Todd's AG Trio G3 System -- it's about time

[sbnx]

Ohhhh noooooo. please don't derail us.

 

[sbnx]

I don't think digital vs. analog would change his mind on whether he was going to buy AG Trios. If he does analog at home then when he gets the speakers home with his Ongaku electronics then he is going to enjoy it even more.

Knowing what I know about analog (which isn't much BTW) I would be concerned at a demo where analog was the source as not only do I have to worry about the setup of the speakers but I would then also have to worry about how well the TT is setup.

Totally agree about the respect. Very few people go to the lengths that Uwiik went to in the exploration process to find out if the AG trio is the right speaker for him. It is a sizable investment and I think anyone serious should try to follow his example. However, a problem may arise in finding a dealer who is willing to jump through the hoops his dealer did.

 

[exupgh12]

Congratulations, you have chosen wonderfully.

 

[Salectric]

….there are several brands now that utilize pure silver: Siltech, Crystal and Argento just to name a few.

There are lots of companies offering interconnects of pure silver, but one of my favorites is hardly ever mentioned on WBF—-Audio Note UK. How about a 5m pair of SOOTTO cables? Or at a more affordable price how about Sogon?

 

[Kozak170]

Big update!!

Spent I don’t know how long in the dealer….I opened the can of worm and tried CH L10 + iTron, still prefer G70+iTron and everyone else in the room (4 other people). They can make more money if I got hooked to CH L10 but they told me their honest opinion that G70 beat the CH L10 (in this particular setup mind you), so it’s a valid opinion.
View attachment 116790
View attachment 116795

Then I insisted that I want to spend the time to re layout and re set the whole G3 setup, moved the basshorns vertically and put these beside the Trio (just like how Todd had it setup), setup the azimuth, tweeter plane, listening distance and everything else, took a few hours to do just that.

View attachment 116791

Just like I expected suddenly everything sounded at least 50% better, tweeter is much more controlled and bass is way beter with both CH L10 + iTron and G70 + iTron, but again me and everyone else still prefer G70 + iTron for wider staging, much more controlled bass, way better sound separations and much much better high.

View attachment 116792

Then we installed the G70 + Ongaku again, still with crazy salad of wires, very very long RCA interconnect, but using Siltech Double Crown power cable….. we were all in heaven…We tested audiophile recording, mediocre recording, trance music, Ed Sheeran, even Norah Jones’ “Come Away With Me” which is one of the most crapiest recording ever constantly bleeding my ears were very acceptable, we were all in heaven doesn’t matter about the quality of the recording. Even the dealer said that this is the best sound he ever heard and he can actually make much more money if he said otherwise. Me myself knew that this is it, this is my endgame system and I fell in love all over again with my Ongaku….

View attachment 116794

I have made my decision, no iTron, yes to basshorns in one swift purchase, G70 + Ongaku, Taiko, Siltech Double Crown + Triple crown throughout, Torus AVR. Now I just need to know what the number comes to, maybe I can swing it this year, maybe I have to wait a bit more, but I don’t think I will change my mind again. I have made it clear to my wife that she has to settle with Boston GP, no Steinway this year, she is lucky she is not getting Casio keyboard.

Thanks for all positive comments and I don’t want to hijack @sbnx thread any further unless we can put this as a sticky for official Trio G3 thread. This is awesome and I am beyond happy finally finding my end game. If only this happened sooner before I spent $500.000 plus on constantly changing and replacing gears….it was damn ridiculous…

Congratulations, that copper color of the Space Horns and the sexy orange color of the main Horns are a match in heaven.
Personally, for passive mode I'd very much like to know if the new trios can be driven with lower power SETs that do not use any negative feedback and are also designed to match for efficient horns(Thomas Mayer,Viva,Kondo,Misho Myronov). If so, you can use Kondo's 2a3s like Souga instead of the 211s. And increase the level of musicality on trios.

 

[Elliot G.]

Congratulations to both of you on your purchases and yoour work. Audio , great audio is as much work as it purchasing. Putting in the effort, getting the right help, learning to do the little things right after you did the big things right and fine tuning are all required and necessary to get to the "promised land" All the steps need to be completed to get there. I would love someday to actually hear this system sound the way you guys are describing it. My experience with them has been not good to be 100 percent honest. I am however a believer that shows and most dealer showrooms only show an incling of whats possible and so I take this all with a grain of salt. I think there are a lot of amazing products out there and they "all" take a lot of time and patience to get them to work to their potential. I again say congratulations since i know how hard the journey can be and how frustrated many get on the way. I have heard a lot of really expensive mediocre sounding and very few really amazing systems.
Enjoy the music both of you!
Great thread without the usual sidetracks!!!!

