Review

Tryptix Complete Review - Australian Hi-Fi - Australia

03 Jul 2008

Krix has been building speakers in South Australia for years. For 34 years, in fact. It has been building hi-fi speakers, home theatre speakers, studio monitors, professional cinema speakers – even the odd musical instrument cabinet – for all those years, but the one thing every single one of its models had in common was that they were build from timber – either MDF or ply. What makes the new Tryptix speakers so dramatically different from anything that’s ever gone before is that their cabinets are made from plastic…or to be more precise, from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (aka ‘ABS’).

My initial reaction was that the switch was simply one of cost. Plastic cabinets are cheaper to manufacture than wood cabinets (at least they are once you reach certain production quantities…you have to pay for the injection dies after all!) and Krix was no doubt getting hammered by the hordes of cheap and nasty plastic-cabineted speakers that have been flooding into Australia from China. Peter Lawson, Krix’s Director of International Sales and Marketing, reportedly told editor Greg Borrowman that it wasn’t quite as simple as that, because the fact that Krix already owned its own high-volume CNC-equipped cabinet manufacturing plant meant it could produce its timber cabinets far more cost-effectively that any other Australian manufacturer.

His spin on it was that consumers are increasingly being attracted to very small, slim line cabinets, and that these are impossible to build from timber, because the thickness of the material means that you can’t get necessary internal volume required to properly load the bass drivers to get the best sound. Using plastic enables thin walls for maximum internal volume, and the ability to mould the product means you can design-in both rigidity and panel damping by including internal struts. As for the harder internal reflective surfaces, he said these are tamed with critical acoustic damping Krix applies inside.

The Equipment

As you have probably guessed from the name, Krix intended that the Tryptix design be used for home theatre applications, (it’s a play on the word triptych, which most commonly is used to describe a work of art that consists of three separate panels, usually referred to as the ‘left’, ‘centre’ and ‘right’ panels). So the Krix Tryptix could be a triptych of speakers: left, centre and right. (Initially I thought that since most home theatres use at least five speakers, maybe Krix should have thought a bit more about naming them ‘Polyptych’ – which means four or more – but when I remembered the meaning of the very similar sounding medical term, I decided Tryptix was by far the better choice!)

However, as is very often the case with Krix’s products, which tend to be labours of love first and commercial products second, when the first full production models rolled off the line, the Tryptix exceeded everyone’s expectations by such a great margin that it was immediately obvious that a pair of Tryptix would deliver sterling service in a conventional two-channel hi-fi system. The result is that you can now purchase the Tryptix in pairs ($1,200), as a true triptych ($1,800) or as a set of five ($3,000) for use in a full-on home theatre system. Those good at maths will have realised that this isn’t strictly true. Krix actually sells the speakers individually ($600 each), so you can order what you want, whenever you want.

I have been talking about how small these speakers are without mentioning their size. Each speaker is 555mm ‘high’, 155mm wide and just 125mm deep. You will notice, I hope, that I put the word high in inverted commas. That’s because the Tryptix can also be mounted horizontally when it’s used as either a front centre-channel in a 3.1 channel or 5.1 channel system, or as a rear centre channel in a 7.1 channel system. You’ll note that there’s also a ‘.1’ after all the system formats, meaning that you will need a subwoofer, but I’ll have more to say about this later on in this review.

Each cabinet contains two bass / midrange drivers and a single 26mm (Peerless Vline XT25SC50) dual-concentric ring radiator tweeter. Krix rates the cone drivers with a diameter of 100mm, but the Thiele/Small diameter is 82mm, for an Sd of 53cm². This puts the system Sd at 106cm², which could otherwise only have been achieved if Krix used a single driver with a nominal diameter of 152mm. The tweeter has a neodymium magnet whose magnetic field is so focused that there’s no fringing, and therefore no need of flux-restraint (aka ‘shielding’). To make use of the relatively small internal volume (I’d guess at around five litres), the cabinets are a bass reflex design, using two ports rather than just the one. This arrangement allows each bass driver to be more accurately loaded, and also puts port’s output physically closer to its matching bass driver. The ports are front-firing, so you can mount the cabinets hard up against a wall.

Krix supplied my review samples with floor stands ($175), and it was only when I was assembling them that I realised the ingeniousness of the mounting schema it developed for the Tryptix. (I understand that patents are pending). There’s a single ABS assembly on the back that can be oriented three different ways, so it serves as a vertical mount, a horizontal mount, or as a wall mount. It’s clever with a capital C! The only part of the design that I wasn’t so rapt about is that once you’ve fixed the mount to the speaker, it completely blocks off the access to the high-quality spring-loaded speaker terminals. However, so long as you think things through before you start so that you connect the wires before you attach the mount, this isn’t an issue. The final cunning part of the design is that when you’re stand mounting you can completely hide the speaker wire inside the tube of the stand. As for wall-mounting, the fitting holds the speaker very firmly indeed. You can also buy a vertical table-stand for $100 or a horizontal table-stand for the same price (the latter for centre-channel application).

