Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined loudspeaker
WINNER
PRODUCT OF THE YEAR
Loudspeakers may come and go, but some carve a place in history. The original Trapez from 1979 is one such loudspeaker. The three-way angled floorstander was the brainchild of Ole Klifoth and established the Audiovector brand in its native Denmark and beyond. And 45 years later, Audiovector – now in the capable hands of Ole’s son Mads – has developed the Trapeze Reimagined; a three-way, Isobaric Compound Bass-loaded floorstanding loudspeaker design. It uses a 12-inch highpower mid/bass driver (with an eight-inch driver in an isobaric configuration), a five-inch-high speed midrange, and an Audiovector SEC Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeter specifically designed for this loudspeaker. The loudspeaker is also one of the few designs that takes an
amplifier’s damping factor into account, with a three position switch on the rear panel. Trapeze Ri retains the original wide-baffle trapezoid loudspeaker enclosure, but in build and finish, this is every inch a modern loudspeaker, drawing from those 45 years of design and development to create something at once classic and new.
A charmer
The first impression is this is a loudspeaker that puts a smile on your face. Audiovector’s Trapeze Ri is at once a serious and accurate portrayer of musical intent, and a charmer with an innate and almost mischievous sense of humour. If you are the kind of music lover that plays Bach’s cerebral Goldberg Variations back to back with pounding Techno played at club levels, Trapeze Ri has got everything you need!
In our test, Alan Sircom said that “Trapeze Ri is the complete opposite to the stuffy audiophile loudspeaker that only springs to life when fed beautifully recorded music.” He also likened it to the classic Linn Isobarik loudspeaker…” with the nasty bits smoothed off. It’s got that same sense of a visceral, ‘meaty’ and rhythmically precise bass, but this time coupled to a midrange that expresses itself beautifully and a treble that is at once detailed and never peaky sounding. Like most Audiovectors – and like most wide-baffle designs – it gives a fine presentation of stereo imaging.” He concluded by saying, “For those who want something that plays music with fun and force, those who want something that can produce detail and danceable tunes, and for those who want bass that has depth, slam and a wicked sense of rhythm… the Audiovector Trapeze Ri is calling you.”