PureAudioProject Trio15 Voxativ open baffle speakers Review

Pick your setup: Power Drive, Renaissance or Highly-Refined Listening

I build many versions of systems when I assess products. For the Trio15 Voxativ I will comment upon three variants to show the wide range of performance possible and how it can fit into different budgets.

Let’s say you have an older system, one with a big ‘old power amp you love. No problem, keep the power amp and swap out those wretchedly indifferent, bland speakers for the vivacious Trio15 Voxativ. This will breathe new life into your listening. Given the choice of freshening up an old amp or an old pair of speakers I would typically select new speakers. Particularly with the single driver magic of the Trio15 Voxativ you will be astounded at the refinement possible with a full range driver.

Yet, you are likely to retain much of the smoothness, warmth and lack of edge that lovers of older gear insist upon. The Voxativ is adept at presenting the character of amps, and yet I was not able to make the speaker sound hard-edged or flinty. I enjoyed the use of an old Belles Theatrix Amplifier that I acquired from a friend who was stepping up in a big way to one of the VAC Phi200 amplifiers I had previously reviewed. The Voxativ helped offset the sometimes mumbling, less distinct character of the Theatrix, the primary reason the previous owner let go of it.

Alternatively, you could go on a power drive by mating the Voxativ with a set of amps having the ability to crush the bass line, such as the Red Dragon S500, my favored class D amps that I put into use often. If you want to switch between refined and raucous music, having the dynamic gusto to belt out Ramstein or a rollicking run with The Record Company, put the Trio15 Voxativ with an audacious class D amp. PureAudioProject was wise in mating the full range driver with a pair of 15” woofers in the open baffle because when powered mightily they pound out the bass line with more authority than pricey box speakers with a line array of 8” or smaller drivers. Even a 10” in a cabinet can hardly compete with the force generated by the Trio15 Voxativ and big class D power.

While moving to such a setup will require you to spend on new amps, it is not usually as costly as seeking a higher power class A or A/B amplifier. It is a great intermediate step for those on course to turn the Voxativ into their final speaker. It’s also the preferred choice for younger enthusiasts who are passionate about precision as well as impact. The Voxativ can be made to drill down on details and if that fires you up, then put class D with them.

I care to spend the most time discussing a thrilling new set of components from Exogal that that drove the Trio15 Voxativ to a crazy good performance level, an erudite system belying its price point. This was the most thrilling system I built with the Trio15 Voxativ:

• HD-Plex Linear Power Supply with Verastarr Grand Illusion II Power Cord
• Salk StreamPlayer Generation III file server/streamer with embedded ROON and
• Tidal streaming music service (powered by the HD-Plex power supply)
• (Alternate) Clarity Cable Organic USB or Silnote Audio Poseidon USB, both 1M
• Exogal Comet DAC powered by Clarity Cable Organic power cord
• Exogal Ion PowerDAC powered by Clarity Cable Organic power cord
• PureAudioProject Trio15 Voxativ

The neon sign flashing “Best Sound” is illuminated with the Exogal components. I gushed effusively about the Exogal technology in combining the Comet DAC with the Ion PowerDAC in the latter’s review; the former has the preamp functionality and the latter the power amp functionality. This is a company and set of components not to be overlooked. If you want the best sound from the Trio15 Voxativ and do not want to spend well over $15K for the system, then buy the Comet and Ion. That is as close to a slam-dunk, guaranteed massive system upgrade as you will find.

What is it about the Exogal set that is so great with the Trio15 Voxativ? Frankly, it’s not the speakers. That sounds bad, but it’s not bad at all! The speakers as I have said previously are marvelous, but they are the end of the chain, not the start or midpoint. The Exogal Comet and Ion were the only components in more than 10 years of reviewing to escalate to new [near-reference?] reference five different speakers of varying technology. Never has any one system, much less one comprising a core of twin components from one manufacturer, done such a thing. Essentially, the Comet and Ion represent the closest to a perfect purchase as I have found, a veritable “no way to lose” single brand solution.

I must interject here that it has been several weeks since the release of the Ion PowerDAC review. I knew the “doubt level” would be high as the review sounds hyperbolic – but it is not, it is accurate. I spoke with Jeff Haagenstad of Exogal this week and he shared that the company had been receiving strong feedback on the review that motivated people to purchase. The common response among buyers was pre-purchase suspicion that the Comet and Ion would not live up to the review’s accolades, but upon ownership discovery that the praise was well deserved.

Video arcade games offer “multipliers,” which jack up the points won to boost overall performance. Pairing the Trio15 Voxativ with the Comet and Ion was like running the system on multipliers, jacking up the speaker and the sound quality as though PureAudioProject had delivered a new and improved version with 18” bass drivers and an 8” full range driver. The same intent existed in the speaker’s performance, but with a much superior outcome.

The most endearing aspect of this was what I will call the “beauty multiplier,” a makeover, a smoothing and tightening of sonic wrinkles formerly difficult to detect. Fullness, oh such glorious fullness, from a single driver speaker I had not heard in previous encounters. I still strenuously disagree with those who consider the midrange the meat of the music; I do not accept diminishment of any part of the audio frequency spectrum in pursuit of state of the art sound. Still, the palpability and richness of vocals from Sarah Jarosz, London Grammar, and Annie Lennox sent chills up my spine, and I almost never get chills listening!