Each speaker is supplied with not one grille, but two, which I found rather peculiar. Surely Krix’s customers would have a colour preference, and including only one grille would have to shave a few bucks off the price? Still, I guess if you can’t make up your mind, or if you change your décor at some time in the future… One of the grilles is jet black; the other is a silvery-grey colour. Both attach with magnets, rather than the usual flimsy peg and socket arrangement. I forgot to mention the other possible reason for the multiple grilles: the Tryptix cabinets are available in three different finishes: high gloss black, white or silver. And just in case you were wondering, the ABS cabinets are made in China, but they’re shipped ‘empty’ to Krix’s factory in Adelaide, South Australia, which takes it from there.

Listening Sessions

I was pleased to find the speakers on their stands are remarkably stable, thanks primarily to the huge hunk of steel that forms the base. I was, however, a little surprised that the stands weren’t slightly higher. Whereas the ideal is for tweeters to be at seated ear level height, which is generally around 90-112cm, Krix’s stands put the tweeters at 81cm. It could be that Krix has optimized the height so that when you’re using a Tryptix centre channel on its side, underneath a screen, all three tweeters are at the same height, which would be ideal for a home theatre set-up. I solved the problem by elevating the bases slightly at the front, which tilted the tweeters upward so they aimed directly at my ears when I was seated in my usual listening position.

I confess I was a little concerned about the possibility of their being some rattles and resonances in the cabinet, having the usual preconceived notion that associates the words ‘plastic’ and ‘flimsiness’, but also because of those magnetic grille catches. So the very first thing I did was turn the volume up high and run a frequency sweep (5Hz to 20kHz) from a test CD to see if I could actually hear any. I couldn’t. There was not even the slightest hint of a rattle or a buzz, or even of a niggling vibration. These cabinets are as tight as the proverbial drum. While conducting this test, I was impressed by two other things. First, the level of the sweep seemed extraordinarily constant, so it was obvious that the frequency response was very flat. Second, the volume levels at which I was able to run these sweeps without unduly distressing the speakers were very high: much higher than I’d have anticipated from a design that couples such small drivers with such a small cabinet volume.

The reason I was surprised is that most small speaker / enclosure combinations are fairly are fairly inefficient: that is, they’re not good at turning voltage into sound. This means you need quite a bit of amplifier power to achieve a reasonable volume level. These days, power isn’t so much of an issue: watts are cheap. However, the corollary is that small drivers also can’t be driven too hard, because they can’t dissipate heat as effectively as larger drivers, and the cones can’t travel as far, because of the smaller drive chassis and narrower roll surrounds. As you can see, the issues are purely size-related. It’s physics, not magic…

Indeed I was so intrigued that I pulled the speakers apart and discovered that the drivers Krix is using have an extraordinarily long ‘throw’ for their size, thanks to the design of the spider, and a much longer than normal voice coil. Also, there’s far more venting and cooling than I usually see in small drivers. Finally, the chassis, though it’s pressed steel, offers plenty of air-flow so the energy from the rear of the cone can travel to the bass reflex ports, thanks to a very unusual basket design. The bass / midrange drivers have very substantial magnets for their size, which are in turn fitted with flux-restraining magnets to prevent magnetic field leakage, so the speakers can be placed close to TV screens. These are serious drivers.

After re-assembling the speakers I fired up my first music tracks and wasn’t overly surprised to hear an almost complete lack of colouration to the sound of instruments and, more importantly, to the voices of the vocalist. The overall tonal structure was very well balanced, so that everything was in its place, with the sole exception of the deep bass, which was clearly audibly ‘softer’ and lower in volume than the upper bass, midrange and high-frequencies.

I was easily able to compensate for this at my usual listening levels by notching up the bass control a smidgeon, but this tactic didn’t work if I subsequently cranked up the volume right up, because there’s clearly a limit to the amount of high volume bass such small drivers can deliver, and I eventually ran into it. My suggestion would be that if you want to play at very high volume levels and/or want deep bass, you should add a subwoofer, to create a sub/sat system, even if you plan on listening only in stereo. However, if your volume and/or bass needs are modest, I’d certainly suggest you start by auditioning the Tryptix on their own, because they can deliver a surprising amount of bass information.

Conclusion

I started off a sceptic, and ended up a convert. That’s how impressive these new Krix speakers are. If you’re looking for attractive, high-performance speakers for a home theatre system, these Tryptix speakers will leave pretty much any other similarly-styled speakers for dead. And in such a system, a subwoofer is mandatory in any case. And, whereas I’d initially dismissed the Tryptix for use on their own in a stereo audio system, I have since changed my mind. Yes, you will get higher volume levels and deeper bass from speakers with much larger drivers and bigger cabinets (and Krix certainly has plenty of these to choose from!), but if for whatever reason you need your stereo speakers to be compact and stylish, Krix’s Tryptix will take your breath away…in more ways than one.

- Australian HiFi - Australia , Adrian Coupain

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