Todd's AG Trio G3 System -- it's about time
- Thread starter sbnx
- Start date
Hello Caesar,
I do have a strong interest in speaker setup and system optimization. I just became an Avantgarde dealer this year and took possession of my demo speaker at the end of February. I setup a pair of Duo GT at the Southwest AudioFest this past weekend. That was a lot of fun.
I am really not a tube person but I will likely get a pair of tube amps to give people the ability to compare between the iTron and tubes.
Todd, even if this system didn't make a sound, it is beautiful to stare at. Amazing accomplishment.
Cool, excellent to hear you had fun at the show.
I hope the business side doesn't spoil the joy the hobby gives you. Since the market for Duos is probably larger than Trios, curious how you will work the Duos in your meticulous Trios setup?
What tubes are you thinking of? Viva? Audiopax? Ayon? Others?
The Duo GT is much easier to dial in than the Trio. The tweeter is naturally integrated (time aligned) with toe-in and I don't have to integrate a space horn with each speaker.
Jury is still out on tube amps. I currently have a pair of Phasemation MA-1500's that I need to hook up. These are 300B amps. I would like to hear the Viva. We will see what happens.
I am pretty chill about things (except setup detail). I don't think the business is going to bother me. But will see what the future brings.
Jury is still out on tube amps. I currently have a pair of Phasemation MA-1500's that I need to hook up. These are 300B amps. I would like to hear the Viva. We will see what happens.
I am pretty chill about things (except setup detail). I don't think the business is going to bother me. But will see what the future brings.
nice!
Last year duo just didn’t sound right - maybe the setup , non broken-in , large room?
i hope they bring you to do the setup!
you are way too humble.… The selling point of Most dealers I’ve met is that they have done it for 50 years and know what sounds good. But then they sell Wilson with audio research and dcs… makes one wonder why the hobby is dying with such a huge amount of wealth created in the last 20 years…
or there’s a guy who tells you he knows what real music sounds like because his older sister played piano and there was music in the house all the time..
but you have actual skills to make the most out out of the situation! and passion! And, of course, integrity!
Will be interesting if they fly in the blonde German dude To assist, as the setups have been a bit disappointing …
would be even more interesting if the blonde German dude paid you a visit and had thoughts about your setup
Greetings! Apologies for my long absence in Todd’s excellent thread and for the long length of this post(s). Hopefully no one is upset that I have revived a 6m dormant, but highly successful thread. As some of you know, I received the Trio G3’s and a pair of double spacehorns this past summer. I had mine outfitted with the iTron amplifier and passive crossover, even though I have a world class amplifier in the Mayer TM300B amps with all silver transformers.
Several things conspired to produce my long absence from the forum and this thread in particular:
The final position I ended up with was:
By the way…congrats to Todd for a truly fantastic thread. I hope to read all that I’ve missed at some point in the future…just not sure when that will be at this point as work and travel continue to dominate my time. Also, thank you Ron (and Todd) for an excellent interview. I really enjoyed it.
A general comment about Trio G3's with spacehorns before sharing my findings regarding the comparison between iTrons and Mayer amps. The Trios are amazing speakers and they were imminently enjoyable with all three amps that I've tried with them (Valvet A3.5 monos were the other amps trialed). They throw a huge, delineated stage, do not draw unwanted attention to themselves and always serve the music. They were a large step up from my Avantegarde Duo Mezzo XD's that I had before them, yet share (and exceed) the dynamic (micro and macro) envelope possible with the Duo Mezzos.
Comparison of iTron and Thomas Mayer TM300B Silver amps in next post
Several things conspired to produce my long absence from the forum and this thread in particular:
- First there was an issue with the optical cables that allow for real time switching between external amps and iTron. One of the cables was shorted and did not work.
- Then after simplifying the connections to just run the iTron, it became apparent that the tweeter amp for the left speaker was not functioning. Armin assisted in guiding me and my trusty Fluke in finding the problem; however, I had to wait around 4+ weeks for a replacement iTron. In the meantime, I listened through my Mayer amps.
