Opinions of GoldenEar Triton 1

I’m afraid I haven’t spent much time with the T1 but I love the Triton line and have chosen its slightly smaller, less expensive sibling, the Triton 2+ as our next speaker. That said, I think all the Tritons are all terrific values.

The Ones have rave reviews (as you probably already know) - full range, natural sounding, coherent, outstanding sound staging - but I didn’t really audition them at the dealers since they were out of our reach $$. When we auditioned others in the line, we found them to be easy to drive and relatively unfussy about placement and I would expect the 1s to share these virtues.

I like ribbon tweets, and I think the Triton drivers are very well integrated with the mids and bass modules so that’s a big plus for us. I hate a tipped up treble (awful on massed strings) but the 2+ ribbon tweet sounded open and airy to me. My impression is that the Ones just have more of everything than the speakers in line below them, I don’t really want to know since I can’t afford them. My room’s not that big anyway.

We auditioned a fair few speakers before settling on the 2+, In another life I had Maggies, Alon IVs and Alon Circes, all more expensive than the T2+. We listen to mostly classical - large scale orchestral and opera - plus rock and jazz (the stepson is in My Morning Jacket). We play music from very loud to very soft, so I love the fact that the 2s sound great on all kinds of music, The timbral accuracy is quite good on the 2+, but better (as I remember ) on the T1.

The only way to know if you like the T1 is to find a dealer and audition a pair. I dismissed Goldenear speakers for a long time, much to my regret. My only caveat when you go to listen to them is to be sure they’re hooked up to electronics worthy of them and not HT gear. They will sing with good front end and reasonable amp (even tubes).

The day we auditioned the 3+ and 2+, we played around with positioning quite a bit. I thought both models were very forgiving of room placement (they  do want to be toed in, but they don't need to be very far from the back wall) and both models had quite a wide sweet spot - an absolute must for us as my spouse and I usually listen to music together.  I HATE narrow sweet spots and would never consider speakers with that limitation.

With the Goldenears fed by a Saturn R, we both found the timbres realistic on acoustic instruments and vocals, much more so than anything else we auditioned in a comparable price range, and they were not at all dull (dealer began our day by pushing Focals and Paradigms BTW). None of the other speakers really passed the "massed strings" test.  My husband is a retired symphony bassoonist and clarinetist, and he is extremely picky about natural sounding music reproduction, as am I, a mere former singer. 

As for dealer comments, I welcome them, as long as they declare their status. Dealers are NOT the enemy - they are a resource. I;ve learned a lot from audio pros over the years, Ultimately, it's my ears that will decide any purchase.