My Experience With Tekton


I know this is a polarizing discussion point and was thus hesitant to share unless I could keep it objective, helpful, and concise

I have no intention to be inflammatory, sway anyone’s current opinion or beliefs

I merely want to share information in two specific areas, my results of product performance and my experience with the manufacturer

 

Background and reference point

I replaced a pair of Revel F36. The F36 is the upper end of Revel’s lowest tier floorstanding speakers and retails for $2,000 MSRP per pair

Took approx. 45 mins to unbox, level and connect

Like for like drop-in replacement, same location on the floor as the F36s, the listening position did not change, identical electronics and cables

We’ve all got our preferences, biases, different levels of experience, etc; but share the common limitation that we just don’t know what we don’t know

I’ve not heard a pair of 30K speakers but expect to someday and envy those that own them

In my VERY limited understanding, it’s near impossible to pinpoint how any specific system change will behave and perform across the board, contingent on the variances in electronics, set up and room. These three items alone (electronics, setup and room) make me think that while similar in nature, but at a critical listening level, each combination is unique and a different snowflake or fingerprint

 

Listening results

Product delivers as advertised

Meets or exceeds every performance expectation I had hoped for

After approx. 5 hours of listening over 3 days I tried to characterize the sound. The first thought was neutral, but that was understating what I was hearing. I eventually landed on natural or real. The voices and the instruments sound VERY real to me. This is as close as I have come with my electronics, setup and room to sensing that someone is singing to me or that someone or an entire band is playing for me

To date, each song that I’ve played, is the best version of that song that I have heard in a playback, and I’ve listened to all of them 100s and 100s of times

Some of the improvement was by a small margin, but most songs, 65% conservatively speaking, by a vast margin – night and day, game changing stuff

Chet Baker didn’t sound like a presentation from 1958, it sounded as fresh and real as a new recording with the benefits of 60 years of technology advancements. Exile on Main Street didn’t sound like a home recording from 1972 it sounded like 2022 with many layers of percussion, keyboards, horns and background vocals

Is the sound of this $5,000 pair of speakers comparable to the sound of a $30,000 pair of speakers? I don’t know, as mentioned I’ve not heard a pair of $30,000 speakers.

What I do know is the $5,000 pair of speakers, simply put is the best my system has sounded by a wide margin

Again in summary, it sounds real, like someone is singing to me

 

Experience with the manufacturer

I had hemmed and hawed for 2 or 3 months before placing my order. One day the website mentioned a future price increase but until mmdd you could still order at the current price

I called and spoke with Tammy and told her I wanted to lock in on the current price point but wasn’t sure what product or configuration I wanted

She built an open-ended order with current pricing and told me to contact her when I knew what I wanted

With work travel and other commitments it took me 4 months to finalize which speaker, Moab, which upgrades, beryllium tweeters and Cardas connectors, and what color, white

I was never pressured to make up my mind or that my window for the lower costs was going to expire

Since I was the one dragging my feet, I offered multiple times to pay for the product

Not once did they hint or take me up on my offer to pay in advance

They did not bill me until the product shipped

Once I had made all the config decisions, the build and delivery were again, as advertised

Tammy mentioned a 4–6-week supply chain delay with beryllium, that arrived within her estimated timeframe

Once the beryllium arrived, she said she was waiting on cabinets, eta 5-7 days, followed by build and paint, and shipping approx. 10 days after she received the cabinets

Within 2 weeks Tammy emailed my owner’s manual, unpacking instructions and told me to expect a call from the freight company within the next week

Freight company contacted me on that Fri and scheduled delivery for the very next Mon, Aug 30

The boxes arrived scuffed and with multiple impact points that dented the packing material

There are no blemishes or damage to either speaker cabinet, the packing and packaging worked as designed

Upon unpacking, I didn’t experience a heavy smell of paint or wood, if I put my nose to the cabinet, I could smell fresh paint

The cabinet finish or construction does not appear inferior to anything else in my inventory, KEF, Revel, Klipsch, Paradigm, Polk, and Elac – permission in advance to laugh

Enjoy the journey and happy listening

Respectfully


stevewharton

Showing 16 responses by holmz

My personal preference is to praise to high heaven what I love, and give slight mention if any to what I don't. But do it however you like.     

Maybe it is just me, but I sort of distrust a reviewer that starts of saying that they intentionally omit ~1/2 of the truth.


The speakers have an almost religious following. It would be nice to peek behind the curtain to see if the specs are etched onto tablets, or just recited as lore.
Let’s bring this back to reality a bit…
What is the purpose of all the tweeters/drivers running in unison?
  1. Is it to reduce the excursion as a way to lower non-linear distortion?
  2. Or is it to make the driver appear to be coming from a point further behind the cabinet?
  3. Or is it to make the phased area nature of it reduce floor and ceiling (wall bounces (By make it more directional?
  4. Or something else?

And then how are all these drivers wire to make them appear to be 4 ohm load?
  • Are they in series and then paralleled up?
  • Or resistors in series?
  • Or how?