 

[Kozak170]

I have tried so many different cable, IMO nothing comes close to Siltech especially the double crown / triple crown level…. Never tried Odin 2 thought, gaining a lot of followers these Odin lately…

Have you had any experience with Sablon Audio cables and compared them with Siltech?

 

[LL21]

Have you had any experience with Sablon Audio cables and compared them with Siltech?

Just to jump in, we do own Sablon Prince (Orange fuse) and have compared with Siltech Triple Crown. (BTW, Sablon Prince is NOT their flagship. Their flagship is King but we cannot use the King's Bocchino outlet in the UK, only the Bocchino IEC inlet...) Not to mention Sablon Lanedri...

...that said, I found that on massed strings, the Siltech Triple Crown demonstrated better resolve...down to the roisin of the strings...always naturally, effortlessly...better than the Prince. That much was clear to me and while not far apart, it was a distinct difference in favor of Siltech Triple Crown. Not everyone in the room seemed to care, so it was close, but I definitely liked it better. But...and here is a great but...otherwise, the balance, tonal purity, dynamic scale...were extraordinarily close in our system. That was quite a wonderful surprise to me.

Now for the money? I kindly returned the Siltech Triple Crown with thanks...and suspect the King let alone the Lanedri might well have gotten there or surpassed it. The Siltech Triple Crown is $27K here...vs a very small fraction of that for Sablon Prince which costs something like $3,250.

 

[Uwiik]

If so, you can use Kondo's 2a3s like Souga instead of the 211s. And increase the level of musicality on trios.

Ooooohhhhh please

I can’t say I didn’t think about that since G3 is 109db…Let’s stop now

 

[Uwiik]

Have you had any experience with Sablon Audio cables and compared them with Siltech?

Never, I know Sablon has been mentioned many times as being a really good silver cable without breaking the bank….There is no distro here so I have to buy direct if I want to give it a try, I actually exchanged messages with Sablon a couple of years ago but I suddenly lost motivation at that time due to my parents health crisis. Cable still that far down on my priority list right now because I still have quite a few spare Siltech laying around unused (not the DC/TC) and a couple of Shunyata top line cables still unused too, I know I must buy new much longer cables, I’ll get there once everything is set in regards of the speaker set.

 

[Uwiik]

Congratulations to both of you on your purchases and yoour work. Audio , great audio is as much work as it purchasing. Putting in the effort, getting the right help, learning to do the little things right after you did the big things right and fine tuning are all required and necessary to get to the "promised land" All the steps need to be completed to get there. I would love someday to actually hear this system sound the way you guys are describing it. My experience with them has been not good to be 100 percent honest. I am however a believer that shows and most dealer showrooms only show an incling of whats possible and so I take this all with a grain of salt. I think there are a lot of amazing products out there and they "all" take a lot of time and patience to get them to work to their potential. I again say congratulations since i know how hard the journey can be and how frustrated many get on the way. I have heard a lot of really expensive mediocre sounding and very few really amazing systems.
Enjoy the music both of you!
Great thread without the usual sidetracks!!!!

With my limited experience, I never liked AG horns before the Trio G3, in my opinion WVL horns are much better than all the previous AG before the Trio G3.

 

[Uwiik]

Just to jump in, we do own Sablon Prince (Orange fuse) and have compared with Siltech Triple Crown. (BTW, Sablon Prince is NOT their flagship. Their flagship is King but we cannot use the King's Bocchino outlet in the UK, only the Bocchino IEC inlet...) Not to mention Sablon Lanedri...

...that said, I found that on massed strings, the Siltech Triple Crown demonstrated better resolve...down to the roisin of the strings...always naturally, effortlessly...better than the Prince. That much was clear to me and while not far apart, it was a distinct difference in favor of Siltech Triple Crown. Not everyone in the room seemed to care, so it was close, but I definitely liked it better. But...and here is a great but...otherwise, the balance, tonal purity, dynamic scale...were extraordinarily close in our system. That was quite a wonderful surprise to me.

