Danish loudspeaker manufacturer Audiovector, launched by Ole Klifoth in 1979, introduced an audacious wedge-shaped cabinet that year that broke away from the conventional boxy designs of the time. Unlike rectilinear cabinets, which are susceptible to internal standing waves, Audiovector’s design had no large parallel surfaces, thereby effectively eliminating this problem. It also had a back-leaning baffle that ensured phase alignment of the drivers. While tilted baffles have been featured in speakers from other brands, the Trapeze design was unique and remains unparalleled.
Audiovector’s first model, a large eight-driver speaker, was quickly followed by a more compact three-driver speaker called Trapez, which was distributed in Scandinavia and became an instant success. (Trapez is the Danish word for trapezoid, or trapezium in the UK, which is a quadrilateral with two parallel sides—the speaker cabinet’s profile.) It wasn’t a particularly handsome loudspeaker, Klifoth is the first to admit, but it sounded superb. Over its decade-long production run, from 1979 to 1989, the Trapez sold over 25,000 pairs.
For its 45th anniversary, Audiovector chose to revisit and thoroughly revise this iconic design. The idea came from Klifoth’s son Mads, who intended the upgrade as a tribute to his father’s pioneering work, though he also recognized the potential marketing buzz it could generate. Initially, Ole Klifoth was not supportive of the idea, but he began the development work nonetheless and became increasingly enthusiastic about it.
The result of this effort is the Trapeze Reimagined (Ri)—a fundamentally new speaker in a familiar shell, revamped with cutting-edge materials and state-of-the-art technology and ready for a new era. It is priced at $19,950 per pair (all prices USD) and is distributed in more than 50 countries worldwide. The tweaked name, though technically a misnomer—a trapeze is the popular acrobatic circus apparatus—reflects this wide distribution. It doesn’t look misspelled to non-Scandinavians.
The Trapeze Ri stands alone currently. No variants exist, and none are planned at this time. It is in good company, though: Audiovector’s highly regarded R-series speakers and its popular QR-series speakers. But can it live up to the reputation of its legendary predecessor? It would have been interesting to compare the two side by side. I was unable to do this, and so I auditioned the Trapeze Ri as a new speaker model, which essentially it is.
The company
Audiovector is a family-owned company located near the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Ole Klifoth, now in his fifth decade with the company, serves as R&D manager. Mads now holds majority ownership and serves as CEO, overseeing operations and marketing. Apart from the Klifoths, the Audiovector team currently consists of an R&D assistant, 13 assembly technicians, two finishing specialists, and three marketing executives.
Denmark has become a hub of speaker innovation and production. Audiovector’s speakers are handcrafted in-house using bespoke drivers built by specialist manufacturers in Denmark and Italy. The company manufactures its tweeters in-house.
Audiovector’s speaker-development process entails more than 1000 hours of voicing, during which numerous fine adjustments are made. A group of eight listeners then test each speaker prototype using their own home systems. This provides a realistic performance overview that encompasses different listening environments and equipment. Ole Klifoth uses his listening experience from a specific seat at Copenhagen’s Tivoli Concert Hall and at two local jazz clubs as sound reference, and he voices his speakers to emulate that sound. Having this constant reference, he told me, helps him ensure that Audiovector speakers share a similar voiceprint. Naturally, while similar in overall sound signature, Audiovector speakers exhibit a greater degree of refinement as you move up the range: bigger sound, finer detail, larger images. Like other highly refined products, Audiovector speakers are continually improved as better materials become available and new technologies emerge.
“To produce high-quality and natural sounding loudspeakers for music lovers and audiophiles around the world” has been and continues to be Audiovector’s vision.
Design highlights of the Trapeze Ri
The Trapeze Ri is a three-way, three-driver design, which is clear even with the removable grilles in place as they are quite see-through. Less obvious is the unique design of the bass unit, which is an implementation of the isobaric loading principle, invented by RCA engineer Harry Olson in 1954. A patented variation of Olson’s design was introduced in 1973 by Linn in its Isobarik DMS loudspeaker. In Linn’s configuration, which was adopted by other isobaric-speaker makers, two identical woofers were mounted coaxially in tandem, cone to magnet, with the front of the rear driver and the back of the front driver opening into a shared sealed chamber. The back of the rear driver opened to a second sealed chamber. The two drivers were in phase, so the pressure within the shared chamber remained essentially constant (isobaric means having constant pressure). Acoustically, the isobarically coupled drivers perform as one of the two would in a cabinet twice the size.
