The Trilogy Audio Systems 995R Mono-bloc Amplifiers
By Roy Gregory
The UK is not the high-end audio power-house it once was. Once globally respected brands have gone the way of overseas ownership, mass market mediocrity or, all too often, simply gone under. When it comes to high-performance audio systems, the home market is dominated by expensive, imported brands, which monopolise dealers and magazines alike. In fact, with a very few exceptions, you could be forgiven for assuming that there are no companies producing high-end audio in the UK, Linn, Naim Audio and dCS representing a shrivelled ‘rump’ of former glories and what was once a globally influential industry…
But that is far from the whole story. Dig below the surface (and behind the reviews) and there are still companies pursuing genuinely high-end audio performance – even if they’re not doing it in the full glare of the media spotlight. The recently profiled Origin Live is one example < https://gy8.eu/blog/origin-story/> and Trilogy Audio Systems is another. Founded some 35-years ago, Trilogy amplifiers have quietly been in continuous development and production ever since, constantly refining and evolving a compact range of products to meet a whole range of audiophile budgets and expectations. Initially based firmly around tube technology and circuitry, there’s a refreshing absence of dogma here and, while tubes still feature where appropriate, the current range also includes solid-state and hybrid designs.
Choices are based on engineering efficacy and musical results, rather than whether the product generates a rosy glow – or conforms to some predetermined proportions. Given that designer Nic Poulson is by training and profession, a one-time member of the BBC’s Sound Department, that’s hardly surprising. There are few institutions quite as conservative (with a small ‘c’) as the BBC – or quite as innovative. It’s a strange, possibly unique, environment in which advances and change are underpinned by healthy scepticism and sound engineering.
Translated to the free-market, it’s a pragmatic approach that has had a direct and clearly visible impact on the Trilogy Audio products, inside and out. Taken individually, each Trilogy unit is exactly that – individual. Considering that each unit is built to purpose, with proportions, presentation and operation to suit, there’s an astonishing aesthetic continuity right across the range. Trilogy might not offer the identikit, ‘cookie-cutter’ consistency of a brand like CH, but their aesthetic DNA is, in its own way, just as strong. A Trilogy product, any Trilogy product is, unmistakably, just that, the carefully sculpted casework making them amongst the most recognisable (and arguably stylish) offerings on the market. Yet if the aesthetics on the outside depend on clear, common themes, the circuits on the inside are, as already noted, remarkably varied, employing whatever approach, components and technology the company feels is most appropriate to each, individual situation.
