Floorstanding loudspeakers — GoldenEar Triton Three+

The Triton Three+ is a floorstanding loudspeaker with a built-in powered subwoofer from GoldenEar Technology, the American company founded by Sandy Gross and Don Givogue, who earlier pioneered towers with integrated powered bass at Definitive Technology. Introduced at CES 2016 alongside the Triton Two+, it brought technologies developed for the flagship Triton One into a slimmer, lower-priced tower.

Key specs that matter

The Triton Three+ combines a High-Velocity Folded Ribbon (HVFR) tweeter and a 4.5-inch cast-basket MVPP upper-bass/mid driver, both passive, plus a 5 x 9-inch long-throw quadratic subwoofer driver powered by an internal 800W ForceField digital amplifier with DSP control. The active woofer is coupled to two 6.75 x 8-inch quadratic planar infrasonic passive radiators, one on each side near the floor. Frequency response is 21Hz to 35kHz, efficiency is 90dB and impedance is compatible with 8 ohms, with 20 to 400W recommended amplification for the passive section. The tower measures 13.3cm wide at the front, 17.8cm at the rear, 33cm deep and 111.8cm high with its base (29.2 x 41.3cm), and weighs about 18kg. The rear panel has a subwoofer level control and an LFE input.

Engineering and use context

The HVFR tweeter uses a pleated high-temperature film diaphragm driven by neodymium magnets; the pleats accelerate air as they flex together and apart, so a light diaphragm radiates from a large effective surface. The tweeter sits between the mid driver above and the subwoofer driver below. Because the built-in subwoofer has its own amplifier, the external amplifier only drives the tweeter and the 4.5-inch mid driver, so it never has to supply the current deep bass demands. The ForceField amplifier is controlled by a DSP programmed in-house to shape the subwoofer's response and blend it with the passive section. The two passive radiators face each other on opposite sides of the cabinet, so their reaction forces cancel and the cabinet stays inertially balanced, and their position near the floor takes advantage of boundary coupling for deeper bass. Quadratic (rectangular) drivers give more cone area within the narrow front baffle than round drivers could. The cabinet has a curved, non-resonant shape covered by a fabric sock, and each speaker needs mains power for the subwoofer section.

Pairing

The high efficiency and easy load mean modest amplifiers drive the passive section, since the bass is self-powered. In home cinema, an AV receiver's LFE feed can go straight into each tower, adding the tower's bass to the system's low-frequency channel.

Alternatives

GoldenEar's own Triton Two+ is the larger tower with two active woofers and more amplifier power.