Review: Acapella Triolons Speaker


Category: Speakers

I currently own the Acapella Campanile Highs and have used them as a reference for about three years and hear Acapella Violins weekly at a friend's home. The remainder of the equipment and speakers were auditioned over a 30 hour, 3 day listening session. All amps mentioned and all equipment listed were listened to on the Triolons, carefully varying one component at a time with the Triolons remaining the one constant during the 3 days. The other speakers listed with the exception of the Campaniles and Violons were auditioned during the same weekend with the same equipment but for much shorter periods. The Coltrane Supremes were breaking in; the Coltranes were fully broken in.

The Triolons are an imposing sight. Two woofer towers, each 14" by 28" by 7' tall, each weighing 650# plus a cross piece holding a plasma tweeter attached to the woofers and a sword bearing two horn loaded speakers, one horn 30.5" in diameter, the other 18.5" in diameter. The Triolons can be driven by a single amps of 18 watts or higher power but must be triwired and have an efficiency of 97 db. Each side weighs 850# total. The crossover points are 200, 700 and 5000 hz.

The sound from 200 hz up to 40,000 hz emanates as a spherical wavefront. The Campanile Highs are similar but crossover to their woofers at 500 hz, use the plasma tweeter plus a single horn and are much lower in efficiency (92 db). The Triolons are typically a 6 ohm speaker but have an impedance at 30 hz of 28 ohms. The same is true of the Campaniles. Neither is a particularly easy load for an amp to drive; however the greater efficiency of the Triolons does open up the possibility of driving them with the right low power amplifier.

In my experience it takes a high power, high current, low output impedance amp to make the Campaniles come alive, with the exception of the Einstein OTL's which are used at the Acapella factory and do an admirable job of driving both speakers. The Triolons are much easier to drive than the Campaniles, but also more revealing of the associated equipment used to drive them. Different combinations of equipment resulted in different tradeoffs. Generally, the more expensive set ups involved fewer tradeoffs.

Another Audiogon poster has developed a nomenclature characterizing various pieces of equipment using the terms "workhorse", "realistic", and "magical", with magical suggesting that the system does some things so well that it results in a suspension of reality - you are no longer listening to reproduced sound in your room, but are somehow transported to the event. I have a bad tendency to think/listen in terms of how well a system does certain things and how well it avoids doing things which irritate me, which is to say that I have a bad tendency to focus on the pieces rather than the whole. In those rare instances when a system is so good that I stop analysing the sound and just listen to the music, then I know that something is right.

I am told that my initial reaction to listening to music on the Triolons was to stop talking and get a silly grin on my face. I don't know about the goofy grin but I do know that I did not say a word until the piece of music ended. If you know me, that says alot. I have now lived with the Campanile Highs for a number of years and they are by a significant margin the best speaker that I have ever owned. They are a difficult speaker to make work properly. They require a large room and are hard to drive. Amps that drive the woofers well do not ever seem to work as well on the midrange horn and plasma tweeters. The happy medium is either the best solid state amp which you can find or an OTL with at least 60 real watts of power (read the Einstein). The two types of amps sound different on the Campaniles and have different strengths and weaknesses.

The prime goal of the Acapella design team on the Campaniles was to get the best match between the woofers and the midrange horn and not the most extended bass response (the Campaniles are reasonably flat down to about 40 hz but drop off rapidly after that).

All of this is a prelude to talking about the sound of the Triolons. What makes the Triolons special? In many systems the soundstage is either localized between the inside edges of the speakers or perhaps extends to the outside edges of the speakers. With the Campaniles and the right equipment you can get a soundstage that extends from wall to wall and has excellent depth. Focus and image specificity are good but never pinpoint. Image size is believable, i.e. no sopranos with mouths the size of a baby grand. If the Campaniles have a problem in this area, it is that without proper set up and the right equipment some frequencies can localize on the horns. This is most problematic during the time when the speakers are breaking in but can happen with the wrong wire or associated equipment and is set up dependent.

The Triolons create a massive soundstage with huge amounts of air and space. The sidewalls of the room from the plane of the speakers and the back wall disappear. Instead of recreating the recorded venue in your room, the room no longer seems part of the equation. Its almost as if the space where the event occurred is appended to the end of your room and the recorded event is occurring there ( note that this is only true with certain recordings made in large halls and properly recorded and not with every piece of music played or with all associated equipment or wire). Imaging and focus are quite good but edges are a bit diffuse as in real life. Images are very three dimensional and fully fleshed out

A friend is driving Watt/Puppy 6's with MacIntosh 501's. This combination has great punch in the midabss. My Campaniles with my equipment never had this degree of punch in the midbass. With the Triolons this is no longer the case. Their midbass is extremely detailed, fast and well controlled with excellent slam.

