TRI-ART OPEN 5

same time, seemingly, on your ears. Or so it seems. And this was my introduction to the TriArt Audio OPEN 5 speakers.

REFRAIN: Unlike most reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start, below, with how the equipment actually sounds and not the process of physically “undressing” it and/or laying out its various parts, specifications, etc. Think of this review then, as a non-linear movie—Memento, Kill Bill, Arrival, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Terminator, In the Shadow of the Moon, The Queen’s Gambit, etc—that, likewise, starts at the end and winds its way to the beginning.

The Setup

Speakers are, nonetheless, a different animal from headphones (when you’re not in the twilight zone of transducers). The only ‘setup’ that headphones require, in terms of one’s room, is to be properly affixed to one’s head and ears. This generally takes seconds. Done. Speakers, on the other hand, do not enjoy such simplicity or ease of placement. Theirs is a case by case determination based upon one’s listening environment—room fabrication and materials of said room, overall dimensions (WxDxH), amount of stuff within room, its reflectivity or absorption profile, spousal/ partner placement limitations, etc. Yes, there are a great many more determinants with regard to the proper setup of one’s loudspeakers.

Sometimes setup can be relatively simple, while at other times it’s nearly impossible and one settles for ‘close’ optimization given the variables. I have had easy listening environments and nearly impossible ones, but, ultimately, the music always flowed at the end of the setup.

15 feet (457.2cm) by 30 feet (914.4cm). My system is placed along the long wall. The left side of that long wall is open, while on the right side there are two very large, doublepaned windows, with very effective (sound defusing/absorbing) blinds. The floors are hardwood, covered by large area rugs with thick under-padding. The internal walls are of the robust variety, found in high-rise buildings of the ‘60s-era-build. All one has to do is to walk in to understand the solidity and the quiet.

The TRI-ART OPEN 5s are relatively easy to set up, though they may take a little time to spike and position. The instructions call for an ‘initial’ setup with the OPEN 5s positioned one third (1/3) into the room. I placed the OPEN 5s five feet from the front wall. After some experimentation, I separated them nine and a half feet apart from mid driver to mid driver and toed them in very slightly, an inch and a half. But there was, based upon initial soundings, something that still needed to be figured out.

Figured out? Well, it seems that all was not right and quite possibly terribly wrong in the land of ‘speaker specifications’. And it was this one thing that was throwing everything completely out of balance!

It seems that the OPEN 5’s sensitivity specification was not quite accurate. On paper the OPEN 5 boasted a very efficient rating— 94dB— able to be driven easily and well with few watts, little power. The OPEN 5’s sensitivity specification, after trial and failure, with all amplification below a given wattage, provided a first clue as to its actual specification. That clue was that amplifiers below fifty watts provided bass that was more concept, hypothesis, fiction, and entirely missing in action. However, when power, 200 watts, finally arrived in the form of the Audionet PRE G2 and AMP duo (review coming), sufficient clues were amassed to solve the case. And it wasn’t the butler. The OPEN 5’s true rating was closer to 90dB.

THE SYSTEM, THE SOUND

The OPEN 5’s newly established efficiency necessitated that the Audionet PRE G2 preamp and AMP monoblocks immediately join the review system quintet. Thus the final review system was composed of the following:

Grimm Audio MU1 Streamer

Bricasti Design M1 Special Edition DAC

Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC

Audionet PRE G2 Preamplifier

Audionet AMP Monoblock Amplifiers

Tri-Art OPEN 5 Loudspeakers

Verity Otello Loudspeakers

Audience FrontRow Interconnects (XLR), USB, Ethernet

RSX BEYOND, MAX Power-cords

Audience AdeptResponse aRS-T4 Power Conditioner

With everything right and proper, the TRIART OPEN 5s now gave voice time and again to incredible(!) recreations of past performances. Before me lay one of the most spacious stages experienced (far beyond the boundaries of the speakers), and when called for, one of the most intimate stages.

