AVID Hifi Reference Three

Contrary to popular belief, bigger is not always better and for many listeners this stunning transducer will convey same emotional connection to music as our larger designs in all but the most cavernous rooms. Exquisite mirror finished stainless steel gleams through our distinctive reference patterned metalwork to create an exterior that commands your admiration.

"a real impression of experiencing the music"- Andrew Everard

Key Features

• Tuned Mass Technology™
• Silk Soft Dome Tweeter
• Reflex Loaded Drive Units

Natural beauty

The integrated stand reduces unwanted room interaction and provides a large resistance mass, especially important with certain floor types.

With the Bass drivers elevated from the floor there is less low frequency distortion, more noticeable within a smaller listening environment. 

For many, the Reference Three has proved to be the sweet spot in our range, offering fabulous clarity, realism and a natural beauty.

"breathtaking imaging and soundstaging"- Andrew Everard

spellbinding

Outstanding musical clarity is achieved with a natural sounding tweeter. The grille has a pattern of holes to minimize horn effects and a titanium bobbin offers a tonally balanced and accurate sound with exceptionally fast transients. Bass is optimised by reflex loading from below the cabinet to reduce room positioning issues and our vibration damping techniques leaving you with music that is spellbinding.

"clarinet and bass before the listener was spellbinding."- Andrew Everard

What's inside

Technology

The perfect loudspeaker would only radiate sound from its drive units and the cabinet would be completely silent. Traditional wooden cabinets have limited strength and the air pressure variations inside the cabinet, created by the drive units, causes the cabinet to vibrate, generating sound. This sound will be out of time with the drivers and results in a ‘muddled’ and distorted sound. Trying to eradicate this problem, many manufacturers have designed cabinets which resist these air pressures, employing materials such as aluminium and carbon fibre, but this does not resolve the problem.

Every time the speaker cone moves the chassis tries to move in the opposite direction, causing vibration which passes into the cabinet. Wooden cabinets flex and vibrate with this energy, converting it to heat and unwanted sound and for years this has been the acceptable solution. Ultra-rigid cabinets do not let this happen and instead this energy becomes trapped in the cabinet and over time the energy builds, finding a weak link in the system where it escapes resulting in a high frequency ringing noise.

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 does not need any specific treatment itself. The benefit is instantly obvious with a clean, focused sound, greater clarity to the music and vocals becoming etched within a transparent soundstage.

Cabinet

Reference Three loudspeakers are constructed from phenomenally stiff aluminium plate up to 20mm thick, which prevents any flexing from internal air pressure that is common with wooden cabinets. Drive units are clamped to the front baffle using our exclusive metal compression plate, equally pressurising the complete circumference rather than the traditional less rigid screw fixing. Dissimilar to other metal loudspeaker designs, they are devoid of internal bracing unsuccessfully trying resist cabinet vibration. Utilising our Tuned Mass Technology (TMT)™ damper, unwanted drive unit vibrations are removed at source, immediately lifting a veil of distortion and leaving crystal clear sound. Inside there are angled baffles to prevent any opportunity for standing waves and with the enclosure being reflex loaded to optimise low frequency performance, the twin ports exiting below the cabinet reduce room positioning issues. Each loudspeaker is painstakingly hand assembled with every component meticulously inspected and features our Reference design patterned metal work of mirror stainless steel and fretwork aluminium panels.

Drivers

Two 6” drivers offer 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.

Fully exploiting External Voice Coil (EVC)™ Technology, the ultra-light titanium former is wound with Hexatech™. This aluminium wire is shaped like honeycomb and increases efficiency by up to 20% by reducing air gaps in the coil windings and is responsible for the extraordinarily fast dynamics. Using a Hybrid™ Neodymium/Ferrite motor drive system employing both ferrite and neodymium magnets, more amplified power is converted into sonic energy for a flawless performance.

The same 4” Tweeter used on all our Reference loudspeakers has a powerful Neodymium magnet and 1⅛” diameter Hexatech™ aluminium voice coil with titanium former. This is rigidly coupled to the front baffle which is machined with an Improved Dispersion Recess (IDR) design, a shaped inset which increases the high-frequency output of the off-axis response.

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.

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 Reference 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.