The Campaniles will play loud and are very dynamic from pp to fff. The same is true of the Triolons but much more so. The Triolons significantly extend the dynamic envelope with excellent microdynamics and crescendo's capable of rattling walls, all with a vanishingly low level of distortion. Detail retrieval, particularly low level ambient detail is phenomenal. I am simply hearing low level detail that I never knew existed on familiar pieces.

The Triolons are very coherent and seamless. They have an effortlessness that is reminiscent of the Goldmund Reference TT which I owned for several years. Images have a solidity and three dimensionality. In comparison to the bass of the Campaniles, the bass of the Triolons is tighter, better controlled, goes lower with more authority and is faster with greater retention of harmonics. More importantly, by pushing the horn technology down to 200 hz and dividing the range between 200 hz and 5000 hz so that it is handled by two horns, there is a significant lowering of intermodulation distortion that effects the entire range. Acapella has been able to do this in such a manner that the two horns act almost as a single unit. You cannot pick out the crossover point and there are no discontiuities as the sound moves between the horns. Bells and other percussive instruments have a steep leading edge with a with a natural reverberrant tail. In this area, the Triolons remind me of the Colibri cartridge. Voices are a joy on this speaker, both male and female. The plasma tweeter remains the best high frequency driver that I have heard and that includes the superb diamond tweeters used in the Martens and Kharma's.

Finally, a word about amps used during auditioning. All the amps mentioned at the end of this review were excellent. For my particular tastes the Lamm ML2 at 18 watts and the Audionote Kegon at 20 watts stood out. I hope to have a pair of the Einstein 60 watt OTL's sometime this spring for comparison. Note that the Edge Reference was also excellent at significantly more power. With the Triolons, it is more the quality of the amplification than the power (although 18 to 20 watts is a minimum). Also note that the Jorma Prime cabling proved an excellent match for the speakers, although the Valhalla speaker cable was excellent. With solid state amps, particularly the Edge Sigs, a tube linestage sounded best.

My listening preferences are about 50% classical, the remainder jazz, acoustic and 60's and 70's rock. One CD that served as a reference for system changes was the soundtrack from American Beauty, particularly the first two tracks. We also played a number of Verve recordings from the 50's, rock from the 60's and 70's and quite a bit of voice.

Ultimately the enthusiasm for a product reviewed is best determined by whether or not the reviewer is significantly enough effected by the product reviewed to buy it. I am currently working on arrangements to buy the Triolons.

Associated gear
Audio Aero Prestige SACD
EMM Labs Drive and C/A
Edge Reference and Signature 1 amps
Lamm ML1.1 mono's and ML2 mono's
AudioNote M10 linestage and Kegon amps
Nordost Valhalla interconnect and speakerwire
Jorma Prime interconnect and speakerwire
HRS bases and couplers
Shunyata Anaconda power cords

Similar products
Acapella Campanile Highs
Acapella Violon Highs
Marten Coltranes and Coltrane Supremes
Soundlabs Ultimate 1's
fcrowder
Carlos, in your recent posts you mentioned the Triolon speakers with distain.
Have you ever heard these speakers?
I much prefer Fred's simple approach to building a fine system than your conglomeration of re-mastering equipment.
If your posts are accurate you have much more money invested in your re-mastering studio than Fred has in his system.
However, your posts never fail to amuse but thats about all they are worth.
In response to the Dagogo review mentioned above, I posted the following letter to Constantine:

How does one respond to a review of ones own system, when you do not really disagree with any of the conclusions reached? I could say that I find the picture of me on page 3 to be somewhat less than flattering, but then again, it is a pretty accurate depiction. I would, if possible, like to clarify some of the points made:

Imaging: the Triolons in my room would probably benefit from slightly increasing toe-in; however, no multi driver system of this complexity, regardless of design, will image like a small monkey coffin. Inversely, monkey coffins will never move the amounts of air or properly produce the soundstage of an orchestra playing Mahler at full tilt. I agree with Ryan that the imaging of the Triolons is more akin to what I hear at a live musical event.

