Trident Audio Developments coordinated with Harvey Gerst, Russ Alee, and Brent Casey to design and manufacture high definition studio monitors that are already making waves. The HG3 is a highly anticipated addition to the studio, as the endorsements below illustrate.
The Concept
Almost all studio monitors are flawed to some degree. Limited dispersion, bandwidth, Doppler distortion, phase distortion, inter-modulation distortion, room standing waves and reflections, cabinet resonance, edge diffractions, and a myriad of other problems plague traditional monitor designs. The unique cabinet configuration of the Trident HG3 Close Monitoring System is designed to reduce or eliminate most of those problems.
Bass Response
The use of a port can extend the usable response of a low frequency speaker, but below port resonance, the speaker becomes uncontrolled and will flap wildly in conventional ported systems. The Trident HG3 system eliminated this problem by using a controlled electronic roll-off below the speaker's usable response.
Separate sub woofers create additional problems by introducing phase cancellations at crossover, and exciting unwanted room nodes - eliminating the advantages of near field monitoring. Separate sub woofer box placement is a hit or miss proposition, guaranteed to cause problems in poorly treated rooms
Through the use of dual voice coil sub woofers (with over 1/2" of linear cone travel), in each speaker box, and optimal tuning, the response is extended smoothly to below 35 Hz in a very small enclosure. Each sub woofer has its own 140 Watt dual MOS amplifier to insure clean, distortion free power. Further, the port is located outside the path of all active speaker components to insure freedom from Doppler distortion at very low frequencies. Below 90 Hz, the HG3 bass response is essentially omni-directional. From 90 Hz up to the crossover point of 320 Hz, the bass response narrows to about 180 degrees. Above 320 Hz, any large diameter speaker's dispersion narrows, and the frequency response becomes ragged and uneven. Not a good thing.
Midrange Response The most critical range in any monitor system is the midrange; that's where the voice resides, the bulk of the guitar's sound, and the overall detail of the music. It's confusing that some manufacturers would split the vocal range in the middle, and assign part of the vocal to the woofer, and the other part of the critical vocal range to another speaker. It just doesn't make sense. Part of the vocal is being modulated by pumping bass, and the other part is bouncing off the ends of the cabinet, creating edge diffractions. The result is smeared midrange, bad stereo imaging, and poor off axis response. The Trident HG3 uses crossover points set at 320 Hz and 3,500 Hz to eliminate those problems. The unique cabinet design takes care of the rest.
The Cylinder
The midrange speaker is mounted in an isolated, 6" diameter, damped, inert cylinder, with a 1/2" closed-cell wall thickness, to eliminate edge diffractions and woofer interaction. The cylinder also houses the 1-1/8" silk dome tweeter, its crossover, plus the mid and tweeter level controls. A separate 80 Watt amplifier drives the cylinder mid and treble components. The unique rotating cylinder design lets the listener position the critical directional components exactly as needed, without having to move the main cabinet into a precarious balance position, regardless of the distance between cabinets. The electrical connections are made through the ends of the cylinder and can be turned in any direction, continuously, without damage. In fact, rotating the cylinder simply cleans the contacts.
The Amplifier
The Trident HG3 power amplifier section is made up of three identical 100 Watt MOS amplifier modules, noted for their low distortion, wide band width, and low noise levels. A unique "muting circuit" prevents thumps at turn on/off. Two modules are used to power the woofer section, and a separate module is used for the mids and highs. Overall Distortion is typically around 0.05% and the noise level is typically below -104 dB. A unique warning LED is built into the front panel of the Trident HG3 that changes from green to red as you begin to approach audible distortion levels (above 1%).
Three sets of inputs allow for both Balanced (XLR and TRS) and unbalanced (TS and RCA) connections. The dual-color LED on the front of the cabinet shows both power on (Green) and distortion (Red).
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