I auditioned the trinaural this week.
I must preface this review with the statement that I approached this endeavor with skepticism. I tried as hard as I could to remain objective and not let the hype of CES awards or other previous reviews taint my interpretations. I did not want to write a typical, gushing component review of how this thing is the greatest I've ever heard, it will change your life, blah blah blah. I am a $ensible Sound kind of guy.
I have VMPS Tower II mains with Outlaw 755 amp/950 pre-amp and an ancient 1995 Onkyo 6-CD changer (hey, I like the way it sounds). My center channel of choice would be an RM30C, but Julian didn't have any of those on hand, so he loaned me an LRC as my center channel. My room dimensions are 17Wx32Dx9H. Normally, my mains are 8ft apart, but Julian moved my mains to the extreme edge of the walls to increase the soundstage.
My first impression was that of everybody else's: the center channel is too hot. It took me 3 days before I no longer perceived the center channel as being hot. At that point, the soundstage seemed to open up. My ears were still confused at this point, though. The side channels still seemed a little "beamy", and it sounded like they were occasionally out of phase (they were not). It was not until the 4th day of listening when I no longer experienced any disorientation.
The best analogy I have of the trinaural is that it is a lot like those
3-D sterograms where you have to change the focal point of your eyes before the 3 dimensional picture pops up before you. When you first look at it, you don't see it. But when you change your focus, you see the image. I can stretch this analogy even further: I noticed that my perception of the sound could change depending on where I focused my eyes. When I looked directly at the center speaker, I perceived the center channel to be "hot", but when I lifted my gaze above the speaker towards the soundstage, the beaminess went away and the large soundstage opened up before me. Towards the end of my evaluation, I listened with the lights off to prevent my eyes from distracting me. That helped a lot.
The trinaural will mess with your head. Two days after I started listening to it, I got into my car to run an errand. When I turned the ignition and the radio came on, I froze in my tracks. I didn't hear the sound coming from the windshield like I was used to. Instead it sounded like two door speakers aimed at the sides of my head. I no longer perceived a stereo image in my head from two channels. This really freaked me out!
Let's talk about how it sounds.
I probably listened to 50 different CDs from my collection during my audition. Stan Kenton's jazz orchestra on "Birthday in Britain" is stunning on a soundstage 17 feet wide and 10 feet deep. I can hear soloists stepping forward for their solos as well as musicians talking between songs. The drum echoes of Peter Gabriel's "Zaar" extend beyond the periphery of the main speakers. Solo piano sounds better than I ever thought possible on my system. With a 17 ft wide stoundstage, the piano image is about the size of a real piano. Herbie Hancock's "Harvest Time" sounds like it's being played right in front of me. And when the alarm clocks go off during Dark Side of the Moon's "Time", it is nothing short of spectacular. Copland's "Appalachian Spring" was sublime with its depth and detail. Just for fun, I popped in Wendy Carlos' "Switched-On Bach", and I laughed out loud. That CD is to the Trinaural what the Matrix is to DVD players! Even though that recording is older than I am, it was made for 3-channel reproduction with its LCR voicing.
It is human instinct to turn your head toward a sound. I found myself turning my head towards each soloist around the soundstage as I was listening to jazz, something I don't remember ever doing while listening to recorded music. I no longer stared straight ahead all the time like I did with 2-channel stereo.
I found the trinaural had the most impact on concert recordings and high quality ensemble recordings. It won't make an average Pop recording sound better, for example. I found a lot of Pop CDs didn't sound much better, but I could really hear the difference on live jazz and well-recorded studio CDs.
After listening to the trinaural for 5 days, I switched back to 2-channel stereo to compare. The music lost a lot of detail. It still sounded good, but there wasn't as much clarity and detail as there was before. The clocks on DSOTM's "Time" didn't get me excited any more. I lost the big soundstage for jazz and symphonic orchestra.
Summary:
Does it work? Yes. The trinaural gives you a larger soundstage with more clarity and detail in the music. If you have a 19" computer monitor, upgrading to 21" will give you more resolution, but is it worth it? You have to decide for yourself. I have the luxury of a dedicated 2-channel listening area without any home theater variables. If you have only two speakers, you need to decide if the investment in new speaker + additional amplification + trinaural is worth the incremental improvement in sound. I have not made my decision yet. But I still have a couple of more days to play!
In the end, I totally agree with the $ensible Sound reviewer who said:
In the end what Trinaural does is lets you get back to being a music lover. The love of music is why I got into the hobby and I suspect the same for most of you. The things we have fought for all the years that drove us crazy with hi fi systems are gone reduced or eliminated depending on the recording. With Trinaural the speakers do not localize. Front-to-back depth is a very real thing. Woodwinds take on a size and character that one hears live but never in two channels. Brass glow with full tone but not the harsh edge. Violin sections really sound like sections, as you can hear the individual players, not some edgy blob that oozes from the center of speakers. With the Trinaural processor you can stop that part of your life that involved tweaking components, speaker placement, etc., and get on with what you really want to do -- listen to music.
References:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=6222http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=5675http://www.sedonaskysound.com/trinaural%20processor%20reviewi.htmhttp://ampzilla2000.com/sensiblesoundreview.html
