Having owned a pair of N5's for quite a while now I was excited to hear that Avi had developed and put into production an active sub designed to use with them and thus making a 2.1 system, I immediately drove to Nailsworth and bought one, here are my findings. The sub has 40hz and 80hz settings, three built in 100 watt power amps, built in pre amp, dac, it has four x toslink inputs, one x usb, also one x analogue and it has an Avi branded handset unlike the usual all for one job they used to use. Avi also include with the sub along with its mainslead and remote, 2 x lengths of speaker cable and an optical lead which is a nice touch and helps to get you up and running quickly. it is a neatly sized unit 34 x 34 x 34cm making room placement easy, it has excellent fit and finish as I find all Avi products to have. There is a 2 inch digital display in the top right hand corner which lets you know which input your on and it also displays the volume and bass levels during adjustment and then once you've finished adjusting it reverts back to the input display. once you've plugged in all your input devices you can then tailor the subs bass levels to your requirements and once set up the sub retains your settings for each one individually which saves the need to constantly adjust the bass between music/movies/gaming which is great. The sub integrates seemlessly with the N5's, never does is muddy or spoil the mids and highs and because the incremental adjustments are subtle enough it's easy to tailor it perfectly for musical playback and also for the booms and bangs in movies and gaming. When I used my old goldring gr1 turntable through the analogue input the sub added just enough weight to make the deck sound more expensive as I always felt it lacked the weight of say a P3 or Rpm5. The subs bass is tight and articulate , it never feels like it's out of it's depth nor does it appear to get stressed with complex bass lines or faster electro bass, some subs I've heard can make the complex and faster bass lines sound like one deep note but not the Avi. You can also turn the sub off making it two channel if you prefer not to add any bass. In summary I've heard the Adm9.1's with a sub and that combo does out perform it's cheaper sibling on musical play back but where the 2.1 system really excels is its versatility and it's ability to play everything extremely well, whatever music I played through it I enjoyed it, never once have I felt like it's let me down and at the end of the day that's what it's all about for me, enjoying the music. £1300 for the complete system is a bargain and it also cleared up all my boxes, wires, racks and also the need to add more of the same by adding an AV system. It's a big thumbs up from me for another innovative product from Avi.