I have a friend who loves pop music and is a sucker for a young pretty voice. Who can blame him? Diva-ettes have an allurement with their saucy, perky chirping despite the inanity of their lyrics. But so many of their recordings are scary, as in ugly, uncultured sounding. He followed my lead and now has the Comet and Ion, and couldn’t be happier listening to his Daedalus Ulysses speakers, which I sold to him. Now he is reworking his home theater and inquired about speakers. I advised he move the Ulysses to the HT and get a set of Trio15 Voxativ. That is no disrespect to the Daedalus speakers, but it is an endorsement of the Voxativ speakers. He is in for a lesson in highly refined listening when he puts the Comet and Ion with the Trio15 Voxativ.

Already when listening to the Trio15TB (Tang Band) my mind would wander back to one of my single driver reference speakers, the Lotus Granada. With the Trio15 Voxativ I can close my eyes and successfully imagine I am hearing the Lotus Granada, but that is only so with the Exogal components.  I now have approximately 190 selections in my review “crash and burn or take off and soar” music list. I wind through them, barraging systems with extremes from Funk to twangy Country to Broadway tunes to Spirituals. The Trio15 Voxativ delivers them in style.

The hallmark of the Trio15 Voxativ is intimacy, profound intimacy with the music. All of us can think of places we have visited, or perhaps a favorite room in our home or that of a neighbor, which is inviting. The décor soothes the soul and the mood in the room turns subdued rather than businesslike or sterile. These are rooms we enjoy and we gravitate toward them to refresh ourselves. In the same way the Trio15 Voxativ is a restorative speaker that soothes the ears to hear it. I feel replenished as an audiophile when I hear the above system, as though I have cocooned acoustically for a while.

An enormous speaker system such as the Legacy Audio V System pulls you out of your chair and sets you in the midst of action, a hive of activity that is a live recorded event, or the hustle of a band playing a rip-roaring number. The V is not about gentle persuasion but rather overwhelming immersion. Conversely, the Trio15 Voxativ is at its best playing at a moderate level, though it is completely capable of pounding with the best of mid-sized towers. Its forte is massaging the soul gently, especially with acoustic instruments and simple settings for vocals. It can do synth and what I would call modern, fractured music lacking syncopation and flowing harmonies, which I normally avoid entirely, well enough that I become interested in hearing them out. But that is its alien function; its best form is to convincingly render the subtleties of non-amplified performance.

One particular musical piece that has seen much play in telling when it comes to the capacity of speakers to cleanly and convincingly tell what is in the signal, Sarah Jarosz’s “Green Lights.” Her voice is enchanting as she has an angelic luminous character, as did Eva Cassidy. In this piece there are what I would call wretched backing sounds in the song. The anomalies recorded are so ugly, so antithetical to her demeanor that they detract noticeably from the experience. When friends of mine come to hear my system and the song is put on they all hesitate and suggest that the speakers are exhibiting a telltale noise, as though there is a problem with the system. It’s not the system; it’s the ugly electronic elements of “Green Lights.” I understand the motivation for the noises, as they are to represent the expanse of the universe, the vastness of the space in which she finds herself miraculously together with her lover. However, on many very fine systems those electronic elements make the system sound broken!

I test using such music because it is as important for a product to turn a bad performance into a good one as to turn a good one into a great one. There is a lot of poorly performed and/or engineered music, so I look for speakers that won’t drive me from my listening seat when I encounter it. Electronic music has a remarkable range of sound potential with different systems and speakers. With a cheaper, less graceful speaker, hard-edged performers such as Daft Punk come off as ragged, punishing. But with the Trio15 Voxativ, electronic haze nearly takes on the nature of acoustic notes, as if generated by a form of alien instrument, and Daft Punk’s relentless pounding and piddling with keyboards shows character, not merely flat notes of a certain tone. This is so with consistency from the treble through the bass and with balanced intensity across the frequency spectrum. The speaker is particularly commendable for its lack of hot spots, or extra reinforcement of the mid-bass or mid-treble that would cause my mind to mentally push back from the speaker sounding too forward.

A comparison to the huge Legacy Whisper DSW Clarity Edition

The Trio15 Voxativ is a form of hybrid speaker, a full range speaker with supplemental 15” woofers. Can it match much larger, more expensive hybrid speakers? Having the Legacy Audio Whisper DSW Clarity Edition ($23K) on hand, I sought to find out. The Whisper is similar to the Trio15 Voxativ in that it also employs top and bottom 15” open baffle woofers, though the Whisper has stacked woofers set in closely placed parallel baffles. The Whisper also has a closed cabinet construction for the quad of 7” Mid-bass drivers, 4” neo-ribbon Midrange and 1” Super Tweeter.

One might expect a speaker with such a prodigious complement of drivers to have a superior sense of ease, presence and power, and the Whisper does. Formidability is a hallmark of the large Legacy speakers and in that sense the Trio15 Voxativ sounds smallish by comparison. The Whisper also generates a larger center to the soundstage, a larger center span or range between the Left and Right speakers. The entire soundstage is larger with the Whisper.

So, one does get a lot more for the money in terms of those parameters when moving to a somewhat similar quasi-open baffle design; however. it costs four times as much. If one accepts the point source full range and that it cannot generate as broad a sound field or as much gravitas in the Midrange through to the dregs of the frequency spectrum, then the Trio15 Voxativ stands well in its own right. One hears the difference, but it is commensurate to the design and cost. The Trio15B does not supplant the Whisper, but neither does the Whisper negate the beauty and merits of the Trio15 Voxativ. Component quality is crucial in this regard. If the Whisper were run with less capable components and the Trio15 Voxativ with more capable, the performance of the two would begin to merge, not entirely but more so. It is a testament to the quality of the Trio15 Voxativ that it can be compared to the Whisper.