Loudspeakers

When the Quest Group, known for the ubiquitous AudioQuest brand, acquired GoldenEar in 2020 it raised some eyebrows. Why would a company excelling at manufacturing and selling cables, often co-operating with speaker brands, wish to tackle the challenging loudspeaker market itself? And what would happen to the GoldenEar product range, which next to custom install and subwoofer models mostly consists of curious semi-active loudspeakers? The answer to that second question, at least, is the £6249 T66, the first arrival under GoldenEar's new ownership.

Succeeding the Triton Two+, the three-way semi-active T66 at first glance appears to be more of the same. This is not so surprising, as for all the change at board level, GoldenEar's main development team is still the same as before, albeit with Quest's Bill Low and Garth Powell (of Niagara power conditioner fame) added to the mix. However, the initial plan was to merely update the slightly threatening monolithic Triton Two+ with an aesthetic more suited to non-US markets, but once everyone gathered around the table it turned into a more comprehensive redesign. Hence the long-running Triton moniker was dropped.

Love Me Slender
A floorstanding loudspeaker, the T66 stands 124cm tall before optional spikes have been fitted to its new-look – and strengthened – cast-aluminium base. Such a height means it's not particularly diminutive, but the limited baffle width gives it a slender appearance even as the cabinet, also upgraded in terms of rigidity, widens at the rear. Meanwhile, curves to the loudspeaker's top along with a newly designed full-length metal grille result in a really quite attractive design.

GoldenEar's familiar high gloss black finish remains available, but for the first time there's an alternative colour option on offer, for a £250 premium. Not white, as might be expected these days, but a fiery, metallic Santa Barbara Red that will remind some of products offered by sibling brand AudioQuest. It's quite striking – maybe too striking for some – but there's no faulting the fit or finish of the T66 in either colourway.

Sub Culture
We're told by GoldenEar that the main objective for the new speaker was to take the authoritative sound of its Triton Two+ and make it a bit more 'audiophile'. In pursuit of this, the T66's High-Velocity Folded Ribbon (HVFR) AMT tweeter is now the same unit as found on the company's Triton Reference [HFN Jun '19], its mounting plate here dressed in a wool felt to reduce baffle reflections.

The underlying crossover has also been upgraded, one alteration being the removal of a Zobel network that was previously employed by GoldenEar to make the Triton Two+ model more 'forgiving' of inexpensive AV amplifiers. As before, the HVFR tweeter is placed in a D'Appolito arrangement between two 4.5in (115mm) bass/mid drivers with 'Multi-Vaned Phase Plugs'. Upgrades to these include new yoke assemblies. Yet what truly sets the T66 apart from a traditional loudspeaker is its use of a built-in DSP-controlled subwoofer unit.

Here, a 500W-rated amplifier, leveraged from GoldenEar's ForceField subwoofer models, powers a pair of front-facing 'quadratic' 5x9in (125x230mm) bass drivers, while a larger passive radiator is placed between, on each side. Importantly, the active bass crossover/amp can either tap a signal off the main speaker inputs or be fed directly via a separate interconnect cable to its RCA LFE input. A knob above the LFE connector lets you adjust the subwoofer level, and adjacent to these are new, higher-quality binding posts, now duplicated to enable bi-wiring and linked by a pair of AQ-sourced gold-plated 'naked' jumper bars.