VANDERSTEEN AUDIO TREO CT LOUDSPEAKERUncommon Musicality

Equipment report(/articles/?type=review)

by Neil Gader(/articles/?authors=3) | Apr 21st, 2016

Categories: Floorstanding(/articles/?categories=4) | Products: Vandersteen Audio Treo CT(/articles/?products=2913)

The question is actually a very simple one: Are you an audiophile whose ears are attuned to the sound of live, unamplified acoustic music performed in anatural setting—traditionally defined in these pages as “the absolute sound”? If the answer is yes, Vandersteen Audio would very much like to talk to you.For this is the milieu of its Treo CT, a mid-sized floorstander that, at $7990, resides midpack in the Vandersteen lineup. It’s a loudspeaker that has anuncommon reverence for the music that poses the greatest challenges to an audio system. Reproducing the context and complexities of performanceand venue, harmonics and ambience, the micro and the macro is where the Treo CT shines at its most brilliant.

The Treo CT silhouette will be instantly familiar to longtime audiophiles, and not just to Vandersteen fanciers. Elements of this classic look—the slantedfront baffle to time-align the drivers, the cabinet widening and deepening as its non-parallel sidewalls flow into its base—have appeared in varyingdegrees from makers as disparate as Thiel, Avalon, Rockport, Wilson Audio, and, more recently, newcomers like Ryan Audio.

The Treo CT is a four-way floorstanding loudspeaker in a bass-reflex enclosure. (The single port fires downward from the speaker’s base.) It shares itsgeneral architecture and transducers with the Quatro Wood CT—a hybrid iteration with a powered bass system. CT stands for carbon tweeter—anevolution of the driver type first developed for the Model Seven flagship, later migrated to the Model 5A Carbon, and now an option with the CT (thestandard Treo lists for $6900/pair). For Vandersteen, carbon-driver cones offer the pistonic linearity of metal drivers without their inherently unnatural andamusical sonic colorations (known as ringing in some circles).

Vandersteen Audio Treo CT Loudspeaker

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True to Vandersteen tradition, the Treo CT is a time-and-phase-correct loudspeaker. The crossovers are first-order, impedance-compensated numbersindividually tuned in an anechoic chamber. Crossover points are specified at 80Hz, 900Hz, and 6kHz. As a first-order design, much is asked andexpected of the drivers in extended operating range and dynamic demands. To these ends, the drivers include a CT tweeter and Vandersteen’s“reflection-free” 4.5" midrange in a proprietary transmission line that breaks up energy from behind the driver rather than directing it back into the cone.The mid/bass driver is a 6.5" tri-woven cone, while the bass is handled by a ported, carbon-loaded, ultra-long-throw 8" woofer.

Vandersteen describes its dense, narrow, rigid enclosures as “minimum baffle” designs that minimize diffraction effects and time-smearing reflections.Construction is in a word, extreme. Vandersteen has engineered a unique system that it describes as “cabinet-within-a-cabinet” construction—essentiallyan inner MDF cabinet within an outer MDF enclosure, separated by a viscous or “gooey” membrane that eliminates resonances. Vandersteen reports that“measurements bear out that this gives us the kind of silent cabinet performance that is typically seen only in very exotic cabinets made with exoticmaterials…we only exceed this by combining similar techniques with superior and much more expensive materials, like the carbon fiber in our ModelSeven Mk II flagship or even the multi-layer head in the Model 5A Carbon.” Curiously, the Treo CT still uses a terminal plate rather than multi-way bindingposts for speaker-cable hookup (bi-wire or single). This reduces cable termination options to bare wire or spades. However, Vandersteen argues thatsince “the barrier strip terminals are soldered directly to the board on crossover networks, this makes the connection 100% impervious to oxidation andother environmental elements that can corrupt connections over time.” Vandersteen adds that wiring directly into the crossover board avoids any full-range wiring inside the speaker, which is a big plus sonically.

A word about the Treo CT speaker grilles: Don’t touch ’em, as they are meant to be left on. Yes, this runs counter to audiophile gospel, which maintainsthat grille cloths reduce acoustic transparency, but the Treo’s grille is anything but ordinary. Rather than a thin, cheesy frame with a sheer clothmembrane, it is actually a physical extension of the baffle itself—literally completing the front baffle in the way a final piece of a jigsaw puzzle finishes thepattern. Feel free to remove them when you audition the Treo CT, but my bet is that you’ll reattach them pronto. In my observations they were integral tothe level of imaging and coherence that the Treo CT was capable of achieving. The set-up manual is very explicit about placement and provides graphsfor optimization. The robust and adjustable cone-footers, three to a side, significantly aid in fine-tuning.

