Through reviews and videos on Youtube I was triggered a while ago to the products of Stack Audio and I kept looking at them with a sideways glance. The Auvas in particular caught my interest, don’t ask me why 😀
In the meantime I have read a lot about it, seen dozens of Youtube videos about it and sniffed various measurements. It would be the superlative for controlling and counteracting unwanted speaker energy/vibrations and IsoAcoustic Gaia ’s but even the Townsend Seismic Isolation Podia surpass in effectiveness. Unfortunately I can’t compare these Auvas with the Gaia’s, because they were first of all under completely different speakers, namely the Xanadu HRS80 and they have the woofers on the side. And even if I still had those, it wouldn’t be that easy to change quickly.
A few weeks ago I looked at the Stack Audio site again and then I noticed that the price of a set of Auva 100’s per set of 4 pieces had just become about €25 cheaper. You need two sets of 4 so that adds up. In addition, I had a discount coupon of 5% and decided it was time to just buy them. There is a 60 day money back guarantee so no worries.
Loudspeakers have to vibrate, at least the parts that throw the music into the room, such as cones, membranes, etc. and that is their function. But it also causes vibrations in the speaker cabinets and stands, if any. These, usually unwanted, vibrations can mask the sound/music. With that fact, Stack Audio got to work and they found a way to absorb these unwanted vibrations. According to the site:
Enclosed within the AUVA’s precision machined aluminium cases are multiple cells containing particles such as tungsten powder. Vibrations excite the particles, creating movement and collisions that dissipate the energy virtually instantaneously. Think of it like throwing a ball into soft sand – the sand absorbs the energy from the ball preventing it bouncing. This patent pending technology enables the AUVAs to remove masking vibrations over a wide frequency range, revealing more of the clarity in the musical recording.
The Auva 100 has five of these cells with different particles. There are also smaller Auvas, namely the 50 and the 70, referring to their diameter, and those models have two and three cells respectively. The Auva 70 and 100 also have a central cell, the 50 does not. The more cells, the more vibrations they absorb. Now I want the maximum, so the 100 came to mind as the model to buy.
The mounting adapter is screwed into the top of the Auva with M8, for mounting to the speaker there are many different thread sizes to choose from. The stands on which the Xanadu HRS22YH-MG are mounted have M8x1.25mm thread tapped. Initially, the wrong thread was delivered with one set, but that was resolved very quickly, chapeau for that!
They can also be supplied with screw-in spikes, but that is only for floors with carpet. My copies are equipped with felt and that also slides very easily!
Mounting is a breeze, a matter of screwing in the adapter, tightening with the supplied Allen key, securing with a nut, mounting under the speakers and tightening the 2nd lock nut. Just like with the UFO XLs, the thread of the adapters protrudes above the foot and had extra stainless steel locking caps made for that, which secure everything even more. This means that the Auvas are really rock solid under the stands. Adjusting the height was not necessary here, they were already nice and flat. The view takes some getting used to with those rather large feet, but I think they look cool.
Under the guise of “a good story doesn’t have to be true”, I sat down to hear the “mega” improvements that some reviewers attribute to it, with my own ears.
Well, to put it very briefly: there are differences in my experience and those differences are also improvements. To put it more succinctly: the music sounds fuller without becoming woolly. The bass has a considerably improved layering and distinctiveness, such as a bass drum that is better separated from a bass guitar playing at the same time. The tranquility creates more space for details, which increases the 3D bubble that expands on all sides. But even within this bubble, the placement is more accurate. Overall, there is more tranquility without becoming diffuse in the slightest. Music flows and sounds very natural. Also nice and spicy attacks come through strongly and then resound for a long time. The oh so important midrange gains in glow, which gives voices and instruments in that area a beautiful body.
It is often easier to interpret on the basis of various pieces of music, so here they come again:
Haevn: The song The Sea from the album Eyes Closed is very spacious. Here you can clearly hear the gain of the Auvas. The sound is more organic, very beautiful 3D. The bass is nice and full and seems to go deeper.