Amplifier Choice: Ryan characterizes these speakers as having a benign sensitivity plot. Assuming that we are talking about sensitivity, he is correct. At 94-97 db, there are quite efficient. Unfortunately, if we are speaking about the ability of an amp to drive these speakers, the sensitivity is misleading. The factory provided an impedance plot by frequency of the speakers. The plot from 40 hz to 40,000 hz is literally a straight 4 ohms; however, there is an impedance spike at 28 hz of 30 ohms. As one might guess, the choice of amplifier is critical to the bass performance. Note that the Campaniles have almost exactly the same impedance curve. Most tube amplifiers, including the Wolcotts (which are capable of 300 watts with the right NOS tubes) do not do a very good job of controlling the bass or driving the speaker. Most transister amps leave something to be desired driving the horns and tweeter. I have heard the Triolons with the Edge Reference and Signature 1.1's, the Lamm ML 1.1 and ML 2.1's and the Audio Note Kegons as well as the JC-1's. Strangely enough, the best combination, thus far, has been the Kegons closely followed by the ML 2.1's at 22 and 18 watts respectively. Bass was clearly not a problem with the Kegon or for the most part with the ML2.1's. The JC-1's do a better than adequate job but are not even close to the Lamms or Audio Note or for that matter the Einstein OTL's; however, the area in which the JC-1's excel is in driving the low end. Check back to a description of the power supply of these amps and the current capacity.

Bass Extension: In speaking with the designer of the Triolons, his goal was never to plumb the depths of the bottom end. It was to make this speaker with its multiple dissimilar drivers coherent. I believe that he has been successful. If you examine the two more expensive Acapella speakers, you will note that the Excalibur has a larger bass horn that allows a lower cross over point and uses 15" woofers. The top of the line Spharons use a horn loaded woofer built into the room; however, I doubt that it has much extension below 30 hz; yet in terms of sound, it probably far exceeds the Excaliburs. In addition to the Acapella's, I have two of the 21" Cabasse Saturn A55 woofers which are the best that I have ever heard. I mention this as I seldom feel that need since the arrival of the Triolons to turn them on.

Wiring Choices: Talking with Brian Ackermann, the hierarchy for the Triolons (i.e. best sound) in order of best to least is: i) bi-amp and tri-wire, ii) single amp, tri-wire, iii) single amp, bi-wire, iv) single amp, single run of speakerwire. In particular, the use of bi-wiring on the single amp makes a significant difference in bass control and extension.

Cross over: Ryan states incorrectly that there is no crossover between 170 and 5000 hz. There is one at 700 hz. Apparently, it is not audible.

In closing, I would like to thank Dagogo for a review that captures much of what has made these speakers special.
Docsavage, While in Shanghai, China on business last year I was able to listen to not only the Acapella Triolon's but the Acapella Excalibur's and Sparon's driven by Audionet Amp II's, FM Acoustics and Halcro monoblock amplifiers. I left the auditions unimpressed. The ion tweeter sounded inefficient and had a hard time integrating with the collage of other drivers.

Even in Germany, where I conduct a great deal of business, Stereo Testmagazin Der High Fidelity Februar 1994 issue Pg. 124, they gave the A capella Campanile a luke-warm three stars.

By the way, while in Shanghai, I also heard an ALL top of the line Burmester reference system and left that audition unimpressed as well. Don't take it personally; it's hard to impress me after living with my reference system over the last year.

And yes my overall investment in audio equipment (as seen in my listening room) is more than Fred Crowder's BUT my reference system retails for less than his system and therefore one should expect bigger returns for his investment. And that is the point of one of my post that in audio you don't. You get better results by using your brain, knowledge of physics/acoustics/psychoacoustics/electrical-engineering and experience than if you set out to buy some of the most expensive components out in the market.
For all readers of this thread, I am pleased to announce that the Acapella Triolons will be displayed at the upcoming Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver CO., on October 12-14. The speakers will be driven by a complete Einstein system (OTL amps, Preamp & CDP) All tube system. Power conditioning by Isoclean, and cables by Acapella.

In addition look for follow-up reviews of the Triolons in Dagogo and Soundstage in the coming months.

Regards, Brian Ackerman / Aaudio imports
That's fab Brian, I am looking forward to auditioning the Triolons at the Audiofest. [WWCS?!] Guido