All of the T&T speakers are built using MDF cabinets. However, it’s a bit more complicated than that. The Joy has started to use an HDF baffle, a mixed materials approach that is not dissimilar to Wilson’s application of specific materials for specific functions. Don’t be surprised if that spreads to the Nel and Nora too. Inside the cabinet, the walls are braced with birch ply: not the standard circumferential braces used by so many manufacturers, but ‘pads’ added to stiffen and damp the cabinet walls at strategic points. In conjunction with bituminous pads, this gives T&T the ability to manage or tune the behaviour of the cabinet.
All of the T&T speakers are reflex loaded and, once again, the approach is consistent across all three models, with a large diameter downward firing port. In the case of the Joy, a secondary base plate provides a chamber below the port that is vented sideways by a pair of slot ports. The linearity of the speakers’ bottom ends speaks volumes about the care that’s been expended on the porting for each cabinet. Listen and you’ll swear that these speakers are sealed box designs, the low-frequencies are so clean and extended. Yet at the same time they have the life and energy of the best, ported designs. Which brings us back to that discussion about energy and even energy distribution. It’s an interesting distinction, but by thinking in terms of energy, rather than level for instance, the equation embraces both the electrical and the mechanical, the behaviour of both the drivers and crossover and the cabinet that encloses them. The sophistication of that perspective is immediately apparent in the speakers’ musical coherence and communicative qualities. It’s equally apparent in their response to input, just how audible they make changes in set up or system. One of the Nels will be arriving for review in the not too distant future. It needs to be run in before despatch, another nicety that escapes many manufacturers. But in the same way that the (literally) single-minded approach at T&T provides a clear sense of focus and direction, working in the real world with real customers brings home what really matters when it comes to really delivering. The thinking and theory behind the speakers ticks a lot of boxes. The attitude towards execution and implementation tick more besides. T&T might be a young company, but it’s definitely a company with something to say.
T&T Enceintes Acoustiques
61 Quai Maurice Barjon,
26500 Bourg-lès-Valence
- +33 (0) 4 81 66 10 43
- t-and-t-enceintesacoustiques.fr