Vandersteen Audio Treo CT Loudspeaker

Sonically, the Treo CT offered a near-full-range experience with exceptional balance, nuance, and continuousness. Its presence in the room was feltimmediately in bass response that extended with authority and finesse into the thirty-cycle range. The Treo’s was not a heavy or ponderous balanceeither; rather there was a lightness to its overall personality that belied the power of a four-driver configuration. Tonally, it perches on the warmer andmore relaxed side of neutral, but this trait only manifests itself in contrast with designs that have a drier, more forward, studio-monitor-type sound. TheTreo CT has a midrange that calmly draws listeners in rather than forcing them away. There’s a civility to the way it steers clear of carving out the last iotaof so-called detail or of vying for your attention with a too prominent treble. For example, the top end of the Vandersteen had the air and fluidity thatbrought the chorus of the Rutter Requiem startlingly to life in my listening room. Individual soloists remained cleanly defined and focused amidst thechorus, which led to moments so detailed that each line of vocalists was clearly imaged on the ascending risers of the stage.

There’s an implicit sweetness to the carbon tweeter that produces a sibilance range that is well nigh perfect. The Treo captured the leading-edge intensityof singers like Norah Jones and Holly Cole without turning up the sizzle in this precarious treble region. The CT’s stock-in-trade was true treble resolutionas distinguished from the false detail of many above-average tweeters that are dogged by material colorations. Thus, piano transients and macro-dynamics were potent and aggressive in the way a grand piano is meant to be aggressive under a heavy hand, yet never veered into hard steely territory.And soundboard harmonics rose into the listening space as if borne aloft on cushions of air. In the CT we have the rare tweeter that places its attentionsquarely on the music without drawing any attention to itself.

The Treo has such an expressively wide color palette and fine resolution of timbral contrasts that it almost seemed constrained within the musicallynarrow confines of a typical, studio-sired rock production. In fact, the more musical complexity I threw at the Treo CT, the happier it seemed to be.Whether I was listening to a brass ensemble, or a classical chamber group, or a percussion section, each note was unique in time, fully differentiated inmicro-information. The Treo was equally sensitive to the resonances of string instruments, easily distinguishing the unique accents of violin or viola, orthe scale of different guitars from auditorium-size dreadnoughts to smaller parlor instruments.

As I listened to Copland’s majestic Fanfare For the Common Man, I encountered bass response that excelled in pitch definition and tunefulness. Althoughthe raw dynamic energy and extension of the percussion section’s timpani and bass drum didn’t leave craters in my listening room (see the Quatro WoodCT for that), the Treo CT performed without port noise, chuffing, or the sensation of overhanging notes clinging to the fundamental as if trying to catch upwith a performance that had already moved on. During tracks from Appalachian Journey, cello and bass viol consistently exhibited a fine body of warmthand detail, though to my ear they did not quite fully ripen with the weight and resonance I know this recording has in abundance. As I’ve mentioned, theVandersteen, while touching on the bottom octave, begins to run short of breath in the lower-30Hz range.

Throughout this evaluation there was one trait that, like an addiction, continually fueled my excitement for the Treo CT. It was the speaker’s of-a-piececoherence. This is not always a given in the high end. Many multiple-driver loudspeakers—primarily designs with three or more transducers—fail tospeak with one voice. Instead, the listener can identify each driver as it jockeys for prominence up and down the front baffle. In contrast, the Treo CT waslike a top-drawer two-way compact—a segment long celebrated for its ability to reveal three-dimensional space while remaining invisible as a soundsource. Similarly, the Treo CT (far better proportioned across the frequency spectrum than a two-way) projected a vast image of the legendary ChicagoSymphony Orchestra performing the Beethoven Ninth. Its spread across the soundstage was replete with height cues that reached well above thespeaker, and depth cues that drew my eye to the back wall of the hall each time the percussion section lit up and the vast chorus rose in intensity. Muchof the credit for this level of spatial precision is certainly owed to Vandersteen’s time-and-phase-correct philosophy, but it’s also due to the inert cabinetand well-controlled port. You don’t need the classic “knuckle rap” test to determine that the Treo’s cabinet doesn’t appear to be a source of(mis-)information. You just need to listen to Dick Hyman’s “Moonglow” (From the Age of Swing on Reference Recordings) to hear how each instrumentrings true, utterly free from the common cabinet-borne colorations encountered in lesser designs. Piano, brass, random bass lines, lone ride-cymbal…each instrument seemed physically engraved into the soundspace.

