August 2002 Reviewed by Anthony Di Marco	Triad Silver Home-Theater Speaker System

Description Model: InRoom Silver Monitors Price: $2000 USD each Dimensions: 16.125"H x 7.375"W x 8.375"D Weight: 36 pounds each Model: OnWall Silver Surrounds Price: $600 USD each Dimensions: 13.5"H x 13"W x 4"D Weight: 15 pounds each Model: InRoom Silver PowerSub Price: $1400 USD (with external amplifier) Dimensions: 16.25"H x 15.5"W x 14.5"D Weight: 70 pounds System Price: $10,000 USD ($8600 with one Silver PowerSub) Warranty: 10 years parts and labor on speakers, three years on amplifiers Features Proprietary SEAS tweeter (InRoom Silver Monitor)

Features (cont'd) Proprietary Scan-Speak midrange (InRoom Silver Monitor) Proprietary, clay-filled rubber damping material (InRoom Silver Monitor) Terracing to reduce internal standing waves (InRoom Silver Monitor, InRoom Silver PowerSub) Dipole design (OnWall Silver Surround) Low-profile design (OnWall Silver Surround) Paintable grille (OnWall Silver Surround) Optional rack-mountable external power amplifier (InRoom Silver PowerSub) 250W amplifier (InRoom Silver PowerSub) 12" driver with 120-ounce magnet structure (InRoom Silver PowerSub) Video shielding (optional on InRoom Silver PowerSub) All models are available in InRoom or InWall configurations Wide variety of custom paint and veneer finishes (including matching to end user's décor)

I’m a firm believer in investing in a well-made product instead of spending twice the money replacing a mediocre one. I hate buying cheap power or hand tools because I know I will probably have to replace them in a year. I’ll admit though, that applying this logic to my audio habit would quickly land me in the poorhouse -- not to mention the doghouse. Still, there are audio lovers who don’t want to upgrade every time a new whiz-bang product comes out. They would rather invest their money in a top-quality product and call it quits.

Triad Speakers of Portland, Oregon has earned a reputation for producing top-quality speakers that are engineered with a high degree of detail in mind. Each speaker is available as both InWall and InRoom designs, which are custom made to fit the décor and environment of a user’s home. But unlike some "high-end" speakers, Triads aren’t just pretty boxes with average parts. They use proprietary clay-filled rubber damping material instead of poly-fill, 1.125" MDF instead of .75", and point-to-point hand-soldered wire instead of mechanical connections. Triad’s director of sales and marketing, Paul Scarpelli, is also quick to point out their use of very high-quality proprietary drivers from Scan-Speak and SEAS -- drivers that, he states, equal or exceed those in some $10,000 monitors. Triad’s Bronze, Silver, and Gold lines are available through professional home installers, so don’t expect to run down to your local home audio store and grab a set.

Built to last

I received eight boxes containing three of Triad’s InRoom Silver Monitors for left, center, and right positions and a set of OnWall Silver Surrounds for rear placement. Two of their 12" InRoom Silver PowerSubs with 250W external mono amplifiers rounded out the $10,000 system. As one should expect from a system at this price, build quality is outstanding.

Each Silver Monitor sports a cinderblock-sized enclosure, which is just as heavy and acoustically dead as a cinderblock. Though I wasn’t lucky enough to get them in wood veneer, the painted matte-black cabinets have a non-shiny, simple look to them that is attractive -- especially with their grilles off. Not to be upstaged by the cabinet, the grille has its own tricked-out design, which further contributes to removing any resonance that could color the drivers' output. Forgoing the typical grommet and pin fittings, the grilles employ four hollow-rubber tubes that "suck" onto four of the screws (which fasten down the drivers). This effectively decouples the grille from the cabinet. And rather than using self-tapping wood screws, Triad goes one step further by using brass inserts with Torx-type machine screws. The driver complement consists of two 5" Scan-Speak woofers and one SEAS 1" fabric-dome tweeter.

The dipole OnWall Silver Surrounds are equally well built, though both the driver compliment and the cabinets’ weights aren’t as impressive as that of the Silver Monitors. The two 1" Mylar-dome tweeters, two 3" paper midranges, and single 6.5" polypropylene woofer look more conventional in design. Each surround features removable and paintable white grilles, which allowed them to blend seamlessly into my living room’s white walls. Holes on the cabinet’s four corners allow for screwing it flush with a wall, which give it a seamless look. At just under 14" wide, the surrounds wouldn’t match up to 16"-on-center studs, so I had to use heavy-duty sheetrock anchors for one side. The well-finished surround also required the use of bare wire or spades since the flush-mounted grille offered too shallow a clearance for banana plugs.