- The next challenge was to find the right location for the spacehorns. Since I had always had my source components at the front of the room, I initially attempted to get the spacehorns dialed in either to the outside or inside of the Trios, similar to Todd’s arrangement. Unfortunately, despite lots of listening and lots of measurements, I was never content with the integration. I enlisted Jeff Hedbeck to assist and after analyzing measurements from several different locations he suggested I try the front of the room where the source components were placed. It was a bit of a cluster to even test this, but the measurements and more importantly, the listening, proved this was a much better location. So…more waiting to set up the source components on the side of the room on a permanent basis. I have a dedicated room, but it is dual use in that we watch a lot of movies (and youtube concerts) on an 11’ diagonal screen with a JVC RS3100 projector. The room had to work for that, or my better half would have been severely disappointed. Happy wife, happy life.
- The final challenge was that my work became incredibly busy. I had little time to listen seriously and even less to read the forums. I didn’t log in to WBF for months and when I did it was to briefly scan a variety of threads, peeking occasionally at this thread.
The final position I ended up with was:
- Tweeters aimed at each ear.
- 183” center of vertical support to center of vertical support. Midrange horn centers are to the inside of the vertical support and I don’t have a measurement at hand. The tweeters are also further to the inside relative to the midrange horns.
- 179” distance from tweeter horn front to ear
- 62” distance of tweeter horn front to rear wall
- 45” distance from edge of vertical support to side walls.
- Spacehorns centered against the front wall.
By the way…congrats to Todd for a truly fantastic thread. I hope to read all that I’ve missed at some point in the future…just not sure when that will be at this point as work and travel continue to dominate my time. Also, thank you Ron (and Todd) for an excellent interview. I really enjoyed it.
A general comment about Trio G3's with spacehorns before sharing my findings regarding the comparison between iTrons and Mayer amps. The Trios are amazing speakers and they were imminently enjoyable with all three amps that I've tried with them (Valvet A3.5 monos were the other amps trialed). They throw a huge, delineated stage, do not draw unwanted attention to themselves and always serve the music. They were a large step up from my Avantegarde Duo Mezzo XD's that I had before them, yet share (and exceed) the dynamic (micro and macro) envelope possible with the Duo Mezzos.
Comparison of iTron and Thomas Mayer TM300B Silver amps in next post
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Comparison of iTron and Thomas Mayer TM300B Silver Amps
So…”iTron or the mighty Mayer amps” as someone earlier in the thread asked? It is an interesting question and was not so straightforward to answer. After an initial 4-5 weeks of listening through the iTron post replacement, I switched to the Mayers and didn’t look back. Part of that was work/time and part of it was my initial preference for the Mayers. For around 7 months I used only the Mayers. About a month ago, after peeking into this thread again, I realized that I needed to provide some feedback when I got the chance and the only way to do that fairly was to live with the iTrons again for at least a month, then do comparative testing between the two.
A word about the Mayer TM300B Silver amps…they are not your typical romantic sounding 300B amps. They use a 10Y or 801A directly heated driver tube and are extraordinarily quiet (“dead quiet”) and very linear, a testament to Thomas’ approach to the power supply. They reveal the full tonal color pallet, the entire harmonic envelope if you will, but will not lay a romantic “glow” upon all source material. They are extended and very fast…they bear zero resemblance to the slow plodding SET’s defined by the lower end of SET options. They reveal differences upstream and downstream with great alacrity.
The iTron amps are very compelling amps. All the colors of music are nicely conveyed (very important to me as a long-time tube guy). They are extremely detailed without spotlighting and without harshness. It is very easy to understand, without effort, how an instrument is being played or how a singer is modulating their voice. Piano is just one example of this. Duke Ellington’s piano play in “The Complete Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington Sessions” is effortlessly understandable even though I think most would conclude that it is not particularly well-recorded in this mix.