Positioning, layering, and spacing were solid, immutable, believable. At one point, as I took in what was a cavernously deep soundstage (Eiji Oue’s Stravinsky), I thought to myself, “That’s far too deep.” Now either this was the result of too long a stint in the headphone

TRI-ART OPEN 5

world or the drivers assembled for the TRIART OPEN 5 were ‘next-leveling’ it—knocking it out of the park. As time went on the latter seemed a more appropriate description of what the OPEN 5s were doing and this was something to behold, especially so for a $7,500 speaker! Incredible!

speakers of these domains often fail to bring forth. And yet for so large a speaker to flat out disappear, as in it being impossible to track the point of sound/music from one’s listening chair with eyes closed was, well, magnificent!

[Note: These speakers, properly amped, are tremendous reviewing tools. They are so superbly transparent and resolving that they, the OPEN 5s, will tell on any upstream change! FYI. I’m keeping them.]

Within the various expanding and contracting performance stages, based upon the listening material, were oceans of details and micro-details, lightening fast transients and microdynamics, that gave truth to performance after performance. And one must mention the air and ambiance, the nuance and refinement that the OPEN 5 so deftly broadcast from its assembled, upstream bandmates.

The transparency and resolution on offer by the OPEN 5s easily invaded the domains of electrostatic and planar loudspeakers but with a low frequency force and control that the

I ran a phalanx of bass and deep bass infused tracks through the review system and out to the OPEN 5. It is quite the experience, from the perspective of the components’ scale—62” speaker sporting 18” and 15” drivers and 200 watt per channel monoblock amplifiers, which would never be mistaken for tiny tots. And assuredly what I write here can be reprised for the Audionet duo that made these revelations across the bass region entirely possible. Though my neighbors may now be a good deal more dubious of the soundings and the rumblings emanating from Casa Heartsong.

Eiji Oue’s “V. Infernal Dance of King Kashchey” (Stravinsky, Reference Recording) via the OPEN 5s is sublime. The timpani were differentiated and fleshed out via both their surfaces and interiors (insides) like I’d never heard before. These levels of transparency and resolution are new and this is a track I have heard across many years and many systems. As the balance of the bass pieces— Dave Holland’s “Emerald Tears" (Emerald Tears,

ECM), Paul Chambers’ Yesterdays (Bass on Top, Blue Note), Marcus Miller’s Power (M2, Concord), etc.— play through, it seems as thought the OPEN 5’s drivers take particular care in their rendering. Which is to say, that its drivers, again, bring a level of transparency, and attendant resolution, detail, and vigor to bass plucks and strums, and twangs that make them dimensional, textured, palpable, real, inroom!

Midrange

“Is someone practicing the sax in your place?” said my friend who called during a reviewing session. I was, of course, sitting before the OPEN 5s but she, possessed of an exceptional ear, thought otherwise. And I can scarcely blame her as I sat in the ‘sweet spot’ listening to Branford Marsalis’s saxophone playing through “Gloomy Sunday”, (Eternal, Marsalis Music) my mouth agape, on a gloomy Sunday. The energy, the vigor, the breath, the life seemed real to me, as I sat, eyes closed, transported and then transfixed, as if in the venue. “Wow,” I thought, “this is scarily good. And I don’t really use ‘scarily’ as an adjective. Hmmmm… How much are these again? I’m definitely keeping them.”

Olafur Arnalds’ “Árbakkinn” (Island Songs, Mercury (Universal France)) cues up and plays through. It is one of my favorites for understanding transparency, resolution, and detail, ‘the Three’ and their nexus—a connection or series of connections—to measure the music’s in-room realism. As poet Einar Georg Einarsson recites there is a strong presence or palpability of him in-room. There is startling clarity, wherein ‘the Three’ place the birds, who are outside of the recording venue, inside and beside Einar, at the song’s earliest moment. Very, very few component mixes can make this happen and even some electrostatic headphone setups fail here. Suffice to say, that the realism in this setup is fourth dimensional—“inconceivable (Vizzini (Wally Shawn), Princess Bride)! ”

TREBLE+

Joe Morello’s drum kit, stage far (far) left, is bopping, his cymbals air-infused, a metallic sheen, delicate, nuanced are in the room, and he is deep in the mix, as “Take Five” (Time Out, Columbia-Legacy) plays on. Dave Brubeck stage far (far) right on piano and Eugene Wright, tucked in right of center and deep set within the stage, cavort away, the spatial cues betraying their position. I can’t remember a time when this performance has been so transparent, so real. I shake my head again at the TRI-ART OPEN 5s well aware that their