preamp/player, the Saga system was the most realistic-sounding exhibit I’d yet heard. It instantly became one of the chief contenders for Best of Show, along with MBL, Cessaro, and Lirogon (each of which, though arguably less neutral and natural in the midrange, had its own salient virtues).

Best of Show (cost-notwithstanding)

Avalon Acoustics Saga, with the other contenders from MBL, AlsyVox, Liragon, Wilson, Goldmund, Avalos, Cessaro, etc. very close behind.

Best of Show (cost-considered)

Wilson Sasha V.

Best Soundstage

MBL 101 X-Treme MKIII. As noted, no other stereo speaker can turn your room into the space in which a recording was made like this all-encompassing omni.

Best Introduction

Soulution 787 linear-tracking record player.

Biggest Surprise

The rooms at the ACV (Austria Center Vienna). No one knew what to expect, as this was the first year of the Vienna show, but as it turned out, the listening rooms at the ACV were, in general, sonically superior to the rooms at the MOC in Munich.