"Anyone Up For A Fight?"
The Danes were conquerors.
And that trait has flowed all the way down to Gryphon products. Pit them against anything out there and frankly, they usually win.
About The Pantheon Speakers
What first appears to be a relatively simple three-way slim floorstander, the Pantheon speaker is actully a significnt tour-de-force at it's pricepoint. There are many features we should cover here, to understand the significance of the design. First there is the phase alignment considerations througout, with the D'Appolito driver configuration and the converging rake angle of the two bass drivers, plus the constant phase crosoover too. And then crossover distortion is further minimised by the use of battery biassing of some of the capacitors (see Tech Insight). Next is the provision of individual baffles for each driver that massively reduces acoustic pollution between the drivers, special cone surrounds to reduce edge defraction and of course the use of the AMT for high frequency duty.
Tech Insight
The Pantheon speakers benefit from a piece of simple yet geneus thinking – a battery biassed crossover. This is how Gryphon explain it. "The crossover network is pre-biased by an 18V battery for constant charge to the electrolytic capacitors employed in impedance correction in order to eliminate crossover distortion at zero electric potential, resulting in audibly enhanced stability and substantial gains in body, timbral colour and image coherence. Operating the battery-biased crossover in “Class A” mode ensures a smoother, more richly detailed three-dimensional presentation."
Specifications
Reference three-way loudspeaker system
Constant Phase crossover for perfect phase at all frequencies at all times
System response 25 – 27,000 Hz, -3 dB
Sensitivity 90dB
Nominal Impedance 4Ω
Crossover Frequencies 250Hz and 2.5kHz
Hand-adjusted passive crossover network
Battery-powered bias for selected crossover capacitors
Ultra-fast Air Motion Transformer tweeter with low-mass pleated metal diaphragm
Customised, extensively modified Danish 8” bass and 5” midrange drive units
Mechanically independent baffles for each driver
Special cone surround termination to eliminate edge reflections
Symmetrical vertical driver array for ideal point source presentation
Dual Gryphon 8″ bass drivers for extreme speed and precision with massive, controlled air displacement
Triple-magnet bass/midrange driver motor system for maximum force and precise focus
Ported enclosures with extensive internal bracing
Combination of pure wool and synthetic interior damping materials
Stylish string grille for driver protection
Gryphon internal wiring
Virtually unlimited custom finish options
Dimensions, each, (WxHxD cm) 39x148x69
Weight, each, 122kg
Matching & Setup
There is much talk with speakers about firing them straight down the listening room or direct at the listening position. Toeing speakers out is often about taiming over-bright tweeters – something that's never an issue with the Pantheon's AMTs – or it's a way of covering up poor crossover design, driver integration, baffle construction and so-on. But with the Pantheon we have a product that is properly designed for accurate reproduction without any of those limiting failings. So when the rest of the system is good, we find you can experiment with positioning and toe-in to end up with a much more 'direct at you' positioning. Then, the efforts to retain linear phase, minimise crossover errors, reduce baffle intraction all result in a spectacularly accurate listening experience that comes from a great point-source, combined with such minimal phase error that width, depth and image placement seem to be totally independent of the speakers.
These speakers can be driven effortlessly by any of the Gryphon amplifiers of course, but with amplifiers from other brands you should note the 4Ω impedance but slightly above average efficiency so a solid state amp of 60W plus with reasonable load tolerance should be a good match, or a good valve amp of say 40W with 4Ω taps can give great results too.