Now for the money? I kindly returned the Siltech Triple Crown with thanks...and suspect the King let alone the Lanedri might well have gotten there or surpassed it. The Siltech Triple Crown is $27K here...vs a very small fraction of that for Sablon Prince which costs something like $3,250.

I happen to be very frugal when buying Siltech cable at that price level, I never buy pre owned equipments but I do with cables. Friends, Audiogon and US Audio Mart are my go to source…but yes you are right and thank you very much for reminding me about Sablon cables…just the other night my wife screamed in disbelief when she peeked through the corner of her eyes and saw my iPad screen showing the price of Siltech…and to be totally honest I was a bit (very) scared too imagining that this time with G3 I will need very long cables and nobody in the world sells pre owned DC/TC Siltech cables in more than 2 meter length….The way Siltech price their cable in 100% price multiplication on each additional meter is really really scary….

 

[Ron Resnick]

I must buy new much longer cables

What is your interconnect length?

 

[Uwiik]

What is your interconnect length?

In the new room I will need a pair of 8 m RCA for my analog, a pair of 5 m RCA, a pair of 6 m power cable and a pair of 4 m speaker cable if I want to make everything looks neat and tidy. My new room is not that much bigger than my old room at only 7 x 6 m, but G3 plugs and terminals are positioned high in awkward angle and must be routed through the specific opening thus needing much longer cables than necessary if I do not want to end up with spaghetti looking cable arrangement. All Siltech DC/TC are so thick and very very stiff, not exactly friendly to awkward angles.

After a quick memory refresh last night, I realized that going Siltech DC/TC level would cost me more than the Trio G3+passive+basshorns+iTron and there is no way I could swing that without making my family absolutely hates me… no no no…..

Now I wonder how much @sbnx spent on his Odin2 cables…. Must be a lot considering how big his room is.

 

[Hear Here]

In the new room I will need a pair of 8 m RCA for my analog, a pair of 5 m RCA, a pair of 6 m power cable and a pair of 4 m speaker cable if I want to make everything looks neat and tidy. My new room is not that much bigger than my old room at only 7 x 6 m, but G3 plugs and terminals are positioned high in awkward angle and must be routed through the specific opening thus needing much longer cables than necessary if I do not want to end up with spaghetti looking cable arrangement. All Siltech DC/TC are so thick and very very stiff, not exactly friendly to awkward angles.

After a quick memory refresh last night, I realized that going Siltech DC/TC level would cost me more than the Trio G3+passive+basshorns+iTron and there is no way I could swing that without making my family absolutely hates me… no no no…..

Now I wonder how much @sbnx spent on his Odin2 cables…. Must be a lot considering how big his room is.

It's a pity you can't use balanced XLR interconnects as these can be less costly than RCA as losses are far lower.

I use Duelund speaker cables on my Avantgarde speakers after a recommendation from you know who - the Avantgarde tuning expert! Much more flexible, so easy to route unobtrusively and not too costly. I switched from silver to this cable. May be worth trying this before you commit to mega-bucks cables.

Duelund Dual DCA12GA tinned copper multistrand wire in cotton and oil | HIFICollective

Duelund Dual DCA12GA tinned copper multistrand wire in cotton and oil

www.hificollective.co.uk

 

[Uwiik]

It's a pity you can't use balanced XLR interconnects as these can be less costly than RCA as losses are far lower.

I use Duelund speaker cables on my Avantgarde speakers after a recommendation from the expert! Much more flexible, so easy to route unobtrusively and not too costly. I switched from silver to this cable. May be worth trying this before you commit to mega-bucks cables.

Duelund Dual DCA12GA tinned copper multistrand wire in cotton and oil | HIFICollective

Duelund Dual DCA12GA tinned copper multistrand wire in cotton and oil

www.hificollective.co.uk

It’s one thing that sometimes cross my mind…my inability to use XLR, but I’ve done multiple back to back test between RCA and XLR on long run interconnect and I never think that I lost a lot if any, at least judged by my tinnitus ear..

I use Duelund cables on my car audio for long run RCA interconnect and long run speaker cables and I love it…Can be hard on ear during break in but always settles down nicely after with very natural and revealing sound. What do you think about Duelund in comparison to the top line Sablon?

And no, after realizing how much it would cost me to get Siltech for the G3 I changed my mind. Like I said, it is just impossible to get pre owned DC/TC at the length that I need. I already have quite a few DC/TC level cables along the lines and I know for experience that two TC level cables is not two times better than one TC level cable on any complete system.

