My family room is VERY live - no curtains, lots of windows - and a difficult room with over two story ceilings, open on one side into a kitchen and dining area and open above into a large foyer, and large. My stereo setup in the room was originally based on a set of Gradient Revolution speakers, which are the most placement and room tolerant speakers I've ever listened too. I had the Tritons in my photography studio, which is a big oddly shaped space, and pretty live too. I was surprised how well the Triton's handled the studio's acoustics, and decided to try them in my family room setup, thinking they'd become the basis for a combined music and video sound setup. With a tiny bit of attention to position, the Tritons sound stunning. My wife loves the clarity in the highs, and since she claims to not know or care about differences in speakers... that's a big endorsement.

I'm not using Audessey, our receiver is a Yamaha and they've got their own proprietary setup, and it seems pretty rudimentary. It was interesting to me that I did NOT get the "out of phase" the first time I ran the setup, but when I re-ran it, I did get the message. I then ran the setup three more times - twice I got the "out of phase" and the third time I didn't. I did not change anything. (I ran multiple times wondering why it was not detecting that the Tritons were large full range). Since the auto setup at least got the distances right, saving me tape measure time, I just went in and made manual changes.

The Yamaha will be replaced in the next couple of months. I set up the Triton's on passthrough, and with the Yamaha only doing the pre-amp functionality, it makes the Triton's sound less good than with my music amp/preamp setup. I'm waiting for the Supersat 60s to come out (WHEN?) and will initially try using one as my center. If the wife approval factor for the pass through doesn't rise, however (she thinks it's complex... turning on one more piece of equipment... sigh) I'll get two more 60s and have one music system and one video system. And I'll feel like a GoldenEar showroom...

I was going to use a Supersat 50, but listening at my dealer, I thought the gap between the sound character of the 50s and the Triton 2s was pretty large, but the gap in the character of the sound between the sound bar and Triton 2 seemed almost non-existent. I don't know how to describe the difference really - it was in authority, density of sound, if that makes any sense. (Could also be the setup at the dealer not being ideal.) I'm thinking the 60s will be stronger, and a better match for the large space I have to fill with sound once I get a better receiver in place. They'll also be a better visual match for the screen size.

Thanks for the additional insight.

Your suggestion of trying the receiver's bypass or direct mode is a good one. In my case, I had done that a while back, as well as hooking up my old, but high quality 2-channel stereo preamp/amp to the Tritons in the home theater space. Neither aproach made an audible improvement, which suggests to me that the negative room affects are so strong that they mask any imrovement likely to be gained by bypassing all the additional digital signal processing in my Marantz AVR.

I also have read reports in one of the Audioholics forums that some AVRs, specifically the Anthems, do not automatically downmix the subwoofer channnel to the front left / right speakers even when they are set to full range or large.

SuperSat 60's are shipping to dealers today.

Setup was probably not correct on the 50C demo - it is very difficult for retail showrooms to stay properly configured with multiple systems, consumer/salesperson button pushing, changing gear, etc. The 60C does look more size appropriate for today's growing screen sizes, and for bigger rooms with Triton Twos.

Thanks for the additional detail, ednaz.

I agree with you regarding the sound character of the 50C as center channel. At least in my setup, I do not get the seamless integration or voicing with the Tritons I had hoped for. I haven't been able to determine how much of this is due to room effects, but I have found that temporarily substituting my old narrow dispersion center channel speaker gave me a more coherent soundstage across the front of the room and clearer, more focused dialogue on videos (at the expense of even more obvious differences in speaker voicing).

I had a similar experience with a Yamaha Aventage receiver when auditoning the Tritons in a dealer showroom. They were initially set up in stereo configuration with a high quality amp and preamp and sounded great. I asked the dealer to substitute an AVR, albeit in stereo mode, since the speakers were not in the home theater showroom and the dealer didn't have the GoldenEar center or surrounds in stock. While the sound through the Yamaha was good, it was obviously thinner sounding, with less depth to the soundstage and less authority in the bass. The AVR was configured to its default settings, so improvment could have been possible.

Good luck with your complete GoldenEar system and new receiver. BTW, I like your fallback positon of having separate GoldenEar audio and video systems!

I agree on keeping up in the showrooms. They were in the process of rearranging to get the sound bar in, which required moving the screen, and then there's the different Tritons in the room. Holes drilled, wires being pulled, floor plan being shuffled.

Sound is so idiosyncratic, depending on the space, the other components, what types of sources and content. If I was a dealer, I think I'd have one set of "rental" speakers that could be borrowed for a week, kept an additional week if "rented", to help people make the decision. Hard on cash flow because those speakers will take a beating, but with the decline in dealers with show rooms that more closely mimic the real world environments, it's going to be harder and harder for people to understand the quality of pleasure that the right speakers can bring.

(Early job, many years ago shortly after dinosaurs went extinct - delivering demo speakers and/or components to customers, setting them up; then picking them up a week later. That dealer sold more of the top of the line of every product they carried than anyone else in the region.)

I recently upgraded from a receiver to Marantz separates - the 7701 processor, and the 7055 amp. When I did system setup, I used the Audessy that's in the Marantz, and I did NOT get the "out of phase" warning, and I went through the setup process several times because my original center was replaced by a SuperSat 60C, and then replaced my rear speakers with a different set.

The Audessy system recognized the Triton 2 as full range, and did a decent job of setup, with one exception. I have a sub, along with the Triton 2, and the Audessy setup came out mega-heavy in bass. Clearly struggling to balance the sub with the Triton 2 woofers. A little manual tweaking and it came out nicely.