Avalon Acoustics Factory Tour
by Jeff Fritz and Marc Mickelson

We at SoundStage! have visited a wide array of large and small audio companies. Of the products those companies manufacture, speakers have the greatest variation in terms of both design criteria and price. Paradoxically, however, speaker companies, even the largest ones, generally build their products according to a defined series of procedures, employing highly trained personnel to operate all manner of machinery, including the ubiquitous CNC routers that cut panels and baffles out of medium-density fiberboard. The cabinet shops of speaker companies are loud, sawdust-covered places. Large sheets of MDF are fed into the CNCs, and the resulting pieces are carted off to other areas where they are assembled into cabinets.

But one of the things that defines high-end audio is that some companies buck trends and do things their own way. This applies to the manner in which Avalon Acoustics creates its speakers. At Avalon, the Exacto knife and hand file have replaced the CNC router as the equipment most responsible for finished products. Speakers aren't so much assembled at Avalon as hewn by hand, complex facets and all. Until you see an Avalon speaker being crafted, you won't have full appreciation for it. What look to be single panels after the cabinet has been veneered turn out to be the product of MDF cross-sections, a raw cabinet looking almost as much like a wooden boat as a loudspeaker.

Audiophiles know the name Avalon Acoustics, but this division is only one-third of the entire company. Avalon Professional and Avalon Multichannel are lateral divisions that produce just what you would think -- professional and multichannel speakers. But long before its three-headed structure became reality, Avalon was started by Charles Hansen, among other people. Nowadays, Hansen is well known for his electronics designs -- he heads Ayre Acoustics -- but in the early '80s he designed speakers. A couple of years after Avalon was founded, Hansen sold the company to another well-known Colorado electronics designer, Jeff Rowland, who owned it for a very short time before selling it himself. So in its early days, Avalon was an audio orphan.

Avalon's current owner, Neil Patel, bought the company in 1989 and has designed all of Avalon's speakers ever since. Patel, whom we didn't get to meet on our tour because he works at the Avalon Multichannel facility outside Philadelphia, PA, is obviously a talented man. He was an Avalon customer who bought the company and thereafter started doing the complex work of designing loudspeakers. Avalon's current-day success is due to Neil Patel's design prowess. Our tour was led by Lucien Pichette, company vice president and the fellow you very well may talk to if you call Avalon with a question about a speaker.

Before an Avalon Acoustics speaker is ready for production, it is prototyped, often many times. Given the distance between Colorado and Pennsylvania, this process is not straightforward. At Avalon, two pairs of each prototype are created in Boulder, with one set shipped to designer Patel in Pennsylvania and other set up in Avalon's Boulder listening room. This allows for bridging the physical gap between designer and manufacturing facility as well as provides input from people hearing the speakers in different environments.

Avalon's unique approach is obvious in the way the company builds its cabinets as well. To make sure they are as inert and non-resonant as possible, cabinets are constructed not from MDF panels but rather from cross-sections milled with pin routers. These are then glued and squeezed together with large purpose-built presses. Exterior surfaces are worked by hand -- this is where the Exacto knives and files come in -- and then painstakingly sanded to ensure proper adhesion of the real-wood veneer. Internally, the speakers are lined with a proprietary fabric that Avalon believes is the very best acoustic damping material. The cavity of an Avalon cabinet has a labyrinthine appearance.

The baffle for the top-of-the-line Sentinel's woofer section is built up of layers of highly braced MDF panels...	...as are the cabinets for the midrange and tweeter sections.
All of those MDF layers are glued together and pressed at precise pressure.	Veneer is glued and then permanently affixed with purpose-built presses.
Like so much of the woodworking done at Avalon, sanding is done slowly by hand.	Here the veneer and sanding are checked closely for imperfections.
The driver testing and matching area at Avalon.	A pair of tweeters for Eidolon Diamond speakers. The tweeter's exotic diamond dome acts as a heatsink for the voice coil.

Once a cabinet is assembled, the veneering begins. Avalon speakers are well known for their beauty, not only from the angular shapes of the cabinets but also the veneer that covers them. Avalon purchases flitches of veneer that they've identified as particularly attractive. Cherry is the most popular finish overall, with curly Birdseye maple reserved for the Eidolon Diamond and Sentinel. We can also attest to the fact that Avalon's myrtle and burl-walnut veneers are particularly lovely.

After a speaker is veneered, it leaves the Avalon facility for final finishing. Because of stiff regulations in Boulder, CO, it is necessary for Avalon to send out cabinets for the final multiple coats of lacquer. The results speak for themselves, with each Avalon speaker looking every bit like a high-end product before it is crated and shipped to a waiting owner.

Drivers for each speaker pair are matched, of course, and all speakers are tracked via their serial numbers should the need for a new driver arise. Avalon also takes great care with the design and manufacture of the grilles for its speakers. Each has a hand-fitted wool-felt insert, which Avalon once again has determined makes for better sonics. Avalon considers the grilles integral parts of the speakers, although I'm sure some owners try listening with them removed as a matter of audiophile principle -- and to the detriment of their system's sound.

After making our way through Avalon's offices, workshop and shipping area, we were shown the area in which the drivers are matched and stored. On the day of our visit, this room doubled as a listening area, with a pair of Avalon Pro Mixing Monitors on sonic display. These smallish speakers looked thoroughly like an Avalon product except for their functional black finish. They sounded like an Avalon product as well, conveying the delicacy and space of the recording with aplomb. Lucien Pichette admitted that a good many of these speakers, which were designed for studio use, are being purchased by audiophiles, and we immediately understood why. They are "mixing tools," as Avalon refers to them, that would impress Doug Schneider, who has heard more such speakers than any other person we know.

A unique approach is one of the things that defines the very best high-end-audio products, and this is certainly the case with Avalon Acoustics speakers, which, as we discovered, are designed and built in surprising ways. But to our ears, the end justifies the means -- and then some.

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To find out more about Avalon Acoustics, visit www.avalonacoustics.com.