Review

Tryptix Complete Review - The Age

27 Aug 2008

Rod Easdown looks at some locally made speakers that take an unconventional approach.

How do you feel about corks in wine bottles giving way to screw caps? In one corner we have the purists talking about tradition, heritage and perception, and in the other we have pragmatists pointing out that not only do screw caps eliminate ruin through corking, but wine bottles no longer need be stored horizontally.

Having once lost 18 of 24 expensive bottles of glorious cab-merlot to corking, I side with the scientists, and if corks were outlawed tomorrow it wouldn't be quick enough for me. Stuff tradition. Which is probably why I was able to approach Krix's Tryptix speakers with an open mind. These are speakers with cabinets made not of timber but, gasp, plastic.

Now there's nothing rare about plastic speakers; wander through any electronics store and you'll see dozens of them on either side of those little mini and midi hi-fi systems that cost anything from $100. What's rare is to see plastic speakers of this size and price, not to mention wearing a brand like this.

Krix is an Adelaide company that has been building speakers since 1974, and this is the first time it has used anything but timber for a cabinet. Actually, it would probably pick an argument with my calling the cabinet plastic; it calls the stuff acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

You might assume this has been done to cut costs, and there may be a bit of that in it, too, but the big attraction of ABS is that it takes up a lot less space. Most speaker drivers need a very carefully measured volume of air behind them to operate properly. This air is their suspension system and if there's too much or too little, the sound goes to the dogs.

So while the external measurements of a speaker cabinet may be critical to you as a home owner, what speaker manufacturers worry about are the internal measurements of the cabinet. And to get the strength required, as well as that precise internal volume (and all the bracing in there has to be taken into account), they need a solid lump of wood. Thick, in other words, which means external measurements just get fatter.

But ABS achieves the same result with a far thinner cabinet, and the bracing takes up a lot less internal volume too. The result is a noticeably more compact speaker.

So the Tryptix packs a couple of 100mm mid/bass drivers and a 26mm tweeter into an attractive cabinet that measures 555mm high, 140mm wide and 125mm deep and weighs just four kilograms. This makes a bunch of them ideal for placing around a flat panel screen, and although you can get them with stands, Krix lists them as on-wall speakers.

The Tryptix has been designed specifically for this and, being available in white, silver or high-gloss black, it can colour-match almost all plasma or LCD screens. It can also be mounted horizontally or vertically, so the left and right-channel speakers can go vertically at each side of the screen while the centre can go horizontally above or below it. And if you want rears they can go on the wall behind, or on stands. Now the big question about the cabinet is the obvious one: how does it sound? We ran some challenging music through a pair of these both with a subwoofer and without and what impressed us most were the staging and imaging.

Although the speakers were mounted fairly close to one another they presented a generously wide sound stage with accurate placement of instruments across it. And they covered a pleasingly wide audible range accurately and with surprisingly deep bass, even with the subwoofer disconnected.

Our objection was that in a sublimely beautiful presentation of Simple Gifts, consisting of just Alison Krauss singing and Yo Yo Ma on cello, the lower range of the voice became untidy and ill-defined. It was noticeable enough to prevent us recommending these speakers for anyone who listens to music in detail.

But then they've been designed for home theatre and in this respect they're perfectly adequate to excellent across all measures; given their dimensions, they'll be of strong appeal to anyone who wants proper sound but also requires speakers compact enough to sock away on a spare patch of wall with as little intrusion into the room as possible.

We liked these, and they're especially good value at $600 each; plus, they're sold individually.

- The Age , Rod Easdown

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