It has been an incredibly hectic 48 hours! Four piano movers arrived at my home about 8 AM Sunday morning and proceeded to move the assorted boxes that constitute the Triolons into my listening room. On Saturday I had carefully measured and taped the positions of the speakers because I figured that once bolted together, there was little chance that I would want to move these 850# monsters. The speakers were positioned much as they had been at Mike and Neli's: front inside corners 73" apart, back corners about 79" and about 60" from the back wall with the back of the listening chair about 12' from the front of the speakers. Surprisingly this turned out to be a really good location and allowed about 36" from the outside edge of each speaker to the side wall. The speakers made it into the house safely without incident. It took most of the remainder of the day to rehook up the system. Then it was time to fire everything up! The ion tweeters which positively loathe travelling would not come on. At this point, I decided to give myself a rest and wait until the next day to troubleshoot the tweeters since the most likely scenario was that FedEx had dropped the wooden shipping crates and dislodged a tube. I also decided to await on Neli's arrival to help [she had been at an audio show in Dallas over the weekend, so the timing was great]. I should also note that disassembling the tweeters is tedious and getting the metal cages back together is similar to a Rubik's cube.
Neli arrived the next day after lunch. We pulled the tweeters and proceeded to disassemble them. As predicted the Siemens PL509 driver tube in each tweeter had been dislodged. After putting the tube back in the socket and putting back on the anode cap, both tweeters were now working but were a bit spitty as they burned dust from their combustion chambers. We then put everything back together and began a listening session that lasted until midnight.
Initial listening was with an Esoteric X-01 D2 with a variety of classical and female vocals. The sound was very good with excellent depth and detail, but never magical. Two significant changes were made, i) hooking up my Saturn A55 subs and ii) switching to the Rockport turntable. The subs blended seemlessly with the Triolons and added the bottom octave which the speakers just cannot produce without augmentation. The turntable was revelatory, think jaw dropping. Now there was magic! We played mostly Decca 2000's and 6000's with one or two re-issues such as Sounds Unheard OF.
Further thoughts: The Triolons are a significant improvement over the Campanile Highs. They are much more detailed without being bright or strident, the micro and macro dynamics are vastly superior and the bass, particularly from 170 to 700 where the largeer horn operates instead of a dynamic woofer is superb; faster tighter, better controlled and much better integrated with the smaller horn and tweeters. Unfortunately, the Triolons' resolution is a two edged sword and tends to magnify problems with other components. The Parasound JC-1's are actually doing a much better job than I had expected. They are excellent at controlling the SEAS woofers, fast, detailed and clean. They do lack a bit of harmonic richness and texture in comparison to something like the Kegons and they do have the least amount of whiteness in the upper mids and lower treble. Likewise, I clearly need to experiment with my current cabling (Crystal Reference) which may be contributing to what I am hearing.
All things said, I am extremely happy with the Triolons!
Neli arrived the next day after lunch. We pulled the tweeters and proceeded to disassemble them. As predicted the Siemens PL509 driver tube in each tweeter had been dislodged. After putting the tube back in the socket and putting back on the anode cap, both tweeters were now working but were a bit spitty as they burned dust from their combustion chambers. We then put everything back together and began a listening session that lasted until midnight.
Initial listening was with an Esoteric X-01 D2 with a variety of classical and female vocals. The sound was very good with excellent depth and detail, but never magical. Two significant changes were made, i) hooking up my Saturn A55 subs and ii) switching to the Rockport turntable. The subs blended seemlessly with the Triolons and added the bottom octave which the speakers just cannot produce without augmentation. The turntable was revelatory, think jaw dropping. Now there was magic! We played mostly Decca 2000's and 6000's with one or two re-issues such as Sounds Unheard OF.
Further thoughts: The Triolons are a significant improvement over the Campanile Highs. They are much more detailed without being bright or strident, the micro and macro dynamics are vastly superior and the bass, particularly from 170 to 700 where the largeer horn operates instead of a dynamic woofer is superb; faster tighter, better controlled and much better integrated with the smaller horn and tweeters. Unfortunately, the Triolons' resolution is a two edged sword and tends to magnify problems with other components. The Parasound JC-1's are actually doing a much better job than I had expected. They are excellent at controlling the SEAS woofers, fast, detailed and clean. They do lack a bit of harmonic richness and texture in comparison to something like the Kegons and they do have the least amount of whiteness in the upper mids and lower treble. Likewise, I clearly need to experiment with my current cabling (Crystal Reference) which may be contributing to what I am hearing.
All things said, I am extremely happy with the Triolons!