Loudspeakers

I can't recall ever encountering a loudspeaker whose sensitivity is quoted to quarter-decibel accuracy like the Triton Reference (93.25dB) but our pink noise measurement result of 93.1dB is in close agreement with GoldenEar's figure. Although the nominal impedance is quoted as 'compatible with 8 ohms' this is in reality a 4ohm speaker, with our measurements recording a minimum of 3.4ohm/328Hz. Unfortunately, the impedance phase angles are very high at bass frequencies, despite the active subwoofer section, and so the EPDR (equivalent peak dissipation resistance) falls to a challenging low of 1.3ohm/69Hz.

The forward frequency responses for the review pair, measured at 1m on the tweeter axis, reveal a classic 'BBC dip' through the presence band and shelved-up extreme treble [see Graph 1, below]. Together these features raise the response errors to ±4.0dB and ±3.5dB (350Hz–20kHz), which is mildly disappointing for a flagship model. Notable too are the closely-spaced response ripples, caused by a reflection within the speaker which shows as a peak within the impulse response at a delay of 0.57ms, equivalent to a path length of 19.6cm. While it's impossible to say what this is due to, the curved grille – which is fixed – is a suspect. Pair matching over the same frequency range was also somewhat disappointing at ±1.6dB, the largest disparities occurring within the bandwidth of the HVFR (High-Velocity Folded Ribbon) tweeter. Because of the impossibility of accessing the bass drivers and ABRs for nearfield measurement, bass extension was very difficult to assess with accuracy – the figure in the table is a 'guesstimate'. The CSD waterfall [Graph 2] shows a succession of treble resonances. KH