After nearly 15 years of not being available in North America Gryphon Audio Designs is re-introduced into the USA by Philip O'Hanlon of On A Higher Note and by Jason Lord of The Source AV, in Torrance, CA! Flemming Rasmussen, Founder of Gryphon Audio Designs, devoted many years and much effort to finding in North America the perfect distributor whom Flemming could trust to represent properly Gryphon in the USA and Canada and to fully support and take care of North American clients.
Tonight Jason Lord and Philip and Pandora O'Hanlon showed the Gryphon Audio Pantheon loudspeaker, a three-way system with two 8” bass and two 5” midrange drivers and an air motion tweeter. The system response is 25 Hz to 40,000 Hz, - 3dB. The cabinet is ported with extensive internal bracing.
The sound was vivid, very dynamic, and very transparent! Only a digital source was played, but I could not fault in any way the sound of the Pantheon. It sounded fantastic to me, albeit on this brief listen in an unfamiliar system and unfamiliar room. (But Jason Lord is an expert on room acoustics, and each of his sound rooms is very carefully and thoughtfully treated.) I think the Pantheon represents very good value for money.
The fact that I liked very much the sound of the Pantheon is no surprise. I would not be surprised if the 8" woofers and the air motion tweeter in the Pantheon are the same drivers used in the Pendragon. I have yet to hear a Gryphon loudspeaker which did not, to my ears, sound fantastic. And I have heard Gryphon speakers driven only by solid-state electronics.
With a MSRP of $52,000, it will be very interesting to see how the Rockport Technologies Cygnus and the Von Schweikert Audio VR-55 Aktiv and the Wilson Audio Alexia 2, among other similarly priced speakers, will compete with the Pantheon. Among the Cygnus, the VR-55 Aktive, the Alexia 2 and the Pantheon, only the Pantheon employs a D'Appolito (midrange-tweeter-midrange) driver configuration, although the top-of-the-line products from both Rockport and VSA utilize this driver configuration.
Don Saltzman, of The Absolute Sound, attended the event, and he was pleasantly surprised to see such a huge, old-school audio/video showroom in the Los Angeles area. The Source AV has three full-featured home theater set-ups, with the largest featuring the entire Macintosh Reference line of speakers and electronics as well as two JL Audio Gotham subwoofers. There are at least five audio sound rooms. (Don, by the way, was very approachable and down-to-earth and delighted to talk all things high-end audio. He is a very thoughtful and conscientious reviewer, and one of the very few reviewers who actually carefully compares components under review with competing products.)
The Source AV also has the largest selection of high-end headphones in the country.
Philip is planning to exhibit the tall, one column Trident II, with four 8" drivers, in the near future, as well as the four column Kodo -- Gryphon's flagship speaker -- sometime thereafter. Philip will be distributing and Jason will be exhibiting both Gryphon speakers and Gryphon's world famous Class A amplifiers, as well as pre-amplifiers, DACs and the top-selling Diablo 300 integrated amplifier.
The availability of Gryphon products in North America is very likely going to shake up the U.S. market for state-of-the-art Class A solid-state amplifiers and loudspeakers.