In the Trapeze Ri’s implementation, the bass unit is ported at the rear and combines a 12″ driver with an 8″ driver sitting immediately behind it, where the front, isobaric, chamber is ported to the rear chamber equalizing the pressure between the two—a compound isobaric design trickled down from the R6 Arreté and R8 Arreté tower speakers. The two drivers work together to produce the output of a much larger single driver but with the reaction speed of the smaller driver. The 12″ driver is a long-fiber doped-paper cone, while the internal 8″ driver uses a sandwich construction made from carbon fiber.
Key to the performance of Audiovector’s top models is its proprietary air motion transformer (AMT) tweeter, a refinement of the original AMT design, invented by Dr. Oskar Heil in the early 1970s. A special version was developed for the Trapeze Ri. It covers the frequency range of 3kHz to 53kHz, has an extremely fast, transient-preserving response time, and offers a wide bandwidth. Most derivatives of the original AMT design are closed-back; the one in the Trapeze Ri is open-backed, like the original. A large rear port eliminates back pressure on the driver, allowing it to function freely and produce natural-sounding highs.
Audiovector’s Low Compression technology minimizes unwanted resistance and friction in drivers, coils, treble systems, cabinets, and cables, ensuring more effective and natural sound reproduction while extending component life and reliability. The lower the compression, the more open the speaker sounds at high volume levels, and the more realistic it sounds at low levels.
The acoustic center of each driver in the Trapeze Ri is carefully positioned to permit crossover points at 500Hz and 3kHz, with a slope of 6dB per octave. This gentle slope maintains phase coherence among drivers, enabling seamless integration. However, it requires each driver to operate without distortion or compression for a full two octaves beyond the crossover frequency. To meet this requirement, Audiovector employs ultra-light paper cones with concertina-like surrounds in the 5″ midrange and 12″ bass drivers. These drivers are equipped with hysteresis-free vented voice coils and a basket made from an aluminum-magnesium alloy. The midrange driver uses a fully ventilated 4″ voice coil wound around a titanium core, as in the two isobaric drivers. This greatly reduces hysteresis losses. The midrange driver and tweeter are mounted on an HDF hardwood baffle and are surrounded by felt to absorb diffraction.
The crossover employs custom capacitors that “combine polypropylene dielectrics with a tin-flashed copper foil to create the most musical sound,” Audiovector states. These capacitors are manufactured to a tolerance of 0.3% of their nominal capacitance. The tweeter section uses high-quality film resistors and a custom bypass capacitor from Denmark’s Duelund Coherent Audio, a premium electronic-component manufacturer.
A three-position switch on the back of each speaker enables the Trapeze Ri to accommodate amplifiers with different damping factors. Positions 1 and 2 are for solid-state amplifiers with a medium or high damping factor, respectively, while position 3 is for tube amplifiers, which typically have a very low damping factor. Position 2 produced the best results with my Soulution 511 amp.
There are two high-quality binding posts on each Trapeze Ri speaker, along with what appears to be a third one, which accepts a special, optional grounding cable—part of what Audiovector refers to as its Freedom Grounding technology, which also includes a dedicated crossover circuit. This technology is designed to filter out distortion-producing induced currents between the chassis and the drivers. The Freedom Grounding connection also lowers the noise floor. I did observe that the Trapeze Ri has a very dark sonic background.
The cabinet is constructed from high-quality HDF and has considerable internal bracing. Ole Klifoth’s experience has taught him that greater bracing produces better results than thicker panels. Four veneer finishes are available: Nordic Oak, Italian Walnut, Black Ash, and White Silk. Custom piano-finish colors are available for an additional cost. The grille is black fabric. Each speaker measures 16.5″W × 17.1″D × 34.4″H (at its widest and deepest) and weighs 55 pounds.
