AVID Hifi EVO FOUR
The AVID EVO FOUR pairs explosive dynamics and weighty, disciplined bass with a holographic soundstage that makes its compact cabinets vanish. The Ear admired its scale, speed and musical involvement, while Pursuit Perfect System highlighted exceptional layering, clarity and treble air. A seriously engineered stand-mount for vivid, room-filling listening.
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Nicely Roasted
Sound Quality
90/100
Build Quality
94/100
Value for Money
85/100
Pros
Exceptionally expansive, precise three-dimensional imaging; reviewers report that the cabinets effectively disappear.
Deep, tight and authoritative bass for a stand-mount, with strong rhythmic drive that does not routinely cloud the midrange.
High dynamic capability, speed and articulation, remaining composed at very high playback levels.
Premium, substantial construction with aluminium baffles, vibration-control engineering and high-quality terminals.
Cons
Energetic treble can sound hot or overly dominant with bright recordings, loud playback or revealing electronics.
Some male vocals may lack the tonal fullness and smoothness of warmer, more midrange-forward rivals.
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What Reviewers Are Saying
SOUND QUALITY PERFORMANCE 90/100
The EVO FOUR is repeatedly described as an authoritative, highly resolved stand-mount with unusually weighty bass, huge spatial presentation and the ability to play loudly without losing composure. Its deliberately vivid balance brings exceptional clarity and excitement, though several reviewers found the upper registers can become prominent with bright recordings or unsuitable partnering.
Bass
92/100
For a 160mm two-way, reviewers found the bass notably deep, tight and substantial, with one describing it as surprisingly big and another suggesting many owners may not need a subwoofer. It is praised for rhythmic drive and authority without routinely swamping the soundstage, although its generous low-end presence is clearly part of the speaker's character.
Mid
87/100
Reviewers hear considerable midrange insight, clarity and separation, with vocals carved convincingly into the soundstage. However, more than one assessment notes that some male voices can lack the boldness, fullness and solidity offered by tonal rivals, while the response is less midrange-forward than a classic BBC-style monitor.
Treble
86/100
The coated soft-dome tweeter earns strong praise for precision, articulation, air, shimmer and abundant micro-detail. Its energetic upper-frequency balance can also make sibilance more noticeable, and reviewers found treble could become hot or dominant with certain recordings, louder listening, or revealing electronics.
Soundstage Imaging
95/100
This is a standout strength: reviewers repeatedly say the speakers disappear, producing an exceptionally broad, deep and high three-dimensional stage. Image outlines, layering and organisation are described as ultra-precise and holographic, with vocals and instruments strongly defined in space.
Dynamics
94/100
The EVO FOUR is widely praised for speed, articulation, timing and a sense of weight and authority that exceeds expectations for its compact format. The Ear reports that it can play very loudly and that little seems to faze it, while describing its dynamic capability as huge when the music demands it.
Assessments of Build Quality, Usability, and Overall Propositions.
Build Quality
94/100
Reviewers consistently portray the EVO FOUR as an exceptionally substantial, premium-built loudspeaker. The thick aluminium front and rear panels, custom terminals, carefully engineered driver mounting and exemplary packaging all receive praise, with The Ear calling the engineering quality superb and noting full UK manufacture.
Value for Money
85/100
At £8,000, reviewers are clear that this is a costly, unapologetically premium stand-mount rather than a budget proposition. They also find the construction, distinctive engineering and unusually forceful performance persuasive at that price, but recommend an audition because its forward, high-energy presentation and system matching needs make it less universally suited than a conventional rival.
Reviews & Sources
Professional reviews and sources for this product's Watt'n Potatoes analysis.
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Specifications
- HF DRIVER:
- 1x 28mm (Acuflex™ hand coated soft dome)
- MF/LF DRIVER:
- 1x 160mm (75mm Titanium Voice Coil Former)
- FREQUENCY RESPONSE:
- 43Hz - 20KHz ±3dB
- SENSITIVITY:
- 87dB @2.83V/1m
- RECOMMENDED POWER:
- 30 - 150W
- IMPEDANCE:
- 8Ω
- CROSSOVER TOPOLOGY:
- 2 WAY, 2ND ORDER
- CABINET CONSTRUCTION:
- ALUMINIUM PLATE FRONT AND REAR. MRMDF PRECISION HAND-CRAFTED CABINET
- DIMENSIONS:
- 363 x 200 x 449mm (HXWXD)
- FINISHES:
- BLACK FRONT/REAR BRUSHED ANODISED BAFFLE. BLACK OR WHITE GLOSS FINISHED CABINET
- NET WEIGHT:
- 15 KG
Manufacturer's Description — AVID Hifi
First impressions are important, and our compact EVO FOUR impressively reproduces music with such scale, you will believe they are a much larger loudspeaker.
Utilising the development of our Reference loudspeakers, it quickly reveals an incredible bass power, speed and clarity that will make you marvel over your most treasured music.
"Mids and treble offer information by the shovel load"- Paul Rigby
Key Features
- Tuned Mass Technology™
- Silk Soft Dome Tweeter
- Reflex Loaded Bass Driver
Elegant Lines
Beautifully but purposefully styled, the hand crafted, angled cabinet eliminates internal standing waves, with strategically placed bracing maintaining cabinet rigidity, reducing resonance interfering with your musical enjoyment.
Cascaded from our Reference series, the drivers are mounted on precision machined 20mm thick aluminium front baffles, kept narrow to minimise sound interference, with the solid aluminium rear baffle rigidly mounting the high quality crossover.
"I just cannot stop grinning"- Giancarlo Massironi
CLARITY OF SOUND
Channelling unwanted vibration that you normally feel in the loudspeaker cabinet to our Tuned Mass Technology (TMT™) damping element ensures that everything, especially the cone itself remains free of colouration and the sound remains pure and smooth.