The InRoom Silver PowerSub is pretty compact, and is as solid as a rock. It features a 12" driver with a 120-ounce magnet structure! And although it doesn’t use the clay-filled rubber damping material of the Monitors, it has their concrete-like structure complements of thick outer walls and internal terracing used to break-up standing waves. Other details include self-leveling isolation feet and an inset cloth grille that gives it a family resemblance to the Monitors. For installation flexibility, customers are given a choice between having internal amplifiers or external rack-mountable amplifiers to power the InRoom Silver PowerSubs. The two unassuming amplification units I received were plain black boxes built out of medium-gauge steel. Inside each box is a single, hefty toroidal transformer, powering simple but well-assembled amplifier circuits yielding a 250W rating (4 ohms). Typical controls for crossover (high-pass and low-pass outputs), gain, and phase (0 to 180 degrees) were also built into the amplifier and adjustable via functional pencil-thick knobs.

Setup

I found early on that the Triads liked power. Though their manufacturer claims 92dB sensitivity for the InRoom Silver Monitors, they enjoyed playing at loud levels with plenty of wattage. They also seemed to match better with amplifiers that were slightly more aggressive than neutral. I had Sherbourn's 5/1500A hooked up through my Harman/Kardon AVR 510. The Sherbourn did a nice job controlling the Triads, though its darker-than-neutral demeanor did make the system sound a bit too laid back for my taste. Things changed with B&K’s AVR305, however. The AVR305 woke-up the neutral-sounding Triads with a slightly more forward, but still highly controlled sound.

Having two subs did alleviate any bass-localization problems in my room, and provided bass extending into the mid-20Hz range, but the two InRoom Silver PowerSubs consumed too much floor space to be practical for the long haul. I therefore used only one PowerSub, which of course would limit ultimate output. Triad offers some adjustment options that helped the situation, however. I connected one of the subs via its Theater input to the B&K. According to Triad, the Theater input differs from the standard line-level input, in that it favors output level over ultimate bass extension (the line-level connection allows the sub to extend down to a Triad-specified 20Hz). The company also adds that the Theater input does not include any boost, but simply prevents the sub’s amplifier from trying to reproduce power-hungry frequencies below 35Hz. Using this configuration, I bypassed the sub amplifier’s crossover and phase controls in favor of the B&K’s own comprehensive adjustments.

Much of my listening was done with the Silver Monitors positioned 12’ from my listening position. The surrounds were mounted 15" from my ceiling and 3" to the front of my listening position. Blending the InRoom Silver PowerSub, InRoom Silver Monitors, and OnWall Silver Surrounds was a snap.

Sound

The opening titles to Disney’s Tarzan filled my room with palpable percussion and powerful, lean bass. Phil Collins’s great music and the characters’ voices sounded full and free of any grain or nasal qualities, while high frequencies had nice extension and speed. "Refinement" was the word that kept coming to mind.

As one would expect with a tweeter of the SEAS pedigree, there was an airiness and decay to the treble that never became splashy. A splashy tweeter causes sounds to hang around longer than they should. Some tweeters offset this characteristic by rolling off high frequencies, to the detriment of extension and transparency. The Silver Monitor’s tweeter always stopped on a dime.

The Silver Monitors also managed to find the right balance between being revealing and easy going. The opening chapter of Unbreakable has proven to be a good test of this quality. The Triads were able to reveal the natural character of the baby’s crying without making me wince.

The InRoom Silver PowerSub also proved to be revealing. It was able to point out shortcomings in The Usual Suspects’ overblown bass, while the tight authoritative bass in chapters 5 and 6 of Jurassic Park 3 made dinosaurs come alive in my room. I was also able to identify subtle differences in bass effects. The heartbeat sounds of the Ulysses’ engine and the inhuman growl of the Leviathan in chapter 5 of Atlantis had distinctly different timbre, while both were presented with excellent separation. The sub’s performance with the restricted extension of the amplifier’s Theater input could be heard on several movies. The sub-30Hz rumble of Unbreakable’s train scene (chapter 1) and Apollo 13’s take-off (chapter 13) were nowhere to be found, but this was corrected using the line-level connection.

My initial impressions of the Silver Surrounds’ drivers were unfounded. These speakers didn’t sound conventional at all. Each speaker provided a consistent and enveloping fill to the surround image without any holes. In the opening chapter of Atlantis, Atlantean fighters flew around my head with convincing weight and position. In chapter 19 of Terminator 2:Judgement Day, the sound of Arnold cocking his shotgun was very realistic as he faced off with the T-1000. The system also captured the smooth echo of the hallway with no harshness. If the film had a well-produced three-dimensional surround mix, the Triads would reproduce it perfectly.

