Avid Model 230
A designation that turns up on two very different pieces of gear - and the archive can't yet say which one this page is about.
Overview
This entry is a mess, and it's better to say so up front. The name "Avid Model 230" points to at least two unrelated products in the surviving documentation, and nothing in the archive's fact sheet pins down which one a collector is holding. One trail leads to a speaker system tested by HiFi-Stereo in its February 1979 issue. The other leads to the Aphex Model 230 Master Voice Channel, a broadcast voice processor whose manual excerpts surface under the same model number. Those are not the same product, made by the same company, in the same decade, for the same purpose. Until the identity is nailed down, treat every claim below as provisional.
The speaker-system trail is the more period-appropriate one for a vintage audio archive. HiFi-Stereo (February 1979, p.58) ran a test report on an "Avid Model 230 Speaker System." It published tone-burst response plots at 100, 1,000, and 10,000 Hz and described a "live-room" measurement that came out unusually smooth and free of the irregularities such measurements usually show. The same report noted a sound-pressure level of 88 dB at one meter in front of the grille from an octave centered at 1,000 Hz. It said the bass gave "the impression of a reasonably good bass response" while the high end, though strong and extended, ran emphasized. That is a real, citable data point, but it describes a loudspeaker, and it is the only hard performance figure the archive can attach to an "Avid Model 230" of any kind.
The other trail is a broadcast processor. Manual excerpts for an "Aphex Model 230 Master Voice Channel" describe a channel strip built around an RPA tube preamplifier, an Easyrider compressor, a logic-assisted gate, a split-band de-esser, Big Bottom and Aural Exciter processing, and a parametric EQ. It has 10dBV and +4dBu analog outputs and 24/96 digital outputs on AES3, S/PDIF, and optical, plus word clock I/O and a cough switch with soft mute. The documentation carries a 2005 copyright. None of that belongs to the 1979 speaker, and none of it should be read as an Avid product. The manufacturer named in those excerpts is Aphex, not Avid. The shared model number is almost certainly coincidental.
Do not buy, sell, or repair anything labeled "Avid Model 230" on the strength of this page alone. Confirm the manufacturer, the product type, and the era before money changes hands. If it's a boxy loudspeaker from the late 1970s, the HiFi-Stereo test is the reference and the 88 dB / 1-meter figure is the one solid number to work from. If it's a rackmount voice channel with a tube stage and a cough switch, it's an Aphex unit and this page is the wrong entry.
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