They are exceedingly dynamic, startling really, and that says a lot when this speaker would be enjoyed by everyone as a very dynamic speaker powered by ANY amp. All that said, they do seem to emphasize the leading edge over decay. Perhaps this is truer to the source? Perhaps not? BTW…the leading edge is very natural and not “spotlit”. I can say that during the last month of listening exclusively to the iTrons on music, movie tracks and youtube concerts, I was blissfully happy with what I was hearing. I could certainly be happy with the iTrons and I was legitimately unsure of what the outcome would be upon direct comparison. I heard new things in the recordings I listened to and it was surprising to me given my early lean to the Mayers.
In direct comparison with the Mayer amps over the last two weekends, I find myself preferring the Mayers. Forced to give a single sentence answer, I would say the Mayers convey the gestalt of the music perfectly, while the iTrons seem to never quite stitch the pieces together as a unified musical message. Again…this is only evident in direct comparison. Despite their radically different approaches, they are more alike than different, at least that is how I believe a non-audiophile with a good ear would describe it. I am convinced that I could distinguish the two amps in a blind test if given enough time and good source material to which to listen. I would also likely get 20%-30% wrong; such is the challenge with blind tests.
What am I hearing that leads me to that summarizing sentence above? Foremost, it is easier to feel transplanted to the space of the recording. The way the room or hall in which the recording was made is illuminated more evidently through the Mayers, particularly the rear of the stage. The Mayers better capture the energy in the room. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the Mayers are revealing more low-level information, in this case about the diffuse reflections in the room, but it is hard to wrap my head around this point of view because the iTrons reveal so much information about how instruments are played, and they do so naturally. It would be hard to argue that the Mayers are more detailed, though they certainly wouldn’t suffer this comparison with any other amps except the iTrons in my opinion.
I’m at a loss to determine why this is, though maybe they stop the drivers too quickly and shorten the decay? This is unsatisfying to my engineering brain, despite appealing to my audiophile mind. Maybe I’m just conditioned to like the effects of less precise control of the driver? Still, the sense of “realness” and being transported to the event are so powerful to me as a listener that in the words of Luther Ingram, “if loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right”.
Secondly, and maybe related to the first, how the instruments are arranged together seems more “whole” with the Mayers. The delineation of space for each instrument seems more continuous. Imagine each instrument occupies a spherical bubble around it on stage. With the Mayer amps, the spheres overlap to varying degree and make for a continuous sense of space across the stage. With the iTrons, it’s as if there is a small gap between some of the spheres. Each instrument has its own space, but it feels a little discontinuous if that makes sense. Interestingly, this also appears to be true on studio recordings, but to a lesser degree. Is this a slightly blurred signal coming from the Mayers? Wow…I guess it could be, but in no other way would one likely conclude this. Could speaker setup ameliorate this effect? Perhaps…I have no idea and don’t possess the energy to find out.
As an additional reference point, I listened through a pair of Valvet A3.5 pure class A mono amps that I have had for years. These are really nice little amps at 50w/ch that do so many things well and have a touch of sweetness to them. I could never justify selling them so just held on to them. If one had never listened to the Trio G3’s and spacehorns through the iTron or Mayer amps, I am certain they would be very happy indeed. Unfortunately, I have and they are just not in the same league. The amps don’t offend in any noticeable way; they just don’t draw you in to the same degree and provide considerably less musical information in a less balanced way. They just are not as refined as either the iTron or Mayer amps. Any G3 owner would be wise to step up a few levels in the amp selection…the G3’s will reward you.
In short (is there anything short about these two posts of mine?
), the Mayers are my amps for the Trio G3’s. If any prospective purchaser/owner of the G3’s is interested in buying the iTrons to go along with their passive crossover, I’ll let them go at a fantastic price. It's a chance to inexpensively add a world class amplifier. I’ll throw in the optical cables that allow one to switch between external amps and the iTron in real time. I believe the infrastructure for this is included in the standard passive crossover configuration, but I’m not 100% sure.