Setup
Audiovector recommends positioning the Trapeze Ri speakers two to three meters apart to start so that the distance between them is approximately three quarters of the distance from each speaker to the listener. The rear of the speakers should be parallel to the front wall and well clear of it (15″ to 43″, according to the manual) on account of the rear port of the AMT drive and that of the bass reflex. When the speakers are positioned this way, the asymmetrical cabinet geometry orients the baffles with the proper toe-in.
In my listening room the Trapeze Ri speakers were about five feet apart in their optimal position, with their backs three feet from the long wall of the room. The magnetically attached grilles proved acoustically transparent, but I left them off. The three exposed drivers with their shiny aluminum rims just looked so impressive.
My digital source was an exaSound Delta Server ($3399), feeding an EMM Labs DV2i streaming DAC-preamplifier ($35,000) via a Nordost Tyr 2 USB cable. The variable output from the DV2i fed a Soulution 511 power amplifier ($39,975). Power cables, balanced interconnects, and speaker cables were all Nordost Valhalla 2. Occasionally, I replaced the Trapeze Ri speakers with my YG Hailey 2.2 speakers ($55,800/pair) for comparison.
Listening
The Trapeze Ri pair sounded exciting from the very beginning. It took self-discipline to adhere to the recommended 100-hour break-in period, but since the sound had not yet stabilized at that point, I extended the break-in period to 250 hours. The tonal balance improved by the end, though the bass remained slightly elevated compared to the midrange, appreciably so compared to the highs. Nevertheless, it was rich, untinged by coloration, and wonderfully open—particularly with low acoustic bass plucks—something the YG Hailey 2.2s couldn’t match. That free-sounding bass was also fast, keeping in step with the articulate midrange and tweeter even at high volume. It provided a solid foundation for bass-heavy material.
I began critical listening with solo piano recordings, which are often the most revealing due to the instrument’s expansive dynamic and tonal range—from 27.5Hz (A0) to 4186Hz (C8) and far beyond in overtones. Among typical orchestral instruments, the piano comes closest to reaching the full depth of the Trapeze Ri’s claimed bass extension of 23Hz. (Some pipe organs can produce frequencies as low as 8Hz and even lower, well below the threshold of human hearing. The human voice bottoms out at around 100Hz.)
First on my playlist was Artur Rubinstein’s performance of Chopin’s Nocturne in F Major, op. 9, no. 1 from his 1967 Chopin Nocturnes (24-bit/96kHz FLAC, RCA Victor / Qobuz). Rubinstein, regarded as one of the greatest interpreters of Chopin, had a joyful and lyrical playing style that can always be felt in his recordings. The Trapeze Ri pair faithfully recreated that distinctive Rubinstein sound, which I consider myself fortunate to have heard live several times in London. I was somewhat less enthralled, however, by the piano sound. It seemed to lack body and had an abbreviated sustain. It resembled the sound of an overdamped piano (which Rubinstein’s instrument most certainly was not).
I next listened to Víkingur Ólafsson’s performance of Domenico Cimarosa’s Sonata No. 42 from his 2021 album Mozart & Contemporaries (24/192 FLAC, Deutsche Grammophon / Qobuz), a state-of-the-art recording. Although the speakers’ overall delivery of this piece was strong, I found the midrange somewhat weak and noticed some excessive resonance.
Moving to chamber music, I had more success with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet Op. 57 from the 2018 album Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets, with the Borodin Quartet with pianist Alexei Volodin (16/44.1 FLAC, Decca Music / Qobuz). This recording possessed a powerful presence through the Trapeze Ri pair and exhibited exceptional imaging. The string tone, albeit slightly thin, showed no strain, and the piano was full-bodied.
The last classical piece I listened to was the first movement of Gustav Mahler’s monumental Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” played by the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer (DSD64 rip from Channel Classics CCS SA 23506). The Trapeze Ri speakers presented this music with tremendous power across a wide and deep soundstage. The leading-edge transients of the strings were less than snappy, however, and some low-level details became obscured by the louder instruments at full tilt.
