Thanks guys and let me say, unlike your friend Dick, I am willing to back down when proven wrong or shown something better. We can borrow just about any speaker we want to, but honestly, I don’t know what I would have chosen had that been the course to take.
One other point to make. Politics. Sigh. Whenever we, or any manufacturer, uses a pair of speakers to demonstrate, we alienate some group of manufacturers who don’t like our choice. By using a 27 year old speaker the only person taking any heat is me.
Well, young master Scott had the Aon 2s I believe running with the Sprout. I thought it sounded very nice. Sandy Gross himself was in another room running the Triton Ones. I thought they were a really nice speaker for the dollar, but IIRC he was using Marantz gear to drive them. I have nothing against Marantz, but IMO he should have been using something better to drive these speakers. It felt like they would have shone if given the chance.
Hard to say. I felt like they had the capacity to sound really really good, as the things I heard that bothered me seemed like characteristics common to Marantz gear (a bit slow on transient speed, not quite as resolving of some of the better gear, a little soft in general). It so much seemed like they were being held back.
The room both Marantz and GoldenEar were in was a ListenUp room so brands have to be what’s carried by them. Other electronics and speakers were already paired up, as GoldenEar was a late exhibitor entry.
I believe the Triton One speakers are quite revealing of source and amplification so you heard characteristics of the Marantz gear. I don’t disagree with your Marantz assessment but I also think that, in the price range, the Marantz gear offers a lot of bang for the buck. The room, cables and power conditioning were also new to us.
At both CES and CEDIA trade shows, GoldenEar tends to use Pass Labs XA series class A mono amps and often an ARC Ref 5SE preamp, generally with higher-end Cardas cable. Low level gear is plugged into a PS Quintet. Last CES the source was the MSB Analog DAC w/Power Base and, IIRC the MSB Universal Transport.
The Triton One has a very natural and musical tonal balance and reveals more of the source music as you improve what’s in front of them. Kind of a blessing and a curse in that it’s great to know a $5k/pr speaker can perform as well as this one can but there’s not much gear in the “usual” price range that will bring out their best. A bit of good news is the Triton One is pretty efficient and since they have powered woofer sections, the load is quite easy. It doesn’t take a lot of power to drive them to decent volume levels.
It was gratifying to hear comments as people came in, listened and then hear their exit comments. Many end users who’ve not yet heard them walked in quite skeptical because of all the over the top rhetoric in reviews and brochures (generally along the lines of: “How could they possibly be that/any good?”). And nearly all walked out with a big grin and mentioning how good they sounded, let alone for the price. And yes, they can sound even better in a real room than what they sounded like in the hotel room.
Just my $0.02, and in full disclosure, I work for GoldenEar. Plus I have a pile of PS gear.
BTW Paul, thanks for those Goodness Knows bars. Tasty and reasonably healthy to boot! We don’t have those on the East Coast, although we certainly have other similar type things. But these seem to have great taste and fewer carbs and sugars that some of the ones I tried here.
Streets Still Works said
So did anyone find out why the amp prototype smoked?
–SSW
Yes. Bob just found out. A capacitor shorted out. Go figure. It was an extremely expensive, physically large, film and foil REL Cap - the kind that NEVER shorts out. Sigh.
The cap is what isolates the tube front end from the MOSFET back end. There are four of these caps - one for each leg of the tube DIFF pair on the front end. This is a critical point for sound so we use only the very best cap here and that’s what shorted. When that happened it slammed 60 volts DC into the MOSFET stage and all hell broke loose.
Yeesh. If this happens in the field there’s going to be a bunch of very unhappy campers. The big question is if this is going to happen again. Is there any way to screen the caps before they’re installed to check for the potential short? And what caused the breakdown–mechanical, or just the applied voltage? Gaah, I hate problem-failure reports.
If it happens again, do you get a different batch? Different vendor?
Oh, it’s completely safe. Speakers were connected at the time. The amp has full DC protection as well as thermal, over current etc. Not to worry. It just shut down, wouldn’t work. That’s what it’s supposed to do.
You all just wanted to know what happened. It’s a prototype.