With the exception of subterranean synthesizers, organ, and some bass guitar, the Silver Monitors were quite capable of reproducing music without a sub. My room dimensions did seem to tip-up their midbass slightly, but the end result offered a satisfying amount of bass punch and weight for this bookshelf speaker. The detail and refinement I heard during movies successfully made the transition over to music.

Anyone who has heard Booth and the Bad Angel [Polygram 526852] knows that it’s Angelo Badalamenti’s reserved orchestrations that give this CD its character. Lose track of his strings and ambient synths and the performance has no soul. The Silver Monitors kept track of these delicate treatments and kept them in perfect balance with Tim Booth’s rock 'n roll. Frankly, this album has never sounded better in my room.

Like Booth and the Bad Angel, I had a hard time listening to a single track of any CD I threw on. The soundstage to Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints [Warner Brothers 926098-2] was open and crisp with percussion that appeared with an almost holographic quality. The piano, vocal, and ambient effect on The Smiths’ "Asleep" (Louder Than Bombs [Sire 2-25569]) sounded tangible and tonally accurate, while its placement within the soundstage remained solid. The Triads also did a remarkable job presenting life-sized performers as opposed to the midgets that often fall within a stereo image. These speakers acted much larger than their small size.

Comparison

A speaker system that tips the scales just shy of ten grand has to offer excellent performance to justify its existence. Whether that performance is worth the extra money over a more modestly priced system is another question only you can answer. At the time of this review I had a Cambridge SoundWorks Newton (CSW) home-theater speaker system at my disposal. A sobering fact is that the complete Newton system cost about the same price as a single Silver Monitor. It is an enlightening comparison though, because it illustrates just what the added expenditure buys you.

In terms of construction, it’s easy to see huge differences in build quality between the speakers. The Triads are built like fine furniture, while the CSW’s composite-molded enclosures and drivers present a good compromise between sound and the price point. Sound quality was a little less straightforward, yet still quite apparent. The CSW’s tweeter takes the sting out of poor recordings, but at the loss of some high-frequency extension and detail. The Triad’s SEAS tweeter strikes the perfect balance between detail, extension, and transparency.

Midrange quality between the two is also a matter of detail. The Newtons present male and female voices with velvety smoothness, which contained some nasality, while the Triads produce a more open, three-dimensional presentation with zero nasality. Midbass weight and extension were also where the Triad’s Scan-Speak drivers outclass the Newton’s small 4" polypropylene midranges. From the mid-frequencies up, there was not one area where the Newtons outperformed the Triads, and there were several areas where comparing the two was simply unfair. The Newtons sounded pleasant, but the Silver Monitors were able to provide deeper insight into the ambience and harmonic structure of every recording I played. Those who enjoy listening and feeling the music would find more to like about the Silver Monitors.

The flexibility and design of the CSW Newton's subwoofer presents great value for the money. Though it doesn’t offer as many customizable cabinet options, and its bass leans toward plump rather than lean, it’s a great example of how good a product can be, even with cost-induced compromise. The Newton was also able to reach as deep as the more expensive Triad -- though it did have the advantage of some equalization massaging it to attain 20Hz. The InRoom Silver PowerSub bettered the P1000 in its refinement and strength, though. There was never a time when the Triad’s 250W A/B amplifier sounded like it wasn’t in complete control -- bass was always clean and tight no matter how loud I pushed it. The Triad also exhibited greater slam. By comparison, it was apparent when the Newton reached its limits: Bass simply became less tight and focused.

The CSW Newton surrounds did an admirable job keeping up with the Triad Silver Surrounds. Though the Newtons did offer three different sound dispersion patterns, the Triads filled in the surround image more thoroughly. The Newtons also couldn’t extend as low in the bass region, though they were rated with the same specification as the Triad’s +/-3dB at 80Hz.

Conclusion

With the right amplification, the Triad Silver home-theater speaker system provided sound that was not only enjoyable, but also at times intoxicating. The Triad system reviewed here does represent a considerable investment. But if you love music and fine home theater, desire a speaker which has a build quality as good as the finest furniture, and an extra helping of set-up flexibility, the Triads could be the last speaker system you ever need to buy.

Manufacturer contact information:

Triad Speakers, Inc.
15835 NE Cameron Blvd
Portland, Oregon 97230
Phone: (800) 666-6316

E-mail: info@triadspeakers.com
Website: www.triadspeakers.com  

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