By the way, I note the "setup" differs among the T Refs and T1s, so one cannot perform an apples-to-apples comparison by looking at the graphs.

GDHAL, you're talking about the subwoofer amp level? You can see that difference at the lower end of the frequency response curves. The microphone height is a little different, but not much. Those ripples in the high frequency response may be due to microphone vertical alignment (or lack thereof) with the tweeter. There are so many variables with this stuff...

Just read John Atkinson Goldenear Triton Reference review in the January 2018 issue of Stereophile. Personally, I don't know what to think. John had problems with the midrange being slightly on the forward side of neutral, a soundstage that was not as deep as he's used to, and a central image that's not pin point accurate. Yes, the .T Refs do piano and Play loudly without strain, but the bass is their strong point. Why did Sandy set the bass control so high? I believe John has the same size room as me, and the control knob set at 9-10 is perfect for all genres of music... I believe John has a negativity for built-in Subs. The controllability of the subs is what sets the Tritons apart from other speakers.

All in all, it's a Good review. John is being honest with what he heard.
I for one am Very Happy with my T REFS and will hopefully live with them for many years to come.

anthem wrote: Just read John Atkinson Goldenear Triton Reference review in the January 2018 issue of Stereophile. Personally, I don't know what to think. John had problems with the midrange being slightly on the forward side of neutral, a soundstage that was not as deep as he's used to, and a central image that's not pin point accurate. Yes, the .T Refs do piano and Play loudly without strain, but the bass is their strong point. Why did Sandy set the bass control so high? I believe John has the same size room as me, and the control knob set at 9-10 is perfect for all genres of music... I believe John has a negativity for built-in Subs. The controllability of the subs is what sets the Tritons apart from other speakers.

All in all, it's a Good review. John is being honest with what he heard.
I for one am Very Happy with my T REFS and will hopefully live with them for many years to come.

Hi Anthem -

Just my .02 I'm not a big Atkinson fan. No particular reason though. But I did watch the video and he and his listening room (if its the one where the interview was conducted) really didn't impress me.

Anyway, to my way of thinking (albeit warped at times), the bass ideally should be at 12 because this would be "flat" with respect to the rest of speaker drivers. True? At a minimum I'd have to think GET designs all Triton towers with built-in amps to be flat at 12.

The newer models are all set for flat at around 12 o'clock on the bass section gain level, the early Triton Two and Three were set for flat at 10 o'clock. Both of these vary wildly by room and positioning (which is why it's so nice to have the control).

Regarding the bass setting in the review, I am pretty sure this is an inaccurate memory on the writer's part based on the time between Sandy's visit and the writing of the review (which I believe included a remodel of his listening room). From personal experience I can tell you that Sandy always sets the Triton speakers wide apart and toed in, with the bass control typically set around 11 o'clock, but never higher than noon. Anything other than that configuration would have been the re-setup results after Sandy left.

The review was great, the T Ref was on the cover with a great headline and the interview with Sandy was wonderful. I believe this is about as good a review as you can get from JA for an affordable reference speaker. The T Ref also just won Loudspeaker of the Year from Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity, to add to its list of awards so far, I think the industry experts are getting it right.

I finally received my January issue of Stereophile yesterday; the mule teams do take a while to plod across the Nevada desert.

I found JA’s review of the TRefs a little odd, and they certainly prove Moderator Dude’s point about the fallibility of measurements. JA adds the complex responses from the different drivers (Figure 1, page 61 if anybody wants to look) and ends up with a large, isolated peak at 60 Hz. This doesn’t look like an anechoic response to me. I checked his T1 review, and he did not do this sum, although the different T1 driver curves look very similar to those of the TRef, with peaks a little over 60 Hz. (See www.stereophile.com/content/goldenear-te...#gYwVq284hP1ydEfG.97 )

I have never noticed any such obvious peak with my TRefs in their current positions, although back when I was hunting around for the best T1 speaker and listening positions, I heard some pretty strong modes. These days, though, things are pretty tame. But, just to be sure, this morning I ran a frequency sweep and measured the response with a spectrum analyzer app on my smart phone. I found a series of peaks at 56, 73, 87, 110, and 152 Hz, all about the same amplitude, and which correspond well to my calculated length and width room modes. No spectral band averaging here. (I can’t measure much below 50 Hz because the smart phone’s sensitivity drops off radically below that.) JA’s exceptionally high 60 Hz peak might be an artifact of his testing environment (listening room?).

The step response plot, my favorite, looks very much like the T1’s. I think this kind of tight time response is one of the great features of these speakers.

What most puzzles me about this review, though, is that JA felt it necessary to turn down the bass amp control from 12:00 to 10:00, and then again “another notch”. Wow! I run mine at 12:00 most of the time. I’ve experimented with increasing the bass, but even a measly ¼ of a division on the control makes a big difference to me. I find 12:00 excellent for almost everything, from orchestral to rock, blues, jazz, solo piano, you name it. There are big differences between recordings, though; some are bass rich, and others are quite lean sounding. But that ain’t the speakers fault! They are fantastic in their ability to do clean, well-controlled and natural sounding bass.

I can’t imagine turning down the bass as far as JA did. It makes me wonder if he was compensating for that 60 Hz “room” bump. Or maybe it has been a while since he listened to a real full range speaker, of which there seem to be very few in this universe.

Charlie