Owned, and founded in 2011, by engineer Gediminas Gaidelis, AudioSolutions design and manufacture loudspeakers in Vilnius, Lithuania. Gediminas got in touch with Hifi Pig to tell us more about the European manufacturer’s new line of loudspeakers, Figaro.

AudioSolutions’ Figaro loudspeaker range builds on their previous Rhapsody range, which they have developed over the last six years. The range features AudioSolutions’ Self-Locking cabinet technique, mini-horn tweeters and other unique features used in their speakers including their flagship Vantage anniversary. They feel that the result is a quality and finish that is high end, but at a much more affordable price. Figaro maintains the same style accents as the Overture and Vantage series but fits better into the modern home and lifestyle.

The Figaro series features new custom SB Acoustics drivers with ER (extra rigid) cones. The Self-Locking cabinet technique ensures very rigid enclosure joints to help achieve bass control and deep bass extension even in the smallest Figaro S model. Figaro cabinet thickness varies from 18mm up to 50mm in different areas, and starting from the middle to the back of the speaker is made from a sandwich of materials. Gediminas told us more: “Combining materials is nice, but we stepped further, we modelled every surface in the speaker and made its vibration analysis as a whole, so we can see how important the joints between different surfaces are. It is remarkable what modern software can do. It is a very big difference between simple glue joint between two surface edges and our Self-Locking joint. Without Self-Locking joints the cabinet was good but not perfect, after calculating our joining technique cabinet became almost monolithic. The key concept here is that all surfaces acts as one big sandwich dampening each other out. Usually the surface sandwich works alone, but after joining all of them together in a locked joint they become a one big system of different materials working together. The result – no booming, tight and fast bass, very clear mids and speakers are quite light compared to similar properties cabinets. I could easily say that we saved approx. 50-70% of weight”.

“To fight tweeter sharpness at higher volumes we introduced a mini-horn which is used in all our speaker systems and on top of that waveguide which helps to shape sound-front a little bit. We also chose a smaller tweeter than usual to have faster response in very top end”.

“All of the Figaro speakers except the bookshelf and centre are three way. Why three? Well there is two main opinions where one states that two way is better because speaker is closer to point source and there is only one crossover point meaning more homogeneous sound, another opinion is that three ways is better because engineer can pick crossover points not to meet critical area where human ear during centuries of evolution became most sensitive (800-2000Hz). I myself was for two ways at first, because design is much simpler yet cheaper, however now almost all our products shares three ways (even bookshelf Vantage) because not having crossover point in critical to ear area really does the job. All products which were designed following this fashion received best impressions usually like “highly detailed and clear midrange”. I am not saying that two ways is much worse, we have some bookshelf designs with two ways but we are forced to use more complicated drivers and raise the crossover point as high as possible to step away from critical crossover area”.

The Figaro speakers feature an improved version of the “Stealth Grilles” used on the AudioSoloutions Overture speakers, and, like all of their speakers, WBT connecting posts. They are available in 17 different finishes like 3D textured high gloss finishes, or three different colour linen in high gloss. They aim for them to be “an accent of the living room or part of the interior decoration, rather than trying to make speakers as invisible as possible”.

The AudioSolutions Figaro series of loudspeakers start at 1300€ up to 7500€ per pair (VAT excluded)