November 13, 2006

Tetra Takes Off: 606 and 306

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One of my biggest beefs about high-end audio is the lack of personality. I mean, this gear is killer, right, so why are the majority of websites so boring? We have a number of new guys bringing the funk back, but, for the most part, audio sites are about as exciting as weekends at the library.

Tetra Speakers, on the other hand, has launched a brand spanking new website and it's a beauty. Not only does it have crazy colors, but it has musician endorsements. We're not talking Macca (or even K-Fed) but it has enough musicians with bonifieds to make for a compelling read. And it's great marketing. The audience has the music, sell 'em the speakers that they were mastered on.

Witness the new Tetra 606 speaker, aka, the Thee Fabroni. It's called the Thee Fabroni because of co-designer Rob Fraboni (producer of Rolling Stones, among others). Mr. Tetra Adrian Butts invited Rob to take part in the new flagship and wrote a little story about the design process here. Makes for a great story and humanizes the whole speaker building process.

Speaking of the new 606, this thing is wild. As you may be able to tell from the picture, the top portion is an open baffle. For those not hip to this trend (known as OB) that has been sweeping the audio underground for, oh, the last 2 decades, here's a little primer: open baffle means no baffle. Drivers on a board, so to speak. The idea is you create a dipole sound wave, sending sound forward as well as backward, and create a room-filling image. It's one step closer to "live" sound, so they say.

A number of hot open baffle designs have been making the rounds. Jamo's R909 is probably the most prolific, as well as the underground Linkwitz Orion speakers. Then there are a dozen or so prime time omni speaker companies, most notably Mirage and Bang and Olufsen.

For its open baffle bona fides, the Tetra 606 uses an Air Motion Transformer tweeter. AMT tweets belong in the ribbon phylum, but are inherently di-poles by nature. The idea is these AMTs are amazingly fast. The Mundorf model used in the Tree Fabroni (as well as Eton and BG) has been showing up all over Europe but has yet to make a major dent in the US market, though some manufacturers like Magico have started playing around with them.

Below the AMT tweeter is the famed ATC midrange dome, considered the last word in midrange production by many. At the very least, the dome has practically no measured distortion. Not many manufacturers use the ATC dome because, mainly, it's wildly expensive. The ATC is not a dipole, though it's mounted on the top baffle. A custom 12" woofer sourced from the hot Danish design house Audio Technology (I believe) is port-loaded in the rear.

Next up from the pyramid house is a personal favorite, the Tetra 306. I heard these guys at CES last year and they absolutely rocked. Paired with Original electronics, they put out just amazing sound and huge bass. I was in the room for a while chatting it up and would listen to various people come in and say: "what the &*%$!" or "Holy &*#$ *&$#!" or "ummm, yeah..."

At CES, people kept having to be told there was no bottom driver or subwoofer. The way they do the bass magic is through a special port on the bottom. Getting that port as close to the ground as possible, Tetra is able to tune the speakers to put out massive grunt. Wilson does this as well (though Tetra and Wilson have nothing really in common). If you've ever noticed, all Wilsons at shows are very close to the back wall, thus allowing a major bass boost through port tuning.

In any case, I have no idea where a person is supposed to put the 306s since they stand only 22" high and are magnets for stubbed toes. Maybe mount them on the ceiling. Whatever, I want a pair. You can get them without the little red nip on the top, in case you're wondering. In fact, Tetra regularly does wild paint jobs, so I imagine you can get a pair dressed up like candy corns or traffic cones or whatever floats your boat.

If you haven't noticed, I'm a big fan of Tetra. Every time I've heard these guys, they've rocked. Forget specs and flat frequency response, Adrian voices these speakers to just sound great. Check out their whole line of unusual speakers and put them on your short list for top-notch goods.

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