Fink’s Troubles What You’re In from the album Wheels Beneath My Feet also shows that considerably increased space. The speakers disappear completely out of sight and you are really in the middle of the music. Fink’s voice sounds great and stands like a house. The bass reproduction is beautiful, powerful and layered.
Alison Kraus and Union Station’s So Long So Wrong is such a wonderful album. Especially the song It Doesn’t Matter where the guitars have a great timbre, so natural and more attack, power and distinction than ever. Alison’s voice is also firmly in place here. The whole is more precise and now and then a very full bass runs very deep but very controlled.
An album where rhythm plays a leading role is Feeling Good by Randy Crawford and Joe Sample and especially the song See Line Women. It is super rhythmic and it is noticeable that the percussion unravels perfectly but also the clapping of the hands. The sounds from Joe’s piano are completely separate from the rest in the musical image and sound beautifully powerful. Randy’s voice sounds like velvet, spotless and natural. The male voices are nicely in the back of the wonderful spatial sound image.
Manu Katché’s Live in Concert and then the song Drum Solo (live) is really full of energy which can make everything run smeared a bit. Now that already sounded good here, but now even better, because here too the drum energy is beautifully unraveled. The base drums, the powerful toms, the cymbals, it can all be followed excellently separately and wins in quality.
The Yellowjackets recently released another great album: Fasten Up. The song of the same name offers a nice mix of electronic instruments mixed with saxophone and percussion. Again the layering in the low stands out and with that the base drum nicely separates from the bass guitar that brings a very nice example of bass work to the audience! The sax takes its fixed place nicely and the keyboard playing weaves itself almost inimitably through the very rhythmic song, very nice.
Karine Polwart’s voice in Take its own time from the album Scribbled In Chalk is velvety and fragile and that fragility seems to come even more to the foreground. The harmonica and percussion are completely separate, the increased resolution is clear here.
Eric Vloeiman’s Prince Of Darkness on the album Hyper fills the room with energy but oh so controlled!
Tight percussion, deep and full bass, Vloeiman’s trumpet firmly in place in front of you and the separation and placement between all the instruments in that energy is very precise.
After the arrival of the Stack Audio Auva 100, I noticed not only the improvements themselves, but also something else: it almost becomes difficult to listen technically, it sounds so obvious, natural and fluent. As soon as I start paying attention to specific things, I am actually quickly drawn back into the music and that is actually a very nice sensation. So the above-mentioned individual characteristics that I mention with the various music tracks were not that easy to capture 🙂
The degree of change/improvement is not in the order of magnitude as after the arrival of the Grimm MU2 , but in the kind of improvement and that is that the entire reproduction is better and not just a few aspects. To me it sounds as if the total resolution of the set has increased while maintaining the tranquility. And that is quite special due to a few new feet that actually do not decouple but also do not couple. According to Stack Audio the masking and therefore unwanted vibrations are absorbed by the Auva’s (Auva is short for Audio Vibration Absorber) which gives the music free space and that is exactly what I hear here. I am therefore “afraid” that the Auva 100’s will not be returned when the 60 day return period is over ….
Equipment used:
AEZ nanotec Power Strada #308 / Iego 8075BK copper-rhodium powercords
Purecable nanoPWR 309 powercord (1x used on the Grimm MU2)
Purecable 8x Nano Block with iFi AC iPurifier
SOtM sNH-10G switch with sCLK-EX op sPS-500 power
AEZ Carbon / MFP8 IE ethernet cables
Grimm MU2 Music Player
AEZ Furutech FA-αS22/CF-102(R) RCA interlinks
Kinki Studio EX-B7 mono power-amps
AEZ nanotec SP#79 PTC1 / Furutech FP202(R) speakercable
Xanadu HRS22YH-MG with Stack Audio Auva 100
