GoldenEar Triton Reference for a large room...

I have 1s and i can't imagine ever wanting more bass.

They have powered, adjustable active bass drivers,  seems ideal for your situation.  

Other options would include higher efficiency speakers like volti audio, klipsch cornwalls, andio note AN-E

thank you @secretguy and @avanti1960.  i appreciate your thoughts and comments.

@secretguy:  may i ask your room's size please?  you mentioned you have the 1s, which i'm not familiar with.  is the model 1s a predecessor of the 1.R?

you mentioned that you can't ever imagine wanting more bass.  sure, i understand, but it is room-dependent, right?  i look forward to hearing about your particular set up so i may be more educated.  

thank you both in advance.

I would think with the adjustments they offer should be good to go on the bass end of things. Pretty good size room though! I would be more worried about mids and highs getting lost. I had Triton ones and they were pretty damn good but was in a very different room. 

@dualmonitors I should have written Ones...like a pair of Ones.The original model.

I've had them in a couple of rooms. Currently they are used for HT in a pretty lousy setup. In my last house They were used for both HT and stereo. The rooms was about 15 x 25 (guessing)....and it opened to upstairs bedrooms.

The day after watching an action film with explosions etc, we'd have to go through the house straightening all the pic on walls. LOL

I've never run the subs higher than about 12 Oclock.

I think the T Ref's will work well. I have the T 1.r's in a dedicated listening room. However it's not as large of space as yours. With the adjustable bass driver you can fine tune the bass manually on the back of the speaker. Also they are really efficient and don't need a lot of power, but if you do have a lot of power they can handle it and probably really fill any room. I drive mine with a 65 WPC tube amp and it works really well with them. My guess is that you will be thrilled with them as they are really good sounding speakers.

One other thought about the References:

considering that the speakers are in their 5th year (or thereabouts), with no stated improvements made since their introduction (i.e. no Reference 1.1), might these be a bit dated?

Quality control:  how do current owners of ANY GoldenEar speakers, especially the References, the Ones, the 1.Rs, etc, feel about the quality control?  either of the built-in amps, or any other aspects of their construction, their drivers, etc. please?

GoldenEar has been sold to Audioquest, is that also a risk to take into account?

these are some of the things on my mind.  i'd be grateful for the experienced folks here to give me your highly experienced comments, please.

thank you.

@audiotroy says

"with the tritons you can not tune the bass to match the  position in the room get a pair of legacys signatures and if more bass is required then a seperate sub

we used to sell the tritons legacys were far better the signatures are hand made in Illinoisand dont use chinese sourced drivers"

Seriously! Now that you don't sell them you are calling them trash. Less than a year ago you made sure everyone knew you were a dealer and talked about how good they were and what a screaming deal they are. Wow

Have you checked out the Paradigm Founder 120H for around the same price as the GEs? Those look pretty interesting. 

@mofojo : thanks for your comment and thoughts. I sent you a private message. May i ask if you received it? Thank you. ​​​​

@audiotroy 

"we used to sell the tritons legacys were far better the signatures are hand made in Illinoisand dont use chinese sourced drivers"

You do realize that your opinion is virtually worthless.

Because it has nothing all to do with helping the OP and everything to do with adding to your bank account, the OP might as well ask his cat.

@dualmonitors 

I don't see a message. Should go to my email right? 

@mofojo :   you should get a notification for private messages IF in your user preferences for THIS SITE (upper right, click on your own profile).  you may select various types of notifications for private messages.

to get to private messages, it's a bit circuitous: 

please click on my username, then on MY profile page, click the button below my username "Marketplace feedback".  when the NEW PAGE opens up, you'll see that on the upper right corner, under YOUR OWN username, is an icon that looks like a thought bubble.  it is in between the bell icon and the shopping cart icon.

please click that thought bubble icon, and ALL your private messages open up.

hopefully, you'll be successful in finding my message there.  thank you.

