In the time domain, the Avanti's step response (fig.5) indicates that the three upper-frequency units are connected with the same positive acoustic polarity, even though, despite its sloped-back baffle, the speaker is not time-coherent. The woofers are connected with inverted acoustic polarity, which leads to a smooth hand-over of the step wave from the midrange units in fig.5, which in turn implies good frequency-domain integration between the units.

Fig.5 Audio Physic Avanti III, step response on tweeter axis at 50" (5ms time window, 30kHz bandwidth).

Finally, the Audio Physic's cumulative spectral-decay plot (fig.6) is simply superb! Other than some well-suppressed delayed energy at 5.3kHz, which I suspect is due to a metal-cone mode, the graph is beautifully clean, which correlates with the speaker's clear presentation and absence of treble grain.

Fig.6 Audio Physic Avanti III, cumulative spectral-decay plot at 50" (0.15ms risetime).

The three earlier Audio Physic speakers from Joachim Gerhard that I tried—the Tempo, Step, and Virgo—all impressed me with their solid engineering and excellent sound quality. The Avanti III exceeds my expectations.—John Atkinson