So…”iTron or the mighty Mayer amps” as someone earlier in the thread asked? It is an interesting question and was not so straightforward to answer. After an initial 4-5 weeks of listening through the iTron post replacement, I switched to the Mayers and didn’t look back. Part of that was work/time and part of it was my initial preference for the Mayers. For around 7 months I used only the Mayers. About a month ago, after peeking into this thread again, I realized that I needed to provide some feedback when I got the chance and the only way to do that fairly was to live with the iTrons again for at least a month, then do comparative testing between the two.
A word about the Mayer TM300B Silver amps…they are not your typical romantic sounding 300B amps. They use a 10Y or 801A directly heated driver tube and are extraordinarily quiet (“dead quiet”) and very linear, a testament to Thomas’ approach to the power supply. They reveal the full tonal color pallet, the entire harmonic envelope if you will, but will not lay a romantic “glow” upon all source material. They are extended and very fast…they bear zero resemblance to the slow plodding SET’s defined by the lower end of SET options. They reveal differences upstream and downstream with great alacrity.
The iTron amps are very compelling amps. All the colors of music are nicely conveyed (very important to me as a long-time tube guy). They are extremely detailed without spotlighting and without harshness. It is very easy to understand, without effort, how an instrument is being played or how a singer is modulating their voice. Piano is just one example of this. Duke Ellington’s piano play in “The Complete Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington Sessions” is effortlessly understandable even though I think most would conclude that it is not particularly well-recorded in this mix.
They are exceedingly dynamic, startling really, and that says a lot when this speaker would be enjoyed by everyone as a very dynamic speaker powered by ANY amp. All that said, they do seem to emphasize the leading edge over decay. Perhaps this is truer to the source? Perhaps not? BTW…the leading edge is very natural and not “spotlit”. I can say that during the last month of listening exclusively to the iTrons on music, movie tracks and youtube concerts, I was blissfully happy with what I was hearing. I could certainly be happy with the iTrons and I was legitimately unsure of what the outcome would be upon direct comparison. I heard new things in the recordings I listened to and it was surprising to me given my early lean to the Mayers.
In direct comparison with the Mayer amps over the last two weekends, I find myself preferring the Mayers. Forced to give a single sentence answer, I would say the Mayers convey the gestalt of the music perfectly, while the iTrons seem to never quite stitch the pieces together as a unified musical message. Again…this is only evident in direct comparison. Despite their radically different approaches, they are more alike than different, at least that is how I believe a non-audiophile with a good ear would describe it. I am convinced that I could distinguish the two amps in a blind test if given enough time and good source material to which to listen. I would also likely get 20%-30% wrong; such is the challenge with blind tests.
What am I hearing that leads me to that summarizing sentence above? Foremost, it is easier to feel transplanted to the space of the recording. The way the room or hall in which the recording was made is illuminated more evidently through the Mayers, particularly the rear of the stage. The Mayers better capture the energy in the room. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the Mayers are revealing more low-level information, in this case about the diffuse reflections in the room, but it is hard to wrap my head around this point of view because the iTrons reveal so much information about how instruments are played, and they do so naturally. It would be hard to argue that the Mayers are more detailed, though they certainly wouldn’t suffer this comparison with any other amps except the iTrons in my opinion.
I’m at a loss to determine why this is, though maybe they stop the drivers too quickly and shorten the decay? This is unsatisfying to my engineering brain, despite appealing to my audiophile mind. Maybe I’m just conditioned to like the effects of less precise control of the driver? Still, the sense of “realness” and being transported to the event are so powerful to me as a listener that in the words of Luther Ingram, “if loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right”.
Secondly, and maybe related to the first, how the instruments are arranged together seems more “whole” with the Mayers. The delineation of space for each instrument seems more continuous. Imagine each instrument occupies a spherical bubble around it on stage. With the Mayer amps, the spheres overlap to varying degree and make for a continuous sense of space across the stage. With the iTrons, it’s as if there is a small gap between some of the spheres. Each instrument has its own space, but it feels a little discontinuous if that makes sense. Interestingly, this also appears to be true on studio recordings, but to a lesser degree. Is this a slightly blurred signal coming from the Mayers? Wow…I guess it could be, but in no other way would one likely conclude this. Could speaker setup ameliorate this effect? Perhaps…I have no idea and don’t possess the energy to find out.
