Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

I have read a number of comments from listeners/reviewers who found the dispersion of the High-Velocity Folded Ribbon tweeter (HVFR) to be quite limited. CNET observed " I did note some treble softening when I stood up; so it appears that the tweeter's vertical dispersion is limited."

You have the same problem "the tweeter axes fired somewhat over my head."

I am surprise that a 5K speaker have such limitation; a poorly design choice.

goodfellas27 wrote:

CNET observed " I did note some treble softening when I stood up; so it appears that the tweeter's vertical dispersion is limited."

You have the same problem "the tweeter axes fired somewhat over my head."

Look at the measurements. Yes, the tweeter's output falls more than 5 degrees above axis but as the tweeter is already 40" from the floor, this is not an issue. As Bob Deutsch said, the back of the speaker can easily be raised slightly for those whose ears are lower than 40".

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

I have has these for over 4 months now in a dedicated room with stadium seating (2 rows)
Trust me, for 5k they are the biggest bargain in the history of speakers. They smoke my previous speakers (Gallo, Magnepan,) The only speakers I have heard at CES that sound better are 3-4x the price. (Magico, Wilson, ML) Even then there were not that much better.
I would not worry about nit picking about the tweeter dispersion, unless you have unlimited funds, in which case money will buy you 5% better tweeter dispersion. The Triton ones are the real deal and will get you 95% of the way there (for 2 channel and HT)

I agree they have fairly limited horizontal dispersion starting at a fairly low frequency, but so do other speakers.

They definitely have limited vertical dispersion, but some people think that's a design goal (as in MTM arrays.)

We have a troll.

Corrective_Unco, the problem with these is the vertical dispersion; hence, Sandy had to adjust the base of the speakers to move it alone the 'Y' axis (Vertical) Not many speakers have this limitation, from my understanding --specially the ones with dome tweeters. I am not saying they sound bad, but they should work on this for their next speakers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweeter

You have any articles supporting you claim? Most dispersion problems are vertical with this tweeter. The link I pasted before support this, alone with this review and the one from CNET. It's my opinion, but still base on fact.

From the link:

"A ribbon tweeter uses a very thin diaphragm (often of aluminum, or perhaps metalized plastic film) that supports a planar coil frequently made by deposition of aluminium vapor, suspended in a powerful magnetic field (typically provided by neodymium magnets) to reproduce high frequencies. The development of ribbon tweeters has more or less followed the development of ribbon microphones. The ribbon is of very lightweight material and so capable of very high acceleration and extended high frequency response. Ribbons have traditionally been incapable of high output (large magnet gaps leading to poor magnetic coupling is the main reason). But higher power versions of ribbon tweeters are becoming common in large-scale sound reinforcement line array systems, which can serve audiences of thousands. They are attractive in these applications since nearly all ribbon tweeters inherently exhibit useful directional properties, with very wide horizontal dispersion (coverage) and very tight vertical dispersion. These drivers can easily be stacked vertically, building a high frequency line array that produces high sound pressure levels much farther away from the speaker locations than do conventional tweeters."

Since this speaker is at the same price range than the Def Tech Mythos STLs, it begs the question. Which is the better speaker for the money? Several people have stated that the vertical dispersion of the High Velocity Folder Tweeter is an issue, maybe the STL is the answer here? I would love to see which of these speakers sounds better, for the same price Def Tech offers a remote (which controls the bass of both speakers at the same time), a sexier-looking speaker, removable covers (not cloth), aluminum aircraft-grade enclosure, and the list goes on. It also has an amazing magnesium-aluminum tweeter with no vertical dispersion issues. I can tell you that I am not a fan-boy of def tech, however, having heard the STL at a local best buy, I was extremely impressed with the speaker. For a speaker at this price, I certainly was expecting more from Golden Ear, having seen the STLs this speaker does seem like a good deal to me. I will go to a store tomorrow to hear this speaker and see what the deal is, I can tell you that it has a really high bar to reach having experienced the STLs. We'll see.

