V is for Value: Reviewing the Vanatoo T1E Speakers

When the Vanatoo Transparent One active speakers were released, they made quite an impression on Jack Roberts. In fact, he called them “a breakthrough in small powered speakers” in his review here. He’s also spoken very highly of the Transparent One’s smaller sibling, the Transparent Zero.  

This always interested me since Jack is fairly well known for leaning hard into high-end tube and vinyl systems.  In fact, let’s not mince words. I’ve heard life and magic from Jack’s impressive but modest system that few other systems I have heard have been able to match. So when I got the opportunity to review the new Vanatoo Transparent One Encore (T1E) speakers, I absolutely didn’t want to pass it up.

Vanatoo and Value

If you are not familiar with Vanatoo, it was a dream project two Pacific Northwest-based engineers made a reality. Gary Gesellchen and Rick Kernen both have extensive professional and personal audio engineering credentials and knowledge. These guys are not just home tinkerers who were lucky enough to stumble across something.  It is clear that experience, thought, and math, probably a lot of math, went into the design of such unique speakers. That being said, The T1Es are also a lot of sound and gear for $599 USD!

In fact, while thinking over possible critiques, I kept comparing the T1Es to audio systems 5 or 10 times their price. I kept mulling it over in my head and tried to locate the border between my personal biases versus valid critiques. I won’t get into those details now, but it is telling to me that I had to make such a price leap to find other systems I’m familiar with for comparison.

I use the word ‘systems’ because the T1Es, like the T1s and T0s, are active speakers. They eliminate the need for a pre-amp, an amplifier, speaker cables and interconnects. In fact, with the Bluetooth connection, these nearly eliminate the need for a head source if you already have a modern smartphone.  So you can understand why my price comparisons advance upwards so quickly. I’m not trying to be hyperbolic.

Details and Advanced Features

A modern speaker system, the Vanatoo Transparent One Encores offer all of the connections one would expect, ranging from wireless Bluetooth, coax, USB, Toslink optical, and analog. It can be linked to a subwoofer with crossover points at 125Hz and 80Hz. Besides the volume control, there are also bass and treble adjustments on the back, and you can use a remote to adjust everything as well.  

The T1E passive speaker is connected to the active speaker via a 3-pin screw down cable.  The whole system is very easy to set up, and you can have it running within minutes of unpacking.

There are also a few unseen advanced features of the T1E speakers. The speakers can be flip-flopped, as in, you don’t have to always have the active speaker on the right or the left. It can be on either side, and the stereo can be switched. There is also a mono setting, although I didn’t test it for this review.  If you want to take just the single active speaker out somewhere, both stereo channels can be played through it by merging into mono.

More interestingly there are also ‘shelved’ and ‘flat’ configurations depending on how the speakers are set up. For example, the shelved configuration is intended for using the speakers as desktop monitors or near a wall.  The flat configuration is for a more traditional audiophile setup where the speakers are placed away from the wall, two feet or more is recommended for this setting. This setting also drops the subwoofer crossover down to 80Hz. You can even adjust the intensity of the LED on the front panel, with an option to completely turn it off. There are also a ton of personalization options.

The TE1 utilizes as 96K at 24 bits DAC from D2Audio, which is now part of Intersil. In fact, the amplifiers and DSP are also part of a common chip from D2Audio as well. The previous model T1 also used D2Audio components, and the T1E uses a slightly different part from D2Audio but effectively the same the logical guts of both systems are the same.

Amplification and Volume

The T1E uses four direct digital Class-D amplifiers, one each to drive the four active speakers of the system. Each 6.5-inch custom designed aluminum speaker is powered by 100 Watts, and the tweeter is powered by 20 Watts. A 6.5-inch passive radiator on the back of each speaker combines with the powered woofer to create Vanatoo’s ClearBass and XBL technologies.

Vanatoo says that this trifecta of an active woofer, passive radiator and DSP processing delivers deep and clean bass that doesn’t fall back on boosting upper low range to ‘fake’ a deep low-end sound that the speakers don’t naturally produce. Vanatoo also says that the T1E speakers reach further into the low range than comparable speakers of their size and price. I don’t doubt them.

Not to be forgotten, the tweeter is a 1-inch aluminum dome with polyester surround and uses a neo magnet with ferrofluid. Vanatoo picked this tweeter not only for the great sound, but also that it has a low enough resonance and distortion to cross over at 2,000 Hz. This makes it very difficult for the ear to find a seam between the tweeter and woofer. A very important thing when these speakers can be used as both near field monitors or setup in a more traditional fashion.

