I went to my dealer with the intention of buying a pair of Triton 7's, but ended up buying a pair of Triton 3's. In the showroom, the 7s had an exciting sound, but high end seem overly emphasized. The 3'd sounded very different -- much more balanced -- and were on sale for $1600, not that much more than I planned to spend.

At home, I'm disappointed in the 3's -- here, the high end sounds muffled. I tried different settings of the bass adjustment, and different kinds of material, but they just seem to lack sparkle, kind of dull.

I don't think my dealer will be thrilled if I return asking to "trade down" to the 7s, but he does accept returns within 14 days with a 10% restocking fee, so at worse I'm out $160. (The 7s are on sale for $1200, so I would basically break even on the non-sale price of the 7s.)

But would I be on a fools errand? If I'm not happy with the 3s, would I be equally unhappy with the 7s? As I mentioned, in the showroom they sounded very different. I have a Yamaha RX-A700 (from their Aventage line). The store demoed the 7s with a similar receiver. I don't want to start upgrading my electronics as well at this time.

The Threes and Sevens should sound very similar, if properly setup and configured. There are differences of course. The Threes have more extended bass, and an adjustment for bass level; Sevens will probably play louder (assuming both in full range application), but overall balance and sound quality is very similar. Without knowing your application, settings, placement, etc., it would be hard to say why - but I would not be surprised if the Sevens sounded similar, all else being equal.

Just to rule out the obvious "its defective" stuff, I presume the tweeters are in fact both playing, and the woofer level controls function properly and are set at something around noon?

Thank you for the advice -- check the settings on my receiver! As I was checking things out, I hit the "pure direct" button to disable all audio processing -- and the speakers came to life!

The big culprit was YPAO. I had dutifully run YPAO (the older single-microphone setting) when I set up the speakers. It correctly inferred the distance to each speaker and set reasonable levels, but must have really whacked the frequency response. Setting YPAO to "through" (equalizer off) cleared up most of the muffling. On my old speakers, YPAO had helped, but it was awful for the 3s.

Next, I found that I needed to set Dynamic Range to MAX (ie disabled), and finally turn off Adaptive DRC. I don't know why Adaptive DRC should have any effect when the sound program is 2-CH STEREO, but it does. According to the Yamaha user manual, the result should be equivalent to Pure Direct, but Pure Direct is still a tad clearer for music.

So, no more buyer's regret!

Hello Henry,
Thanks for that, it was good to hear about what you discovered.
You should be very happy with the Triton 3s, they are great speakers!!!!! And will give you a more full, rich, deeper balanced sound than even the wonderful T 7s.
I am SURE it was the settings messing up your sound, and as you experiment with position and toe in you will probably find even more musical magic there.
Are you primarily listening to music? Do you use them for movies too?
Let us know how you get on and enjoy the listening, great tunes deserve great speakers, and the Triton 3s are great speakers.
God Bless,
Wayne

I have a pair of Triton Three. I'm asking this because I noticed the industry press giving more attention to the 2s and 7s.

Curious to know the sonic and technical impact of single vs dual midrange drivers.

I have no clue, does that make the midrange louder, more sonically enhanced, wider dispersion or something else?

Its called a D'Appolito design (you can Google that). Triton Seven and Triton Three are different products for different applications. Triton Two is just a "bigger" Triton Three in all respects, everything said about the Triton Two really applies to the Three as well, it just won't play as loud and would not be suited for a large room and high playback levels.

Hope this helps.