Review

Tryptix, Seismix 1 Complete Review - Australian Hi-Fi Best Buys - Australia

05 Jun 2008

The Krix Tryptix home theatre speakers are new models from the South Australian manufacturer, designed specifically to produce cinema sound in a visually unobtrusive way.

Equipment

Their unobtrusive nature comes from their size. They are a mere 125mm deep and just 155mm wide. Their modest five litre volume is provided mainly by their 555mm length.

There is plenty of cleverness here. To deliver improved bass performance, these narrow enclosures are bass-reflex loaded, with a pair of ports firing forwards. Krix has built in a unique set of versatile wall mounts which also work with Krix’s optional floor stands.

Each Tryptix speaker has a centrally mounted 26mm dual concentric diaphragm tweeter which employs a neodymium magnet. This covers the frequency band above 1750Hz. Frequencies below this are carries by a pair of symmetrically placed 100mm bass / midrange drivers with 25mm voice coils.

The enclosures are made from 5mm thick ABS plastic with internal strengthening ribs. They weigh four kilograms each. Each is supplied with two grilles, one black and one silver-grey. The enclosures themselves can be finished in high gloss black, white or silver.

Krix rates their frequency response at 55 to 40,000Hz, their impedance at four ohms, their sensitivity at 88dB for 2.83V at one metre, and their power handling at 100W.

For bass support in this review system, Krix supplied its 255mm bass-reflex Seismix 1 subwoofer which has a 200W amplifier built in. Krix rates the frequency response of this subwoofer at 26 to 150Hz (at the -6dB points), and says that it can deliver “118dB maximum SPL in-room response”.

Performance

Our measurements of the sensitivity of these speakers, using 500 to 2000Hz bandwidth-limited pink noise, gave a result of 88-89dB. That’s pretty close to the average for full-size loudspeakers. Combined with their hundred watt power handling, volume levels seemed likely to be promisingly loud. And that proved to be the case. Even in stereo mode, we were able to run through all our CD test tracks at satisfyingly high volume levels with no significant signs of stress at all from the Tryptix speakers, not for that matter from the Seismix 1 subwoofer.

What surprised us more was the clarity and imaging produced by these speakers. There was a distinct absence of colouration. Instead, the music was revealed with remarkable accuracy and depth. Perhaps the only limitation was that, at very high volume levels, there may have been a slight compression in the dynamics of some drum strokes while playing a Weather Report CD.

With surround sound, the high level of performance was maintained all the way around the room, with precise aural delivery of everything on all movies, including the enveloping power of the DTS-HD Master Audio sound from Alien vs. Predator: Requiem on Blu-ray. Brilliant!

The subwoofer went plenty loud enough, if not quite as deep as we might have hoped. Still, for 95% of even modern movies, and 99% of music, it delivered everything there with tightness, musicality (where required!) and accuracy.

To check some of these impressions, we conducted a frequency response test on the system. When we inspected the response graph, it showed an almost unbelievably even frequency across the whole system.

We don’t use any graphical smoothing in this test, so there were lots of extremely narrow swings up and down in the graph. But what it did show was a combined subwoofer / Tryptix response of 38Hz to at least 21kHz (with 48kHz digital sampling, the roll-off at this extreme was probably in the analogue to digital conversion), plus or minus six decibels. That was after basic installation, setting the crossover frequency to 120Hz, and letting the receiver have its head on setting balance and speaker distances.

We did find that the performance was better in the 90 to 150Hz region with the phase reversed on the subwoofer. Even more impressively, we would put the frequency response at 150Hz to 10,000Hz +/-3dB. Remember, this is a real-world, in-room measurement. The most important thing about it was that there were no broad dips or peaks, and those are things that colour sound. As for the subwoofer, in my room the -6dB point was at 31Hz. At 20Hz, the response was about 24dB down.

Conclusion

If we were purchasing this system we’d be inclined to go for the next subwoofer up in Krix’s collection. Not because there’s anything wrong with the Seismix 1, but because the Tryptix speakers are so good that they would best be rounded out by a Seismix 3 to provide those extra few hertz down the bottom end. They really are that good.

- Australian Hi-Fi Best Buys - Australia , Stephen Dawson

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