I did see something that mentioning “time and phase coherent”. Are there usual step function plots floating around somewhere?
Maybe its just me, but I dismiss anyone who doesn’t understand there is no such thing as the whole truth. The only one who knows the whole truth is God. But then you attack religion. So illogical too then. Right. Dismissed. Totally.
There is a profound difference between not seeing “the whole truth”, and intentionally omitting half of it.
It is sort of like Kusrusawa’s Rashamon movie.
Maybe it is being kind, but it does not engender trust when one needs to read between the lines to get to what the true meaning is.

And sorry @millercarbon, I did not realize you were Mormon.

In any case, that story about the golden tablets does have a striking resemblance to the sensitivity spec sheets. They all seem good, until we realize that they are in error by 6-9 dB...

And still we have people proclaiming the good news of sensitivity like it is somehow based in fact.

I dunno if the speakers are any good or not, but if there were reasons for the design then we could at least debate the logic of the design choices.

As it is now, they have a cult status. With opinions ranging from great to poor.

But it is possible that they do sound heavenly… I dunno.
I just know that I do not trust the messenger.
Good questions. I was about to answer when scanning above noticed you do not trust the messenger. So no soup for you.

^Nice Seinfeld quote.^
But I was giving you and others the opportunity to stay on point here with some factual input.

It is the 1/2 truths/opinions that are hard to integrate into some holistic truth.

But if we stay towards the reality side of things, then we avoid having sugar coated opinions and overly subjective stories.


This quote of @northman seems to continue to be ‘ringing true’:
Everything I know about Tekton speakers I’ve learned on this forum. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much.
Some people don't use enough punctuation. You, however, throw it around like it's raining commas.
Maybe it is like a James Baldwin speech, where the punctuation is to emphasise breaks in thought?

When I read it that way, it has a cadence, or galloping nature, to it.
James Baldwin is on the burn list of books for team Tekton

That’s subtle, but I like where you went with it.

One can probably hear a pin drop with those Textons.
Exactly. thats my reason for pulging in all sorts of **~~,, and such , for innuendos and emphasis, questionable opinions, possibilities, doubts, affrimations, and perhaps for a bit of humor.

Maybe people with innuendos, questionable opinions, etc… can just high light the truth in bold.

Whoa… wait a minute… there is no bold font ability on this forum.
At least saying that they are “just a box with drivers and crossover” is somewhat more truthful and factual, than saying that they’re somewhat imbued with the magic of pixie dust.
Your Fezza example is certainly different than a Pinto though.

The difference between a Skoda, a Pinto and a Ferrari is that we have measured results for acceleration, cornering/skidpad, braking, etc for all those vehicles.

No one I have seen, has ever taken a Pinto’s typical ~20 second quarter mile time, and then fudged it by 6 dB to say it is does the 1/4 mile 5 seconds. If they did then I missed it.

The magazines and their testers can also wax poetic about the sublime handling, but the facts are not hidden in outright measurable lies.

But it is still true that they are all cars.

However, if we put 18 wheels on one of the cars, then some of us would likely call it a truck.
And if we only put 14 wheels on it, then I guess it would be a truck missing 4 wheels?

Lastly the Fezza and Skoda probably have the design philosophy written down somewhere. They did not start out with a clean sheet of paper like that tricycle looking Leman’s car, or the Deisel powered car… But even those had a clear, and stated,  design ethos.
“ I realize you measurement folks don’t care about the sound, but what about “measurements”? Your next reply: if there is any measured difference, it’s small, and beyond auditory level of any human. Why even bother “

Weak ... Predictably  weak !

I think you missed part of the point..
There are in fact no measurements presented here to suggest that the effects are inaudible or otherwise, other the one measurement that we do know about is the sensitivity, which is off by a 4x or more (6-7 dB). That should be audible? (There are no other measurements being discussed)

What is the design ethos that they are using to make a superior product?
"Block out lowest bass and all highs.
You only want to know whats going on in the critical midrange, say 300hz-3khz."

Seriously? 

Not saying the midrange isn't incredibly important (when judging a pair of speakers), but it isn't everything either...

Yeah…

Well there are people that like 78s in mono through a wideband.
However I am not one of them, and I sort of “believe in” the 20-20k Hz range as being valid.
@roxy54 when one realises that all those elements in the lanthanides and actinides rows of the periodic table, come from neutron star mergers… it is pretty impressive stuff.

Maybe even more impressive than the speakers?
Yeah correct Watson… But Neodymium is also an Lanthanide element… ;)

So we switch the word to fit the context 
Holmz
@three_easy_payments
We should really be asking why this brand evokes such a response.

Ok what do you think?


I looked at the first review that popped up: http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0121/Tekton_Moab_Floorstanding_Speakers_Review.htm
It said:
It inspires incredulity. What's the point of 17 drivers per side, even in a smart-on-paper quasi-D'Appolito array? Won't that result in severe comb filter effects? What about phase-accuracy problems? Also, was the Tekton team trying to trigger my trypophobia?

In any case the 98 dB/2.83v specification looks impressive.