Audiosmile Advantage

Hi all,

Having become the proud owner of (I believe) the first production Advantages in the world - 001A, 001B, I though a few observations may be of interest! I have not looked hard but have not seen any other user comments yet.

I first saw and heard them at the audio show last September and was interested right away, alrhough they looked a little lost, I thought in that environment. Having collected them from Simon, and installed them in my (smallish) lounge I beleive they look quite distinguished, tallish, but interesting. The floor space taken up is minmimal, and they fit in really well to a domestic environment.

I ordered Flashback cables (highly recommended, as usual) which connect to my Supernait. I now realise that these, and possibly the Advantage needed some running in. So follow a few bullet points. In summary I am delighted with them!

- Neat and nice looking in beach
- Very similar sound to Kensai but much greater headroom and ease of playing
- Lovely and tight bass (adjustable per speaker, one of my requirements)
- As in the blurb, the Kensai are freed from reproducing deep bass and the system happily plays the likes of Nitin Sawney or organ music without problems and the Kensai cones are not visibly moving now.
- Classical music is more expansive and the bass notes and climaxes are very obviously more powerful.
- They are now basically active and you need a preamp or preamp output (as with the Supernait). The S'nait plays at the same volume settings as before which is satisfying.
- I had active speakers since 1983 (Meridian M3) and feel these are a modern and logical upgrade. They seem to gel well with the Naim equipment although I don't intend to start talking about Naim sound..

I'll stop here but cannot see why anyone who enjoys the Kensai would not enjoy this upgraded system.

Stuart

 

Thanks for the feedback Stuart and glad you are enjoying them.

The cheque is in the post ......

But in all seriousness, the whole idea behind the Advantage is to take the Kensai and effectively scale it up without changing the basic character of the speaker, while keeping everything neat, tidy and domestically acceptable to many users.

Hope to see you at the National Audio Show next month.

regards,

 

Thanks for your feedback Stuart.

The sound from the Kensai + Advantage should be the same as that from the Kensai with lower distortion and greater headroom. The only difference is more extended bass below ~50Hz where the Kensai starts to roll off. In some rooms this can excite room modes more than the solo Kensai, but the bass adjust on the Advantage should help.

Here is a graph showing the different bass response of the Kensai Vs. Advantage.



Would you care to share a photo of your set-up?

I plan to use the National Audio Show at the end of September as a springboard to get shops and reviews so hopefully you will be joined by many happy owners soon!

 

hi stuart, glad that you enjoy them, at last you have the first set,