Reflex loading optimises low frequency performance and our angled tuned port fires below the cabinet onto the diffusing plate minimising location issues and producing a wonderful unfatiguing clarity of sound.
"one of the best stand-mount hi-fi loudspeakers I have heard"- Trevor Butler
What's inside
Technology
Since inception, AVID has placed energy flow at the heart of all its designs. Every system creates vibrations, those you want and those you don’t and the key to good sound reproduction is separating those vibrations at source, making sure the ‘bad’ vibrations have a path-of-least-resistance to an ‘energy sink’ where it can be harmlessly eliminated. With our turntables this resulted in the massive Acutus sub-chassis and for our loudspeakers, we developed the Tuned Mass Technology (TMT)™ damping system, which tackles the problem of unwanted energy at source.
Through extensive experimentation, we found that having a suitable mass loosely coupled to the drive unit creates an effective path for this unwanted energy. With all other paths now ‘High Impedance’, the easiest path for energy flow is to the TMT™ damper. Being decoupled, the damper can freely vibrate, dissipating any energy internally resolving the problem BEFORE it even leaves the drive unit, so the cabinet is less affected than ones without this technology. The benefit is instantly obvious with a clean, focused sound, greater clarity to the music and vocals becoming etched within a transparent soundstage.
Cabinet
Cascaded directly from our Reference Four, the front baffle is precision machined from 20mm thick aluminium plate, the drive units clamped to the baffle using our exclusive metal compression plate, equally pressurising the complete circumference rather than the traditional less rigid screw fixing. Utilising our Tuned Mass Technology (TMT)™ damper, unwanted drive unit vibrations are removed at source, minimising cabinet distortion, immediately lifting a veil of distortion, and leaving crystal clear sound. The rear baffle which supports the crossover, is also made from aluminium, helping with the overall stiffness of the cabinet.
The cabinet is hand crafted from 18mm moisture resistant MDF, each component part precision machined using a 5 axis CNC and hand assembled. With extensive internal bracing, internal air pressure is easily controlled, so dynamic sound quality is preserved. Maintaining the reflex ported design principle, this is implemented in a vertical, downward firing position under the cabinet. This design allows for a low frequency response and makes the loudspeaker amazingly room tolerant and easy to accommodate in any small to medium-sized room.
Drivers
EVO uses a 4” Tweeter employing Acuflex™ Technology, a specially engineered damping compound is applied to the soft silk dome of the tweeter creating a diaphragm that exhibits controlled cancelling break up, or accurate flexing, meaning each break-up mode is counteracted by another in the opposite direction. This cancellation of break-up modes leaves nothing, but a pure and natural sound. With a powerful Ferrite vented magnet and 1⅛” diameter Hexatech™ aluminium voice coil, it is rigidly coupled to the front baffle which is purposed machined with an Improved Dispersion Recess (IDR) design, a shaped inset which increases the high-frequency output of the off-axis response.
Built into the Uniflow™ aerodynamically designed basket, the 6” Bass driver offers an awesome bass performance and utilising our Tuned Mass Technology (TMT)™ damper to remove unwanted vibration, the Damped Polymer Composite Cone remains distortion free. Unlike other loudspeakers that suffer from vibration issues and try to mitigate the problem using trendy cone materials, AVID have resolved the vibration issue at source, just leaving a stunning clarity of sound.
Both Bass and Tweeter exploit the External Voice Coil (EVC)™ Technology, a design that moves the magnetic drive system to within the voice coil, eliminating stray magnetic flux by effectively directing all the magnetic energy to the voice coil, improving heat dissipation, and reducing cone breakup for a flawless performance.
Crossover
Crossovers are a hidden component within the loudspeaker, dividing unfiltered audio signals from the amplifier and suppling each driver with the signal range it was designed to reproduce and is essentially the brain of the loudspeaker. Limiting the number of parts in the crossover reduces distortion with component selection and quality control being vital to achieve the best sound. Essentially there are three types of component within the crossover design: Capacitors, Inductors and Resistors. The importance of selecting the correct specification and value of each component cannot be understated, each working in unison to obtain the highest performance. After using sophisticated computer simulation to establish these values, final component selection is done through extensive listening tests.
Exclusively employing ClarityCap™ capacitors for all EVO loudspeakers, their CopperConnect™ technology dramatically reduces grain boundary crossings and signal path resistance and using higher rated voltage versions greatly reduces Equivalent series resistance (ESR) allowing the capacitor to achieve new levels of audio performance. Air Core Inductors offer significant subjective audible improvements over less expensive alternatives. AVID inductors are wound with 1.25mm self-bonding enamelled wire on air core plastic rectangular bobbins. Using this heavy gauge wire achieves a lower DC Resistance (DCR) for better Bass control and was chosen purely on the basis of superb sound quality.
Verified Dealers
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Authorized dealers for AVID Hifi EVO FOUR
- Holt Hill — online and in-store — Andover, Massachusetts, United States (website)
- à la carte productions — in-store — Palm Coast, Florida, United States (website)
- Akalın Muzik Ltd. — in-store — İstanbul, Turkey (website)
- Alen Audio — in-store — Extramurs, Comunidad Valenciana, Spain (website)
- Anagram Audio — online and in-store — Bury St Edmunds, England, United Kingdom (website)
- Analogue Seduction — online and in-store — Whittlesey, England, United Kingdom (website)
- Andertons — online and in-store — Guildford, England, United Kingdom (website)
- ARK Audio — online and in-store — Borensberg, Östergötlands län, Sweden (website)
- Audio Centrum — Hungary (website)
- Audio Domain — online and in-store — Stadtbezirke I, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany (website)
and 55 more verified dealers