T H E     S O U N D

HP's Workshop
The Alón Trio System

IN RESEARCHING COMPONENTS of compact scale, if not cost, for our Small Systems issue (yet to come), I found, as if by serendipity, Carl Marchisotto's Petite speakers, a small two-way system of considerable musical authority. And these I used in compact space (such as my old office in Glen Cove) to my immense satisfaction.

I found it instructive to compare the Petites with Audiophysic's much more expensive but similarly diminutive Steps designed by Joachim Gerhard, priced at $1,795 a pair without stands. The Audiophysic speaker, with its clean, clean sound, sounded particularly happy with good solid-state gear, while the Alóns did not. With tubed gear, the situation reversed itself, to my bewilderment. The Alóns blossomed and took on a musical veracity very nearly shocking in such a small speaker, while the Steps sounded quite unhappily colored and strained at both frequency extremes, especially at the limits of its bass extension, or should I say, midbass extension. But with a solid-state device, like the Goldmund integrated amp, the Steps loomed at both frequency extremes and what it lacked in liquidity, it more than made up for in purity and ultra-low distortion.

Marchisotto used to be Jon Dahlquist's right-hand man and, as Dahlquist's own interest in design faded, Marchisotto increasingly became the man behind the Dahlquist product. There was, as there so often is in small idealistic High End companies (read between the lines here if you're in the mood for autobiography) great bitterness in the divorce proceedings. The result is that Marchisotto, with the able assistance of his wife Marilyn, started Alón.*

The entire Alón line has a certain consistent "signature" and it is a highly musical one, despite Marchisotto's dependence upon multiple driver arrays and complicated crossovers. What is remarkable, to me anyway, is how much the Petite system sounds like its bigger brothers.

Add to the Petites the woofer-Carl says "Do not call it a subwoofer," correctly noting that many a woofer are so called, but few really get down to the bottom octave (40 to 20 Hertz)-and you've got the new Trio system. That woofer has two 61/2" downward-facing drivers and extends the useful range of the Petites to the mid-40 Hz region, thus giving it a useful bass just about equal to that of the Sound Dynamics and of the Maggie 3.5's (in a room the Maggies like), although not of the same character. To my surprise, in Music Room 2, Marchisotto put the woofer system directly against the wall in the bay area of the room, which, given the acoustic characteristics of the bay, may have given the speaker a bit of hefty help in the lowest part of its range. Contrary to my presumptuous expectation, I could not hear the Trio's crossover from satellites to woofer It was that seamlessly handled. Nor could I hear any major box colorations from the less than sand-filled enclosure in which the dual woofers, one per channel, are installed. Nor could I hear any degradation of directional information from instruments playing fundamentals in the region below 80 Hz.

Quite the contrary, what we got in Room 2, with the Petites placed according to the Pearson Rule of Thirds, was a wide and expansive wall-to-wall soundstage that generated a field of considerable depth. In the dark, there was no point source effect at all. There was simply you and the night and the music.

If I had to ascribe a sonic characteristic to the speaker, I'd say it has a liquid sound, with perhaps the slightest weighting toward the bottom end of the spectrum. Like ordinary tubed amps, it sounds a bit rolled at the top. It is an unusually responsive speaker where dynamics are concerned. It has that quality some have described as "jump," so wide are the dynamic leaps it is able to make, given the right source material. The balance, octave-to-octave, as well as between highest and lowest notes, is so good that you are tooled into thinking you're hearing a much wider frequency spectrum than, indeed, you are. It also has a kind of midrange punch and transient authority rare in any speaker, a quality that lends it a sound that is surprising, both in its musicality and in its sheer thrill factor. But not, I'll note, with much solid-state gear. Like its designer, the Trio does not seem to have a high regard for solid-state. (Until now, I confess I've found it troubling that certain speakers- like Nudell's High End for Infinity and Genesis- whose auteurs use tubes in the design process, sometimes can sound actively unhappy with all but the most exceptional of transistorized designs.) So if these speakers interest you, go tubes. With tubes, their sound-field becomes bigger, the instruments they reproduce the more dimensional, and the dynamics more starkly contrasted and at the soft end of the contrast spectrum, more nuanced.

At its price point, it's silly to expect nuance at the frequency extremes. Balance is more important: that is, does the speaker sound deficient at either end of the spectrum? The Trio won't give you bloom or that sweet sensual airiness that comes at a high price. Nor will it shake the timbers (or whatever) of your living room. But if it misses a trick in the all important midrange, I don't know about it. I guess I don't have to tell you that these sound like far better speakers and they do all the basic stuff with a flair and imaginativeness you don't ordinarily find for anywhere near their modest price.

* I don't know how many of you have noticed the increasing number of husband and wife teams in the business, but if you start to count, you may be surprised. Consider for starters: Dave and Sheryl Lee Wilson, Steve McCormack and Joyce Reming, Harry and Sheila Weisfeld, Dan Fanny and Donna Wolverton, Joe and Carmela de Phillips.... remember, I said, for starters.

Designer: Carl Marchisotto. Manufacturer: Acarian Systems, Hunters Run, Suite 104, 181 Smithtown Blvd., Nesconset, NY 11767, (516) 265-9577. Price: $1,495.