First Impressions: Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined

Retro in looks, sure, but modern in its approach, the Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined is a loudspeaker that begs to be played in front of an audience with its energetic, lively performance.

Introduction

As a brand, Danish hi-fi company Audiovector has existed for 45 years, and it is the rarest of things in a hi-fi market – a father and son company.

So it’s rather interesting to have a look at their latest speaker – the Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined – which is based on one of their first commercial speakers.

The original was designed and developed by the father (Ole Kilfoth), with this reimagined version released under the tutelage of the son (Mads) – which neatly describes the two generations of hi-fi folk the Trapeze straddles as well as its attempts to appeal to both.

I went over to Copenhagen to Audiovector’s offices to take a closer look at this retro-looking but modern hi-fi speaker.

Availability

The Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined (or Trapeze Ri for short) is distributed through Renaissance Audio, and it’ll fetch a price of £15,500 / $19,000 when it goes on sale in mid-June 2024.

Design

• Slanted design
• Four finishes
• Single-wire connections

There’s been a trend in the hi-fi market of returning to retro designs – hi-fi nostalgia as it were. And while the Trapeze Ri, to give it its shortened name, looks to the past and feels retro in that context, there’s a reason why it has the ‘Reimagined’ moniker. Because although the Trapeze Ri’s foundations are rooted some forty years ago, it hasn’t just been given a new lick of paint.

It’s a three-way floorstanding speaker, though relatively small and compact compared to the usual size of ‘traditional’ floorstanders even though it takes up a bigger footprint. Stood next to other Audiovector speakers and it looks dainty, which adds to its charm and should add to its appeal for those who want a speaker that chimes with their living room décor.

Its lopsided cabinet is not a design quirk but a choice that ‘toes’ the speaker in, angled towards the listening spot while remaining parallel to the back wall. In theory, it makes the Trapeze RI less of a fuss to position. I’d also say it’s a “sitting-down” speaker rather than one you’d stand up and listen to, given its height and ear-level placement of the AMT tweeter.

The shape of the cabinet is also intended to eliminate standing waves within it to reduce colouration of the sound or any unwanted distortion. Inside the cabinet is Audiovector’s Diffraction Absorption Control, a thick layer of “natural” felt around the mid and treble drivers that absorbs reflected energy from the drivers.

Gone is the front-firing port of the original with two positioned at the rear. The one at the bottom is a reflex port for the bass unit, while there’s another towards the top to help disperse energy from the tweeter unit. Cover it up and it has an interesting effect on the speaker’s overall performance.

There’s only the option to single-wire the unit, and below the connections is a dial to tweak the speaker’s damping factor. Audiovector encourages customers play with this setting (of which there are three positions) and make a choice based on what’s right for their room – there is no right or wrong in this instance.

And of course there’s a choice of colours, with Audiovector offering White Silk, Italian Walnut, Black Ash, and Nordic Oak real wood veneers. A black grille cloth is included and you can request custom piano colours too. The finishes I saw all looked rather lovely, though the finish on the Black Ash was probably my favourite.

Features

• Freedom Grounding Cable
• Damping Feature
• Simple but high-quality crossover

This three-way floorstanding speaker features a 12-inch high-power mid/bass driver, a 5-inch high-speed midrange driver and Audiovector’s SEC Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeter.

The multiple mentions of ‘speed’ are an indication of what Audiovector values across the frequency range: a fast, rapid response that minimises distortion, pushing music into a room with plenty of energy.

The Freedom Grounding Cable focuses on reducing the distortion between the drive units. Here the currents travelling through the chassis are dealt with – as I understand it – in a separate crossover and routed to the ground terminal of your wall socket or mains. By filtering out these currents, Audiovector claims the Trapeze Ri achieves a cleaner, more accurate sound with a low noise floor.

The Damping Factor feature offers a degree of flexibility in matching with your hi-fi equipment. Position one is for transistor amplifiers with medium damping factor, position two is for high power transistor amps with a high damping factor and position three is for tube amps with a low damping factor.

The crossover technology within the Trapeze Ri is Audiovector’s own in-house solution, a simple design sourced from high-quality components for a more efficient performance that makes it easier for the amplifier to drive the speaker.

Frequency response is 23 – 53kHz, while average impedance is 8ohms, with a minimum impedance of 6.5ohms. Again, that should make this loudspeaker easy to match with a range of amplifiers.

Sound Quality

• Goes loud pretty easily
• Lively, entertaining sound
• Weighty bass performance

A chat with Ole Kilfoth, the founder of Audiovector, revealed a few interesting insights into his approach to sound, which is essentially to reproduce the feeling live music; as if a concert or a band in a jazz club were playing right before you.

And across the demos I heard over the two days at Audiovector’s offices, there was an emphasis on playing these speakers loud – and why not? They respond well, the energy they output is almost overwhelming at times – the scale and size of the sound is not what I would have expected from a speaker of its size. They can easily fill a room, even a large one.

The sound is clear and open, big and wide; the energy they give off gives the speaker a rather rambunctious feel with some of the tracks played, and most heartening is that it does all of this without stoking distortion. It’s a clean sound, though slightly warmer in tone than Audiovector’s less expensive speakers.

The stereo imaging frequently impresses in describing the soundstage, the bass is pounding, assertive, and energetic – it would seem as if Audiovector has attained its goal of making the music you’re listening sound as if it’s live. Even rather dingy recordings sound not too shabby through the speaker, though again there’s thousands of pounds / dollars / euros worth of amplification and streaming to assist.

I was also shown what blocking the treble port can have on the sound, the speaker sounding closed off and reduced in terms of clarity and expression. And it’s not just the treble that’s impacted either, the midrange feels duller as the treble port has the effect of opening the sound that bit more.

The Freedom Grounding Cable also has an effect, though perhaps my ears were worse than other people in the room (or I was focusing too much on something else) as the effect was more subtle to me but I could hear more clarity and reach with the cable connected than without.

And the Damping Factor is an interesting feature too. Switched to position one (with a track that escapes my mind) and there was more snap and attack to the bass. Switched to a different position and the Trapeze Ri generated a warmer, more rounded sound that wasn’t as explosive with the bass as the first setting but richer in tone. Depending on the equipment you have at your disposal, this could be a fun little feature to play with.