Vandersteen Audio Treo CT Loudspeaker

There is a visual analogy that further describes my experience with the Treo CT. It reproduced the panorama of symphonic music with the kind of deepcolor, dimensional presence, and soundstage continuity of classic widescreen films. It did so with an edge-to-edge, corner-to-corner imaging precisionthat few loudspeakers at any price have achieved in my room. It cleanly defined and delineated player after player, elbow to elbow within each section ofthe orchestra, as if they were being photographed through a lens of unparalleled clarity and infinite depth of focus. It balanced the dual imperatives of

image and ambience in much the same naturalistic manner that (I think) is still unique to film. Compared with the slightly cooler, harder, edge-enhancedsuper-reality that often defines digital technology, the Treo CT conveyed a more fluid and realistic representation of the symphonic experience in a realhall. Not softer in resolution, but more attached to the air and atmosphere of its surrounding environment.

Even though I think the Treo CT’s charms were more fully appreciated in the classical and acoustic arena, the speaker, without question, provided ahighly satisfying pop/rock experience. As I listened to the opening bass and drum groove of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” there was a rewarding sense ofunalloyed midbass punch, drum fills, and concussive forward-leaning drive that was riveting. As penetrating and electrifying as another personal favorite,the similarly scaled Wilson Sabrina? No, not quite, but competitively close and less costly. Sabrina, of course, has other charms not the least of which isgreater low-end extension and dynamic output, but for overall transparency and resolution these rivals share more similarities than differences. The lastpop track I played on the Treo CT prior to submitting this review actually turned into a double farewell. That morning I learned of David Bowie’s deathfrom cancer at the age of 69. I thought it was fitting that I should see him and the Treos off by playing one of my favorite LP remixes, “Let’s Dance” [EMI].The Vandersteens seemed to rise to the occasion, digging deep into the heavy dance groove, launching wave upon wave of kick-drum pulses, drivingStevie Ray Vaughan’s searing guitar solo through the air, handily reproducing the screaming saxophone work and, above all, Bowie’s sly, richly resonantvocal, sensually massaging a lyric so very much about being alive and in love.

When all is said and done, there are speakers we’ve all encountered that, however admirable, are more about quantifying information than reproducing amoving, organic musical event. They might sound lively for a spell, but they lack the heartbeat of musicality. It’s a rookie mistake that only years ofexperience can ameliorate. Vandersteen Audio, however, is an old-guard veteran, and it shows. It takes just one listen to the Treo CT to recognize thatyou’re in the presence of a speaker that superbly balances these twin essentials, but never loses sight of where its loyalties lie. In my view, you cannotget a more purely musical loudspeaker in this price range than the Treo CT. A true delight.

SPECS & PRICINGType: Four-way, bass reflex Driver complement: 1" tweeter, 4.5" mid, 6.5" mid/bass, 8" woofer Frequency response: 36Hz–30kHz Nominal impedance: 7 ohms (4 ohms) Sensitivity: 86dB Dimensions: 10" x 43" x 15" Weight: 80 lbs. Price: $7990

VANDERSTEEN AUDIO 116 West Fourth St. Hanford, CA 93230 (559) 582-0324 vandersteen.com(http://vandersteen.com)  

Associated Equipment Sota Cosmos Series IV turntable; SME V tonearm; Sumiko Palo Santos cartridge, Ortofon Quintet Black, Ortofon 2M Black; Parasound JC 3+; EsotericK-03X; Lumin A1/L1 Music Player; Synology NAS; MacBook Pro/Pure Music; Cables: Synergistic Research Atmosphere Level 4, WyWires Platinum,Nordost Frey 2 & Audience Ohno; Power Cords: Audience Au24SE & Kimber Palladian power cords. Accessories: Audience USB, AudioQuest Carbonfirewire; VooDoo Cable Iso-Pod

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