As an additional reference point, I listened through a pair of Valvet A3.5 pure class A mono amps that I have had for years. These are really nice little amps at 50w/ch that do so many things well and have a touch of sweetness to them. I could never justify selling them so just held on to them. If one had never listened to the Trio G3’s and spacehorns through the iTron or Mayer amps, I am certain they would be very happy indeed. Unfortunately, I have and they are just not in the same league. The amps don’t offend in any noticeable way; they just don’t draw you in to the same degree and provide considerably less musical information in a less balanced way. They just are not as refined as either the iTron or Mayer amps. Any G3 owner would be wise to step up a few levels in the amp selection…the G3’s will reward you.
In short (is there anything short about these two posts of mine?
), the Mayers are my amps for the Trio G3’s. If any prospective purchaser/owner of the G3’s is interested in buying the iTrons to go along with their passive crossover, I’ll let them go at a fantastic price. It's a chance to inexpensively add a world class amplifier. I’ll throw in the optical cables that allow one to switch between external amps and the iTron in real time. I believe the infrastructure for this is included in the standard passive crossover configuration, but I’m not 100% sure.
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Thank you, Germanboxers, for this very, very interesting and thoughtful comparison!
Hey Ked. I'm running the MSB Select DAC directly to the Mayer 300B. As you know, I used to have the Mayer 10Y Silver line stage. After extensive listening with the 10Y in the chain and without, I found a slight preference with going direct from the DAC. I know this is sacrilege for many, and I have concluded the same through trial several times over the last 30 years I've been in this hobby, but in this case I came to a different conclusion.
Thomas Mayer 8w's can certainly drive the Trios spectacularly. I do not listen to alot of classical. I wish I was better educated about it, because classical music really appeals to the mathematical part of my brain in the same way that Tool does (and Brubeck). That said, I listened to a fair amount (for me) of classical since acquiring the Trios and again during the last two weekends of comparison. The way the orchestra "swells" during fortissimo and the massive space conveyed through the Mayers leads me to conclude that they are more than capable of driving the Trios. In this regard...the "swell", the space and layering, they exceed the iTron.
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That is a very clear and well written summary of the differences between the amplifiers. Subtle differences are often difficult to describe and convey to others but you do well in this regard. Those “spheres” around each instrument and their energy overlapping or to fill the space and it’s a good description. So is the completeness of the note from attack to decay. I enjoyed reading this more than I do most typical published reviews.
YAY!
(What's the worst that could happen? The tube amp burns down the listening room? That's what fire extinguishers are for!)
Comparison of iTron and Thomas Mayer TM300B Silver Amps
So…”iTron or the mighty Mayer amps” as someone earlier in the thread asked? It is an interesting question and was not so straightforward to answer. After an initial 4-5 weeks of listening through the iTron post replacement, I switched to the Mayers and didn’t look back. Part of that was work/time and part of it was my initial preference for the Mayers. For around 7 months I used only the Mayers. About a month ago, after peeking into this thread again, I realized that I needed to provide some feedback when I got the chance and the only way to do that fairly was to live with the iTrons again for at least a month, then do comparative testing between the two.
A word about the Mayer TM300B Silver amps…they are not your typical romantic sounding 300B amps. They use a 10Y or 801A directly heated driver tube and are extraordinarily quiet (“dead quiet”) and very linear, a testament to Thomas’ approach to the power supply. They reveal the full tonal color pallet, the entire harmonic envelope if you will, but will not lay a romantic “glow” upon all source material. They are extended and very fast…they bear zero resemblance to the slow plodding SET’s defined by the lower end of SET options. They reveal differences upstream and downstream with great alacrity.
