- $299 Pyramid
- compact "pyramid" design
- 30W maximum power
- boosts midrange/voiceover frequencies
Audio Post mixers, sound designers, and producers have called them Alt Speakers, Alternate Speakers, B Speakers Television Speakers, Auratones, and Crap Speakers. These are a class of studio "monitors" that are believed, by some, to represent how program mixes sound "in the real world."
There is hope in resolving the issue of a B-speaker being "too good" on one hand, or "not good enough" as to be useful on the other. That hope is Triple Designs' Pyramid loudspeaker (www.triplepdesigns.com). The Pyramid speaker is specifically designed to walk that fine line - and it does so well. The Pyramid stands seven inches by almost eight inches wide and is six-and-a-half inches deep. Strictly speaking, they are not pyramids, but still have a sleek profile and would visually fit into any studio setting.
For the purposes for this review, I bought a Samson Servo 120 amplifier to power the speakers. For my TV mixes, I prefer to use a single B-speaker, so I flipped the bridging switch on the amp which yields an 8 Ohm impedance that outputs up to 150 watts - which is eight times greater than the stated power handling of the Pyramid (30 watts)! Paul Perett, the speaker's designer assured me that the Pyramid can, in fact, cope with that kind of power output from the amp, provided I trim back the amp's output controls.
The Pyramid operates fine with the Servo 120 amp.
While mixing in the studio, I found the Pyramids to be superior to the built-in speaker of my Sony PVM-20N6U video monitor. In fact, clients have told me, "Ahhh... I like these much better." Pyramids tend to boost the mid frequencies, making voiceovers and dialogue more present in mixes. This has a great calming effect with my clients who may get a bit nervous with my "music-aggressive" mixing style.
At $299 a pair, the Pyramids are possibly a bit expensive compared to the Radio Shack specials we may have lashed-up in our studios. But, if your looking for B-speakers that represent the "average" of most playback devices, then the Pyramids represent a good investment.