November 13, 2006
Tetra Takes Off: 606 and 306
by Josh Ray
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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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