 

[Uwiik]

Never, I know Sablon has been mentioned many times as being a really good silver cable without breaking the bank….There is no distro here so I have to buy direct if I want to give it a try, I actually exchanged messages with Sablon a couple of years ago but I suddenly lost motivation at that time due to my parents health crisis. Cable still that far down on my priority list right now because I still have quite a few spare Siltech laying around unused (not the DC/TC) and a couple of Shunyata top line cables still unused too, I know I must buy new much longer cables, I’ll get there once everything is set in regards of the speaker set.

need to edit my statement. I was confused between Sablon cables and Zenwave cables… few years ago I was inquiring about Zenwave as a possible alternative for oh so expensive Siltech DC/TC….At that time Sablon Audio main attention from this forum was the LAN cable, everybody talks about it and Zenwave was touted as the next best thing without breaking the bank when it comes to silver cable.

 

[Kozak170]

Just to jump in, we do own Sablon Prince (Orange fuse) and have compared with Siltech Triple Crown. (BTW, Sablon Prince is NOT their flagship. Their flagship is King but we cannot use the King's Bocchino outlet in the UK, only the Bocchino IEC inlet...) Not to mention Sablon Lanedri...

...that said, I found that on massed strings, the Siltech Triple Crown demonstrated better resolve...down to the roisin of the strings...always naturally, effortlessly...better than the Prince. That much was clear to me and while not far apart, it was a distinct difference in favor of Siltech Triple Crown. Not everyone in the room seemed to care, so it was close, but I definitely liked it better. But...and here is a great but...otherwise, the balance, tonal purity, dynamic scale...were extraordinarily close in our system. That was quite a wonderful surprise to me.

Now for the money? I kindly returned the Siltech Triple Crown with thanks...and suspect the King let alone the Lanedri might well have gotten there or surpassed it. The Siltech Triple Crown is $27K here...vs a very small fraction of that for Sablon Prince which costs something like $3,250.

Did you have the latest version of Prince PC with Palladium over silver plated IEC?
Palladium seems to have made considerable progress over silver. Me too, can't go for king series, we have Schuko outlet.

 

[Hear Here]

What do you think about Duelund in comparison to the top line Sablon?

I'm sorry but I've never even considered, let alone tried these crazy-priced cables! Every few years I'm persuaded to try this or that cable and as a result I have a bundle of mid-priced speaker cables. My most recent change was from solid silver Cabledyne Reference cables to Duelund tinned copper 12 gauge ones. After many days of "running in" I truly find myself at a loss as to which I prefer. When I invite other audiophiles with perhaps more critical ears than my own, we are again unable to differentiate any difference in sound.

Avantgarde speakers must be some of the most critical to set up for best sound (and with the greatest rewards when done so), but they are also just about the easiest speakers to drive. Being 107 (my own speakers) to 109 dB and presenting a comfortable 18 ohm load, just about any amplifier will be happy to power them.

A suggestion perhaps regarding speaker cables now you've found a friendly AG dealer - buy some Duelunds, run them in for long enough that any rough edges are lost, then take them to your friendly dealer and compare your Duelunds with the no doubt very costly ones he uses to demo his speakers. My guess is that you'll be hard pressed to be convinced that another deep dip into your pocket will be justified!

But I'd be happy to be proved wrong. Well, not happy as I'd have to reassess my own cable inventory!

 

[sbnx]

@Uwiik, Why are you thinking you are going to need long sets of interconnects? This would only be the case if you were going with the iTron. Your Ongaku would likely be sitting in the same place as it is with your current speakers. You will need to run a pair of speaker cables over to the trio. Your current speaker cables may may not be long enough as the speaker terminals are about 3.5' off the ground. Then you will need to run a cable to the spacehorn. There are two ways to do this. You can run a speaker cable from the Trio over to the spacehorn. Or you can run another interconnect from the preamp over to the spacehorn. I don't know which way your dealer demo'd this for you.

One of the cables I very, very strongly considered was the ChordMusic by the Chord Company. This cable is very good. It is a very "quiet" cable with outstanding timing performance. The SarumT is the level below the ChordMuisc and it does the 90% of the timing of the ChordMusic but is not nearly as "quiet" sounding.

A friend of mine in Houston compared the ChordMusic to the Odin2 and bought the ChordMusic as he liked it better and it was much less money.

I have not listened to the duelund so I can not comment on it. If Jim likes it then I am sure it is good.