Avantgarde Acoustic 25th Anniversary Factory Tour, Part 3

This is the finished goods packaging area. Where completed and tested products gets packed in to shipping cartons here

Look at the very clean and organised work station! The Germans have their very own 5S in manufacturing practice too!

Now we move in to the speakers testing station

This lab computer stores all the tested speaker frequency response for future reference, in case in the unlikely hood of driver or horn warranty claim

Armin explains, these are the first pressings of various horn sizes that are used as reference for quality checks on every subsequent production horn

Now in case you’re not listening to me, this umbrella will be knocking on your head! Armin says that we are now entering the actual speaker production line, and warns us not to touch anything just in case we hurt ourselves touching something we are not supposed to!

Look at all the work in progress speakers at the production line. Notice the Trio bass horn on the top shelf?

More items being the WIP area

This are all the horns that are measured and passed the reference test. They are now stored on racks, ready for production line use

Horns of various colors and sizes in stock

As we move on, we come across a set of enclosures for the Avantgarde Zero 1 XD, just at the start of the assembly line

Here, a worker manually stuffs both sides of the clamp shell design enclosure of the Avantgarde Zero 1 XD. You can see the drivers in the front shell, and the XD DSP circuit board on the back end of the enclosure

The worker tells me he could make 7 pairs of Avantgarde Zero 1 XD a day.

But before the drivers goes in to the enclosures, something else has to be done first!

Here is the production line that glues the internal foam linings and pre-wiring work, before all the other stuffing shown earlier goes in to the speaker enclosures

Here is the rack that stores all the speaker drivers, ready to be tested!

As most of the bass bins of Avantgarde speakers are active, here are the plate amp modules that drive the bass drivers

And here are where all the XD boards are stored

A new batch of colored horns have just being coated with glossy automotive paint and awaiting buffing & polishing

And here is the buffing station

A look at this work station confirms the stress on the job. The pack of ziggies to sooth a long day

Internal damping foams of various density is used to lined the speaker enclosures

The aluminium tubes that forms the body of the horn drivers

The aluminium tubes are also lined with internal damping foam

An Avantgarde Trio rack is being assembled here

A QC note accompanies each and every horn tube

It’s the frequency response chart for each enclosure, ensuring matching pair characteristics

Armin seen here doing his “Mickey Mouse” thing!

The rear end of horn tubes

Note the speaker cable terminals

Even the mobile tool station is a model of tidyness

The QC-ed horn drivers with matching frequency response chart attached to make sure of pair and channel matching.

Here’s another speaker production line , building another speaker model

Horn driver fitting. All Avantgarde speakers are hand built, pair by pair

The lower rack chassis with floor contact leveling spikes

These are production line trolleys where they are inserted in to the bottom of nearly finished speakers to be conveniently wheeled in to the QA test station and final packing room

here Armin shows the attachment cart being used to push the nearly completed speakers around the production floor, in to the QA test station for final checks before going in to the product packing room

A pair of nearly completed speakers awaiting to be sent to the QA test station for final inspection

Now, that’s how it looks like being wheeled in to the QA test station

After the packing room, all products are sent to the shipping area

Here, Armin explains the nitty gritty of logistics in Avantgarde Acoustics

All the boxes are marked with shipping stickers for destination and transit points

Here is a pair of Avantgarde Trio awaiting for the courier truck to pick up

All Avantgarde products are shipped with TiltWatch XTR indicators stuck on boxes. TiltWatch indicator(the little circle in the middle of the UP arrow, will turn red if the boxes have being tilted by a certain degree, or dropped during shipping or transit. Do NOT accept the pair of speakers if the Tilt indicators are red!