I recently heard these monsters and thought they were very good. Surely not lacking in detail and like the review stated, no smearing of transient response. I would actually consider them too good for music if that's a thing. The most minute of details have generous amounts of body and are gratuitously layered from one another. During movie playback this ability proves to construct blueprints rather than paint an abstract leading to exact representation of what the producers intended. This combined with sight and imagination creates an otherworldly enigma that undoubtedly would be hard to sustain with many other speakers. However, the layers of details I spoke of and monstrous dynamics makes it a little hard to for your ears to cope with it as a musical presentation for some genres due to the fleshing out of undertones rather than them melting away.

The engineering mindset of this speaker was to sound good. I would never listen to this speaker and say to myself" they should have went dome." that would win most ignorantthing to say title of the year

I demoed these next to some B&W 802Ds. I absolutely thought the Tritons sounded better. So I bought em. Slam, impactful, fast, dynamic as hell and refined at the same time. They just never sound like they are even trying. They really do not give a damn what genre of music you play on them. If you demo them make sure they are broken in and that the subs are dialed in correctly. Lots of speakers are good at some things and I notice most audiophile speakers are voiced to bring the vocals front and center. I believe this is why most only sound good on certain types of music and I believe this robs them of impactful dynamic swings.

I laughed out loud at the "no dispersion" trolling. I've had Triton 2 speakers in our stupidly designed family room (ceiling way too high, open space design lengthwise way far back beyond where seating would go at its limit, continuing the high ceiling all the way; opens up on one side halfway back; in other words, one of those contemporary houses designed without audiophiles in mind). I brought them home on a trial from the dealer, having read all the tut-tutting about Heil drivers. The speakers filled the space. Didn't matter if you were sitting, standing, or flopped out on the floor, there was very little difference in sound. In fact, one of the things that impressed me the most was how much of the good sound was there in the kitchen area off the family room, and in the living room. Good enough that guests sometimes get up in the middle of a dinner and wander trancelike into the family room to listen to something that they'd never heard sound like THAT before.

I just heard the Triton 1 speakers yesterday at an event organized by an electronics store, with Sandy in attendance. Of course there was a chair of exactly the right height in the sweet spot. I spent maybe two minutes there. One side of the setup the wall was near the speaker, the other wall was a good 10 feet or more away. Very high ceiling, very long room. The sound did vary, minutely, if I went all the way over to the wall far from the system, but even less than I expected. Sitting, standing, even flopped on the floor (yes I did... it was clean, so why not) the sound was very consistent. Sandy's demo disk has a lot of acoustic music, no surprise. Finger snapping on one song was freakishly real in space, no matter where your head was (other than looking away...). Most striking was the bass - on the Triton speakers the bass has always been three dimensional, and when Sandy talked about how much of the bass energy comes from the side radiators versus the front facing woofers, it suddenly made sense.

I also heard the new 2+, and there is a noticeable (although not huge) improvement over the 2. More dimensionality, more air.

And now I'm reading reviews trying really hard, REALLY HARD, to convince myself I don't need the Triton 1, and should just upgrade my Triton 2 setup to 2+. Cost IS an object. But I can't get the sound of the Triton 1 out of my head. The bass was 3 dimensional in a way that was spooky. I know that people say bass isn't directional, but if you've been IN a band or orchestra (union musician for 10 years, rock to orchestras and everything in between) it absolutely is directional, and I could tell you exactly where the bass was on stage from almost any position in the room when listening to the Triton 1. That's why I fear I'll be forking over for the new Triton 1 speakers. The dimensionality was just so striking.

Seriously, if you're reading the review thinking about them, go listen, stop reading theoretical criticisms. I saw a lot of speaker orders being written up yesterday afternoon and watched the only in-stock Triton 1 and 2 sets being hauled out to peoples' cars.

I remember the B&W DM1 loudspeaker. It has a huge 31 inches woofer and a curved electrostatic radiator for mids and highs. To have good, real bass, you need a huge driver. All modern loudspeaker fail since they use small diameters drivers for reproducing the bass. As for mid and high, no driver beats the electrostatics. And it is Quad.