There aren’t too many companies like Audiovector around. In a world in which independent brands, be they from-the-shed hi-fi outfits or mom and pop cookie floggers, often succumb to the lure of outside investment or external ownership, the idea of a small-scale, family-run business making high-end loudspeakers is in danger of seeming anachronistic.
That’s no issue for founder Ole Klifoth and his son Mads, Audiovector’s CEO and an equally integral driving force behind both its identity and success.
Speak to Mads in person, and it won’t be long before he’s passionately proselytising the virtues of independent ownership, a state of affairs he believes retains his company’s creative control, credibility and commitment to quality at any cost.
Audiovector has its own way of doing things, and it's a methodology that has led to some of the most unique designs around.
We're enamoured of the brand's Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined speakers, and noted with admiration during our R6 Arreté review just how consistent the company has remained during its considerable lifespan.
Crafting loudspeakers that range from a few thousand quid to the sort of money normally associated with luxury sports cars, the Danish company is proud of its identity.
When you’re a business that, as far as possible, seeks to integrate bespoke drive units for every single one of your speaker ranges, you can understand that desire to keep Audiovector… as Audiovector. From what we can see, it's working rather well.
On the subject of bespoke drive units, Audiovector's latest flagship floorstanders have plenty. We have been lured over to Danish shores on the promise of hearing the new big-money Arreté flagship loudspeakers before practically anyone else in the world; who would turn down an opportunity like that?
The R10 Arreté are packed with drivers, boasting eight 15cm long-throw bass units alongside three 16.5cm carbon sandwich drivers tackling the mids and lower-mids, plus a pair of 38cm tweeters covering the frequencies up to 53,000Hz.
Our official Audiovector R10 Arreté news story can give you the full rundown on the firepower these new speakers pack, but the short version is that they pack quite a lot.
Before us is a decent system to drive them, too. Audiovector's test facilities are a sight to behold, partly because they're just a lovely space (great kitchen, nice aspect) and partly because there's some serious tech on-hand to drive the star performers: behind the R10 Arreté we find a Naim ND555 music streamer hooked up to a trio of Soulution components: a 760 DAC, 727 preamplifier and 711 stereo amplifier. Nice.
How does all that pedigree (and expense) stack up when the time comes to fire them up? Well, the R10 Arreté are certainly fun.
The Audiovector team make a point that so many speakers can become more restrictive and specialised as prices rise, with many big-money units excelling at bringing out the refinement and cohesion of, say, orchestral numbers while making the music you actually listen to most of the time – rock, hip-hop, dance, pop, electronic – sound as dull as ditchwater.
These are certainly not dull speakers. Change of the Century by Ornette Coleman is served by the R10’s full, cinematic approach, and we are treated to a full-hearted rendition as the speakers latch on to the jazz tune’s ebbing, flowing rhythms while bringing out the expressiveness of each dynamic shift.
The R10’s dynamic abilities, in fact, demand to be heard. Pearl Jam’s Present Tense is up next, and while perennial testers and listeners will be familiar with its credentials as a slow builder with a rocking payoff, you would be hard pressed to find a pair of loudspeakers with such a chasm between the gentle troughs and those Everest-like peaks.
Once you’re past the four-minute mark, Jack Irons’ drums become so forceful and persistent that he might as well be hammering his kit in the room with you. It’s a cliché you may have heard before, but one that is justified here.
Details aren’t jettisoned overboard in pursuit of a quick adrenaline fix. Irons’ drums reverberate around us as the R10 pull out the crisp, raw tone of a snare being smacked with full force, while Eddie Vedder also sounds as though he’s flown in from Seattle and has joined us for a live session on the outskirts of Copenhagen – it’s enough for a fellow journo to jokingly enquire whether Eddie’s actually hiding behind the speakers with his very own microphone.
The levels of textural insight are remarkable here, as befits a set of floorstanders sailing north of £150,000. The real treat of visiting Audiovector (aside from some very nice people and plenty of excellent Danish food) is the chance to use the company’s listening rooms as you so choose, giving us the chance to take charge of the coveted iPad and unleash our own tunes upon the unsuspecting floorstanders.
Whatever we play, they continue to deliver on that promise of visceral entertainment. The strings on Björk’s Bachelorette are brought out with bite and texture, the piano on Radiohead’s Codex shimmers with a glassy quality, and suddenly we’re aware of instruments actually being played rather than merely reproduced.
Indeed, a flute is a metal object that requires breath to be blown into it, a drum is something hit by a human with a drumstick, and we have a singer who sings a song. Speakers with detail levels such as these do well to remind you of the process behind the sound, not merely the rote reproduction of the sound itself.
The Audiovector R10 Arreté are immensely appealing speakers. That sounds like an impenetrably fatuous statement to make about something with an outlay of a decently specced Porsche 911, but high expenditure is no guarantee of a good time – a season ticket holder at Manchester United could tell you that.
What charms us about the R10 Arreté is their desire to place musicality at the heart of what they do. In a world in which high-end hi-fi can lose sight of its primary purpose in pursuit of a mythologised ideal of ultimate 'purity' or 'fidelity', Audiovector still maintains an oddly grounded, even democratic view of its flagship speakers – they are designed to make your music sound as fun and entertaining as possible.
"Skål" to that, as they say in Denmark.
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Read our five-star Audiovector Tapeze Reimagined review
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