Advent Heritage Speaker System Review

Advent loudspeakers have historically been two-way systems featuring acoustic suspension woofers. The new Heritage follows in that tradition. It is a columnar floor-standing speaker with two 8-inch acoustic-suspension woofers that cross over at 3,500 Hz to a 1-inch soft-dome tweeter cooled by ferrofluid. The woofers are high-excursion drivers whose voice coils are wound on aluminum forms. The drivers occupy the upper two-thirds of the front panel, placing the tweeter close to the ear level of a seated listener.

The sides and rear of the enclosure are made of a black-finish particleboard, but the front and top appear to be 3/4-inch-thick solid wood (our test samples had an attractive oak-grain finish). The drivers are concealed behind a removable black cloth grille, and the bottom 2-1/2-inch portion of the front panel is finished in black to give the visual effect of a base or pedestal, although the cabinet is actually constructed as a single integral unit. The input terminals (five-way binding posts on 3/4-inch centers) and a protective fuse are recessed into the lower part of the back panel.

The manufacturer’s specifications for the Heritage include a frequency response of 42 to 23,000 Hz ± 3 dB. The tweeter’s dispersion over an angular range of 30 degrees (either vertical or horizontal) is said to produce an output variation -of less than ± 1 dB up to 13,000 Hz. The nominal system impedance is 6 ohms, with a rated minimum value of 4 ohms.

The system’s sensitivity is rated at 89.5 dB sound-pressure level (SPL) at 1 meter with an input of 2.83 volts. It is rated to handle continuous inputs up to 150 watts and peaks up to 600 watts. The bass resonance frequency is given as 55 ±5 Hz, with a usable frequency extension to 34 Hz at — 8 dB in the bass and up to 23.000 Hz at —3 dB in the treble. The total harmonic distortion (THD) is given as less than 0.5 percent above 75 Hz with a 1-watt input.

The Advent Heritage measures 37-3/4 inches high, 10-1/2 inches wide, and 13-1/8 inches deep (plus an additional 5/8 inch for the grille). Each speaker weighs about 45 pounds. Price: $699 a pair.

Lab Tests

The Advent Heritage proved to be somewhat more sensitive than its ratings would indicate (although our live-room measurements could account for much of the difference). The speaker developed an SPL of 93 dB at 1 meter with a 2.83-volt pink-noise input signal. With a 2-volt sine-wave input (equivalent to a 90-dB SPL in our sensitivity measurement), the woofer distortion was very low when the microphone was placed close to the speaker board and midway between the woofers. From only 5 percent THD plus noise at 20 Hz, the distortion decreased to 1.3 percent at 30 Hz and to 0.45 percent from 80 to 130 Hz, and it remained less than 0.8 percent up to 1.000 Hz.

The system impedance was a minimum of 3.2 ohms at 20 Hz and in the 90- to 200-hz range, reaching a maximum of 22 ohms at 1,800 Hz. The bass resonance was at 52 Hz, where the impedance rose to 10 ohms. The composite corrected frequency response of the system showed an elevated bass and lower-midrange output between 40 and 400 Hz, and a somewhat lower average level from 400 to 4,000 Hz, where the output varied over a ±2.5-dB range. In the tweeter’s range, above 5,000 Hz, the response was unusually flat and smooth, with a variation of about ± 1.75 dB from 4.000 to 20,000 Hz.

The tweeter’s dispersion over a 45-degree horizontal angle was excellent, with virtually no divergence between the on-axis and 45-degree off-axis response at frequencies below 12,000 Hz. The woofer’s output fell off at 12 dB per octave below its maximum output point at about 65 Hz and was down about 8 dB from the 50- to 300-hz average value at 35 Hz. The system’s group delay varied ±0.4 millisecond from 20.000 Hz down to 1,500 Hz, increasing somewhat at lower frequencies.

In single-cycle pulse-power tests, the 100-Hz woofer output distorted audibly at a 525-watt input into its 3.2-ohm impedance. At 1,000 Hz (still in the woofer’s range), the amplifier clipped at 600 watts into 11 ohms before the cone reached its linear limits, and at 10,000 Hz the amplifier clipped at 260 watts into 5.6 ohms before the tweeter was overloaded.

Comments

The Advent Heritage was one of those rare speakers whose sound closely matched the way its measured response curves looked. It had a mildly warm, rich bass and lower midrange, with a startlingly deep low-bass extension given the right program material. The highs were obviously extended, smooth, and well dispersed. If I had drawn a frequency-response curve for this speaker from listening to it (normally a foolhardy project), it would have come out very much like the one my instruments produced.

Possibly because of its very low distortion in the deep bass, the speaker gave the impression of greater bass extension than it really had. The lowest frequencies were as likely to be felt as heard, an unusual quality among speakers with modest-size woofer complements.

The Heritage was one of the limited number of speakers that I hated to pack up after tests were concluded. It is both attractive and highly listenable, two qualities that are not always found in the same speaker.

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