Switching to jazz, I streamed Charles Mingus’s “Fables of Faubus” from his 1959 album Mingus Ah Um (24/192 FLAC, Columbia Records / Qobuz). The bass was very strong here, and the midrange, especially the horns, came through clean and bright. The percussion, on the other hand, sounded a little subdued in the mix and was sometimes obscured by the brass.
It was much the same with “St. Thomas” from Sonny Rollins’s 1956 Saxophone Colossus (DSD64 rip from Analogue Productions CAJP 7079 SA). The percussion seemed repressed and at times indistinct. But the sax was beautiful, if somewhat soft, and the bass, open and free as before, created a strong driving undercurrent. The piano sound was disappointing, though, sounding quite muffled.
When I want to listen to vocal music in my auditions, I tend to select recordings featuring male vocals. But female vocals can also be revealing. A case in point was the title track of the 1993 Don’t Smoke in Bed by the Holly Cole Trio (DSD64, rip from Blue Note / Analogue Productions CAPP 049 SA), where Cole’s voice had a nasal edge. Still, Aaron Davis’s piano was tight and focused, and David Pilch’s bass was rich and strong, though the leading edges of plucked notes were a little soft.
I was a little disappointed by the speakers’ delivery of Paul Simon’s latest album, Seven Psalms, released in 2023 (16/44.1 FLAC, rip from Owl/Legacy 19658779112). On my reference system, Simon’s albums have always been enjoyable, leaving little to be desired. It wasn’t quite the same experience listening to this recording with the Trapeze Ri speakers. The opening track, “The Lord,” felt overly forward. It was too heavy for my taste and seemed to lack sufficient definition. To be fair, I soon discovered that it was the quality of this recording that was largely to blame.
Compared to the YG Hailey 2.2
I compared the Trapeze Ri speakers with my YG Hailey 2.2s by listening to those recordings I mentioned as well as many others. Whatever it was that I found lacking in the Audiovector pair, the YG pair almost always restored, most notably that concert-hall realism. On the Rubinstein track, with the YG speakers, the piano had a vibrant, powerful singing tone that swept me away. The YGs’ presentation of the piano on Saxophone Colossus was also more compelling, as was their depiction of the saxophone and percussion. Percussion consistently sounded better with the YGs, however low in the mix, with finer detail and a fully realized initial impact. Tellingly, even the expensive reference-level YG pair failed to bring Seven Psalms to life.
Making sense of my listening notes
Revisiting my audition notes, I find it challenging to reach a definitive buy/don’t buy conclusion. The Trapeze Ri has several strengths—a wide frequency response, excellent dynamic range, prodigious imaging, strong and open bass, an unstrained, bold presentation—but it exhibits some weaknesses too: a tendency to soften attack transients, obscuration of detail during intense musical passages, and a noticeable tilt of the frequency response toward the lower registers.
Should you buy this speaker? At nearly $20K, the Trapeze Ri is positioned in a crowded segment of the loudspeaker market and faces fierce competition, but it holds its own with confidence. This is a speaker for those who appreciate bold aesthetics, deep bass, and a rich, non-fatiguing presentation. It may not provide the same level of detail in a complex mix that some other speakers do, nor the same sharpness of imaging, but it offers an engaging musical experience nonetheless.
Whether you love the Trapeze Ri or hate it depends on your musical taste, the quality of your system’s components, and the nature of your listening room. My advice is to take a good hard listen. Try it first at your dealer. If you like what you hear, try it in your own listening room if you can. You may just fall under its spell.
. . . Phil Gold
philgold@soundstage.com
Associated Equipment:
- Digital source: exaSound Delta streaming server
- Streaming DAC-preamplifier: EMM Labs DV2 V2i
- Power amplifier: Soulution 511 Stereo.
- Power, interconnect, and speaker cables: Nordost Valhalla 2
- USB link: Nordost Tyr 2
Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined loudspeaker
Price: $19,950/pair
Warranty: Five years, parts and labor
F3 / Audiovector ApS
Mileparken 22 A
DK-2740 Skovlunde
Denmark
Phone: +45 3539 6060
Email: info@audiovector.com
Website: www.audiovector.com