If you like to redline the volume knob and are concerned that the DSP system might compress or interfere with the bass at higher volumes, it is worth noting that Vanatoo enables the user to turn off the DSP limiter.  While at more normal and lower volumes, this DSP system helps to create a flatter low range frequency response, which can interfere with bass and power spikes when pushing the speakers to their volume limits.

Listening Notes

So how does all of this technology actually sound? Well, I’d say that Vanatoo absolutely has a winner with the T1E.  The bass performance immediately captured my attention. Jumping quickly from Paul Simon’s Graceland to the faster and harder Pantera album Cowboys from Hell, I was stunned by the speaker’s ability to retain control and clarity with Vinnie Paul’s blast beats. Not only were these clean and crisp, but those double kick drums sounded bigger and punchier than I have ever heard from speakers of this size.

After my fill of Pantera, I loaded up Tool’s first full-length release, Undertow. While this album is heavy in its own way, I was not aiming to hear if the T1E could handle even more speed, but rather how they would reproduce some of the resonance heard from the floor drums of Danny Carey. With larger and boxier speakers, the resonance can be lifelike, even if it is cabinet resonance, but I was curious how such fast little speakers would reproduce that.  To be expected, the resonance could be heard but it was not as engaging as the pure power of the kick drum attack.

After I had my fill of high torque metal, I kept my focus on the bass performance of the T1E. How would they handle the deep but smooth silky textures of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memory? Here they were stellar as well. In fact, the whole album retained its wonderful silky sound while vibrating my chest quite a bit.

Detailed, Open Mid-Range

This leads me to the mid-range of the T1E.  It is very detailed and open without being airy.  Sound staging was also very good for speakers of this size, but I’m not saying the speaker could reproduce some of the woody, paper sounds from reed wind instruments or the dryness of the raspy, older, Leonard Cohen voice. But let me be honest with you, I’m comparing these $600 overachievers to speaker systems many times their price, and I can’t think of a single speaker in their peer group that sounds as good.

So, big deal if they don’t reproduce reeds perfectly. And while the bass is amazing, no one is going to be fooled into thinking you have a drumset in your living room, either.  However, on a smoother mid-range vocalist like Jennifer Warns, the T1Es were engaging and emotional, and they were able to handle some of the larger dynamic shifts in tear-jerking and epic sweeping songs like Joan of Arc, of her Songs of Leonard Cohen album.  And while we are on that album, the Ballad of the Runaway Horse sounded spacious and enveloping, seating me down right in front of Warns with the band filling in their roles just as the flicker of fireflies, the sweet smell of the grass, and the scratch of crickets brings a warm autumn evening to life.  It almost had me reaching for some iron skillet fried baked beans.

Clean, Clear High-end

As for the high-end, it is also clear and clean without ever being harsh, fatiguing or glaring. Though it also had the similar trait of the mid-range, not reproducing the dry air sound or open mic sound of some recordings.  And this may be just a choice of Vanatoo. I’ve heard it argued that the ‘air’ sound from a system is ridiculous as there is no ‘air’ sound in real life. And while I would tend to agree with that, I also think that a quiet whisper doesn’t sound quite right if it doesn’t have that ‘air’ sound.

But here again, I feel I’m trying to compare the T1E speakers to speakers that are significantly more expensive.  It can’t be said enough, the Transparent One Encore speakers offer a lot for the money.

Wrapping It All Up

I suppose at this point it might be worth asking if I have any real critiques of the Transparent One Encore speakers. And I have two.  I don’t think the dynamics of the mid-range are on par with the stellar performance of the low-end. And while being good, my focus kept going back to the bass, which is very good. Now, this could be a fact of me using them as near field monitors next to my computer. If I had moved them into a larger room, or put them on stands, or placed them further from the wall (they were setting about a foot from the rear wall, about 3 feet from my ears and about 3 feet apart) things might be different.  But this is just what I observed over longer listening sessions.

Secondly, and this I will admit here I am off of the unbiased path with both feet into my own personal likes, the Class-D amplifiers sounded very similar to other Class-D amplifiers I have heard. This is great if you like that sound, but I personally find Class-A and tubes to be more emotionally engaging, at least for focused critical listening. So, take that with the grain of salt it deserves.

Overall I think Vanatoo has really knocked it out of the park with the Transparent One Encore speakers.  They have upped my own personal expectations of what a pair of $599 speakers can sound like. I suppose you could call them benchmark setters. The convenience with all of the inputs, their very smart and thoughtful engineering, and the ClearBase and XBL technologies that Vanatoo has introduced sound as good as the marketing material suggest. In fact, it is probably even better. If Gary and Rick ever put together a higher end version of these speakers, maybe with some ribbon tweeters and larger woofers, you can bet I’d be in line to give them a listen. Well done!