Got it thanks. 

i'm grateful for the helpful comments y'all have posted.  what a great group of experienced folks!  thank you!

the References are easy to drive, efficient, has adjustable deep bass, built-in amps which makes the midrange/tweeter easy to drive, thus an Anthem or Arcam might work well with these.

my remaining concerns are:

-  5-year old technology, design.  No improvements or "Model Reference 1.1" made yet.  Is this a real risk?  These continue to be considered Class A at both The Absolute Sound and Stereophile - literally can't get better accolades than these two publications.  Still, worth thinking about whether a 5-year old, untouched design, might be dated?

-  GoldenEar is now sold to Audioquest.  Is this a real risk?  Would customer service suffer?  Or might an injection of funding, the backing of a strong infrastructure actually benefit GoldenEar?  They have been very quick to ship out replacement amps to those with failed amp sections - will this continue?  Or will they become more stingy due to the corporate structure?

-  Quality control:  is being made overseas really an issue?  Many products are made overseas and may be either top tiered products or lower tiered products.  It all depends on what the customer paid for and asked for, right?  Is this not a real risk or is it a risk to some degree?  Clearly, this isn't a "Yugo" or a Ford "Pinto"!  So why would THIS high end product made overseas be a concern, and iPhones and Nikon cameras be not a concern?  Legitimate question.  Personally, i'm merely slightly concerned about quality control, but that's a concern about any high value purchase in general!

Thank you all in advance!  Look forward to hearing!

I should have said in my PM to you that I found the GE to sound best by far with an Odyssey Stratos Plus. High current balsy amp. Specs be damned by I did not find them to sound all that great with a Cayin integrated I had. I don’t buy specs sometimes just gotta try it. They sounded kinda dry and boring with the tubes for some reason. Dunno. My cheap Jolida EL 34 sounds downright fantastic with my S-1ex. Prob should not work on paper. 

@mofojo et al:

may i ask how you feel the References will sound with an Anthem 1140 or 740 AVR please?

i'll also have to buy one of the GoldenEar Center channel speakers.

I had the GE References about 4 years ago and traded them in about a year later.  They were fine for HT but the highs were very fatiguing with music. 

Honestly no idea how they would sound with the Anthem AVR. I know that’s one of the better ones but not in the same ballpark as good separates or integrated designed for 2 channel IMO. I’m sure it would be acceptable but not up to par of what they are capable of. If your worried about home theater there are some integrated amps and some preamps that have a home theater bypass. 

@gimmeroc:  thanks for your comment.

this is the very first opinion that i've ever read that the References have fatiguing highs!

may i ask if anyone else found either the 1.R or the References to be fatiguing as well please?  

i ask about those two models because they share the same tweeters with the higher gauss magnets.

other models as well: are the other models' tweeters fatiguing too?

haven't heard about fatiguing highs till now!

When I auditioned my T1r’s they were hooked up to a Prima Luna Integrated with CD’s and there was no fatigue in the 2 hours I was there and they surprised me for how good they were. I bought them. I use a VAC Renaissance 70/70 tube amp to drive them and it works wonderful. I got your message but when I tried to reply AG said it was against some rules and were reporting me-WTH? What I suggested is you call Upscale Audio and talk to them, they are the distributor for GE and you can ask them about all your concerns and if they will work with your amp. My dedicated listening room is 14' x 18' with 6.5' ceilings. (Basement) so the T1r's are plenty and I didn't want to get too close to the ceiling with taller speakers.

Why is a dealer allowed to post their virtual ad here???

Focal Sopras would work well and if your budget allows Rockport Avior ii or Atria ii would be a must audition. Good luck! 

@dualmonitors,

I have owned the GE Triton Refs since they first came out in 2017. I have never ever had any problems with the speakers. I have also owned (no longer have) the Triton One and Triton Twos. My Triton Refs are in my 16 by 18 foot living room with 12 foot ceilings and they are set up on the long wall toed in a bit. I sit about 10 feet away.