The iTron amps are very compelling amps. All the colors of music are nicely conveyed (very important to me as a long-time tube guy). They are extremely detailed without spotlighting and without harshness. It is very easy to understand, without effort, how an instrument is being played or how a singer is modulating their voice. Piano is just one example of this. Duke Ellington’s piano play in “The Complete Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington Sessions” is effortlessly understandable even though I think most would conclude that it is not particularly well-recorded in this mix.
They are exceedingly dynamic, startling really, and that says a lot when this speaker would be enjoyed by everyone as a very dynamic speaker powered by ANY amp. All that said, they do seem to emphasize the leading edge over decay. Perhaps this is truer to the source? Perhaps not? BTW…the leading edge is very natural and not “spotlit”. I can say that during the last month of listening exclusively to the iTrons on music, movie tracks and youtube concerts, I was blissfully happy with what I was hearing. I could certainly be happy with the iTrons and I was legitimately unsure of what the outcome would be upon direct comparison. I heard new things in the recordings I listened to and it was surprising to me given my early lean to the Mayers.
In direct comparison with the Mayer amps over the last two weekends, I find myself preferring the Mayers. Forced to give a single sentence answer, I would say the Mayers convey the gestalt of the music perfectly, while the iTrons seem to never quite stitch the pieces together as a unified musical message. Again…this is only evident in direct comparison. Despite their radically different approaches, they are more alike than different, at least that is how I believe a non-audiophile with a good ear would describe it. I am convinced that I could distinguish the two amps in a blind test if given enough time and good source material to which to listen. I would also likely get 20%-30% wrong; such is the challenge with blind tests.
What am I hearing that leads me to that summarizing sentence above? Foremost, it is easier to feel transplanted to the space of the recording. The way the room or hall in which the recording was made is illuminated more evidently through the Mayers, particularly the rear of the stage. The Mayers better capture the energy in the room. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the Mayers are revealing more low-level information, in this case about the diffuse reflections in the room, but it is hard to wrap my head around this point of view because the iTrons reveal so much information about how instruments are played, and they do so naturally. It would be hard to argue that the Mayers are more detailed, though they certainly wouldn’t suffer this comparison with any other amps except the iTrons in my opinion.
I’m at a loss to determine why this is, though maybe they stop the drivers too quickly and shorten the decay? This is unsatisfying to my engineering brain, despite appealing to my audiophile mind. Maybe I’m just conditioned to like the effects of less precise control of the driver? Still, the sense of “realness” and being transported to the event are so powerful to me as a listener that in the words of Luther Ingram, “if loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right”.
Secondly, and maybe related to the first, how the instruments are arranged together seems more “whole” with the Mayers. The delineation of space for each instrument seems more continuous. Imagine each instrument occupies a spherical bubble around it on stage. With the Mayer amps, the spheres overlap to varying degree and make for a continuous sense of space across the stage. With the iTrons, it’s as if there is a small gap between some of the spheres. Each instrument has its own space, but it feels a little discontinuous if that makes sense. Interestingly, this also appears to be true on studio recordings, but to a lesser degree. Is this a slightly blurred signal coming from the Mayers? Wow…I guess it could be, but in no other way would one likely conclude this. Could speaker setup ameliorate this effect? Perhaps…I have no idea and don’t possess the energy to find out.
As an additional reference point, I listened through a pair of Valvet A3.5 pure class A mono amps that I have had for years. These are really nice little amps at 50w/ch that do so many things well and have a touch of sweetness to them. I could never justify selling them so just held on to them. If one had never listened to the Trio G3’s and spacehorns through the iTron or Mayer amps, I am certain they would be very happy indeed. Unfortunately, I have and they are just not in the same league. The amps don’t offend in any noticeable way; they just don’t draw you in to the same degree and provide considerably less musical information in a less balanced way. They just are not as refined as either the iTron or Mayer amps. Any G3 owner would be wise to step up a few levels in the amp selection…the G3’s will reward you.
In short (is there anything short about these two posts of mine?
Great comparison. Great writing takes time. Thank you for taking the time to do the write up! Well done!!!
And any chance you can post videos of the itron vs mayer?
Juuuuust kidding !!!!
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