Alan Sircom of Hi-Fi Plus loved almost everything about the Triton Five – bass, soundstage, dimensionality, treble, and especially the price.
He didn’t claim perfection – he said that to get the best bass performance you need a big amp, and that the definition of the bass does not measure up to what could be had by “spending an order of magnitude more than the Triton Five”.
Since “an order of magnitude” is defined as ten times he is referring to $20,000 speakers. I haven’t heard any lately, but I’ll agree in principle that he is right.
Here are selected quotes:
If ever there was a speaker that best encapsulates ‘affordable excellence’ in audio, it would be the GoldenEar Triton Five.
if you want to take maximum advantage of what the Triton Five has to offer. In particular, the Triton Five needs that big amp ‘grip’ that only a large power amp with an appropriately ‘stiff’ power supply can deliver. Once that condition is met, you are, ahem, golden!
This means the kind of big, deep bass that many of us thought wasn’t at all possible at this price level:. Used with an appropriately powerful amplifier, the Triton Five brings truly awesome-grade deep bass and power without the sort of overblown, flabby, tubby, and flubby bass groans that you can get at this price level.
The other big feather in the Triton Five’s cap is its soundstaging properties. The loudspeaker builds a wall of sound; not in a manner befitting a murderous 1960s impresario with mad taste in hair, but more like your rear wall has been replaced with the concert hall, club, studio, or other venue in which that particular recording was made. There is a true sense of epic scale on offer here, the kind of thing that you might have to spend £10,000 or more to experience elsewhere.
….The Triton Five is three dimensional, incredibly open, and capable of an extremely accurate soundstage that ‘scales’ sublimely well…
…. a fine sense of top-to-bottom coherence
….a natural-to-rich tonal balance that is extremely alluring, and the clean, extended, and grain free treble associated with AMT ribbons…
Spending more does eventually justify itself. When you start to talk about the ‘shape’ and ‘texture’ of deep bass notes, without sacrificing the ‘depth’ of bass, then suddenly some of the true titans of high-end begin to win out. This doesn’t manifest in playing dub reggae or dubstep, but comes across when playing something big and orchestral and a little bit dour – symphonies by Mahler or Bruckner. The bass comes across as the most powerful and structural you can get in its class, but lacks the kind of cold beauty required to portray the depths of this kind of music.
At the price it has no peers and no parallels, and comes strongly recommended.
Link: Hi-Fi+