There is no need to worry about too much bass, as the level control on the back of the speaker will help compensate. My control is set around 10 O clock, bass is “to die” for. I have never hears bright treble from the speakers, if they were bright, I would never have bought them. I used a Odyssey Stratos 150wpc amp in the beginning, tried a CJ MF2550, and for 1 1/2 years used a McIntosh MC152 150wpc amp and finally bought a McIntosh MC 302 300wpc amp which is my final amp. All the amps sounded great with the speakers except the CJ MF2550. It just didn’t seem to gel with the speakers.

If you have questions, send me a PM and we can discuss further.

@audiotroy,

You sold the GE Triton 1R speakers for at least a year and during that time you went on and on about them, singing their praises. You brought up the speakers in just about every speaker conversation and raved and raved about them. In fact, you raved so much I thought you were a shill for GE.

Now it seems you yet again jumped on a different brand of speakers bandwagon being Legacy Audio. I love Legacy and if their speakers weren’t so big, I may have bought a pair. The Valor is one of the most realistic speaker I have heard at any price. With that being said, you seem to jump around with different lines, going with the flavor of the month. You also seem to think you are the know all end all dealer. A dealer inFramingham, MA did the same thing, jumping from line to line and then badmouthing the previous line, exactly the same thing you always do. I no longer purchase from that dealer, even though they are the closest high end store near me.

IMO, with you jumping from line to line and badmouthing the the line you dropped (or were dropped) because you don’t sell them any longer makes me never want to purchase anything from you. I wonder how GE would feel if they knew a former dealer is bad mouthing them now. I actually wonder how all the companies that you have done this to would feel. If I were one of those companies, a lawyer would be knocking on your door. It just is not good business practice. 

Agoners- 

Report the questionable posts by the obvious.

I did.

Some dealers are simply have no shame.

@stereo5 If I were a vendor of @audiotroy I would drop them due to the lack of decorum and  integrity they have displayed in this forum. 

@stereo5 :   sent you a private message.  kindly please, when you have a moment, check your private messages here on audiogon.  thank you!

streo e4e were selling legacy at the same time stil like the tritons however like the lreacys more

Do you read anything you write before you hit post? Looks like a 1st grader writes it. 

So you are moving into an apartment and are worried if you will have enough bass? I wonder if your neighbors will have the same concern?

@ozzy62:   i'm not "worried if i'll have enough bass..."

my concern is with such a large room and the fact that it is connected to another room, mostly all open without walls, that the bass might be substantially "lost" due to bass leakage.

as to whether my neighbors will have the same concern, i do not yet know.  when i find out, i'll be sure to circle back to inform you.

By the time you find out and circle back to inform him you may just be out a good bit of money. That's on you not the neighbors who are already there. 

Agreed. That "lost" bass might just be found by a somewhat annoyed neighbor.

Pay for an ad.

a follow up question please:

i've essentially decided that i'll get the GoldenEar Triton Reference speakers for my front left and front right speakers.

for my center channel, GoldenEar has 3 options: X, XL, or Reference center.

i'm using an Ultra Short Throw projector, the Hisense 120" L9G, so the projector is quite some distance from the wall, but close to the floor (i.e. low), which means the center channel needs to be BELOW the Hisense projector.

The Hisense L9G ultra short throw projector is around 24" wide, so the Reference center at 35" is much wider in size than the Hisense projector. Please note that the Hisense is on the top shelf, with the center BELOW the Hisense. This floorstanding stand will have to be custom made.

considering that the Reference center at 35" is SO much wider than the Hisense projector (at 24" wide), i am thinking of getting the middle size center from GoldenEar, their "XL" center, which is 29" wide, which is merely 2 1/2" wider on either side of the projector. that means the stand would only have to be around 5" wider than a stand made for the projector-only, not that much wider.

may i ask if anyone has experience with these centers please? am i giving up that much by not getting the Reference center and just getting the "XL" center please?

thank you.

If I could find a pair of preowned Reference I would buy them.  Not interested in paying the full 11k retail price.  

@seanile31, I got lucky. I bought mine when they were first coming out. I ordered from the dealer and it was a 6 month wait. The retail was $8500.00 but I got a $500.00 discount down to $8000.00. I am ecstatic they jumped $3K in price, makes them more valuable.