Audio AudioSolutions Overture speakers arrived a few days ago for test and review. Here are the official intro and few images…
The choice of naming speaker series Overture is not a simple coincidence or easy-pick for a nice name. Overture is an introduction to something more substantial while at the same time being itself quite delicate and majestic. Overture speaker series despite being cheapest AudioSolutions product indeed is first step in High-End world and also AudioSolutions world.
Usually, it is top-class models that gives a tone how cheaper models should sound like and look like. Usually, this is achieved by downgrading existing top model. We started in opposite with Overture. It’s Overture that gives high-end starting tone for the upper series. Downgrade from something better is quite simple to achieve, meanwhile having high-class product from the very beginning and pushing limits in more expensive products it is something that needs a lot of effort and knowledge.
Due to some half year in developing construction, some clever engineering from years of experience was taken into account. The result is the very fast production of Overture series. Shorter assembly time directly translates to lower self-cost. This allows us to use much more expensive materials and technologies that is usually used in such price tag speakers.
We offer 13! different finishes for Overture. 8 of them is piano gloss finishes with anti-scratch surface technology! 3 finishes include different shades of Oak and two matured kinds of wood for retro styling. I’d say this has superb WAF factor which is usually major force in buying speakers sadly.
No usual sound-damaging grilles are used in Overture. Those who track AudioSolutions activity know that engineer Gediminas Gaidelis don’t like grilles and have the strong opinion upon not using them. However, grilles is a must for cheaper speakers. We couldn’t design usual grilles that wouldn’t interfere with sound reproduction. Usually, it was not cloth as we thought at first – it was a frame. An Even thin-braced frame was creating a lot of reflections. We decided to raise our expenses for better sound reproduction. We designed double removable front baffle.
One set of the speaker includes four front baffles. One pair is covered with acoustically transparent cloth, other pairs are painted in speaker color. All four panels are identical in shape and performance characteristics.
It is usual nowadays to use waveguide for soft or hard domes. It raises sensitivity and creates controlled radiation pattern. While this is beneficial we decided to go a bit further. Since by default we think that customer will have at least little acoustically treated room we do not control radiation, but we unload tweeter in its critical region. As You may notice usually speakers in lower price region plays nice when driven
up to 90dB-95db. Troubles starting when they are driven really hard I mean like 100dB (trust me it is VERY loud don’t dream about 120dB in a home).
Usual soft dome tweeters starting to distort because of soft materials and act more like waving sea than piston driver and even worse whole assembly of coil and suspension starts to make radial movements on some specific frequencies because the suspension is too soft (better sensitivity for datasheet). All this described above translates into screamy/noisy/unpleasant tone change. Our Mini-Horn is working in quite a narrow band around tweeter’s resonance frequency where most of the distortions described above appear. The result is unloaded drive system in the specific area and lowered distortions. Our Mini-Horn lowers distortions by 8dB in that region.
In Overture we introduced self-locking cabinet and this technique of ours is used in freshly launched Vantage anniversary speakers too. This technique gives very strong joints between different parts. Fully assembled enclosure is much more tough and rigid compared to similar sized
and priced speakers.
Again, engineer Gediminas Gaidelis always was against PCB because of thin layers and was using pin-to-pin assembly like is usual in tube amps.
Well, it was true until we recently found a good supplier which offers triple copper thickness on PCB compared to traditional PCB’s. Finally, measurement shows no difference between pin-to-pin construction and PCB mounted.
As I mentioned in beginning we at AudioSolutions starting from the beginning and pushing prototype to the max until engineer Gediminas is satisfied, then we they with more expensive models. Maybe that’s why many people say that it is no matter which model customer will listen. It can be Vantage and it can be Overture. The basic canones, the roots of right engineering is in all AudioSolutions pairs.