CES 2009

Miguel Alvareaz of Point St. Lucie, Florida, is a defector for the cause. A self-confessed former marketing rep for Bose who always had a passion for audiophile products, he eventually left the company to develop the Tripoint Troy power product ($8000). Based on a new concept, the device uses passive filtration in the form of magnetism and layers of different materials (brass, copper, and proprietary products) to eliminate and reduce EMI and RFI. Rather than a line conditioner per se—one is in the works—the Troy is a grounding device to which you attach ground wires from the various components in your system. (If a component lacks a ground wire, Miguel can explain how to determine the right place to affix one).

One of the places where Miguel first tried out his unit was at Skyline Studios in NYC. When the resident sound engineer used the Troy to play back rare Sam Cooke master tapes, he declared that he could finally hear things on the tapes that he had never heard over the past 30 years.

The Tripoint Troy employs harmonic tuning to create an extremely neutral, warm sound without any hint of sterility. This unit's cabinet is composed of African bubinga, a high density African wood that is not as wooly sounding as maple. Heard in an expensive system that included a Stibbert Tube CD Player by Goldenote of Italy, MIT speaker wire, and Chario Serendipity loudspeakers, the Troy helped bring out a lovely, inner warmth on a piano recording. That the system sounded as good as it did given that none of the electronics were broken in suggests that the Tripoint Troy is doing something very right.