Tekton Design Encore Monitor by Terry London

It’s been six years since I last reviewed a Tekton Design loudspeaker. Over the years, I’ve come to two conclusions about this brand. First, Eric Alexander, the founder of Tekton Design, is one of the most innovative minds in creating the illusion of live music in his loudspeakers. Secondly, Tekton Design loudspeakers, in terms of performance and build quality, are indeed some of the most excellent bargains available in today’s market. In my 2018 review of the Double Impact, which retailed for $3,000, I stated that the DIs outperformed my reference ($18K) Lawrence Audio Cello loudspeakers! Eric’s breakthrough was his proprietary circular multi-midrange array composed of seven drivers. Moreover, this circular array has 90% lower mass than a planar electrostatic, equating to tremendous transit speed and stop/go accuracy, virtually eliminating the smearing of leading edges of notes and micro-details. This mid-range array disperses a precisely focused acoustical power pattern, which leads to great veracity of overall dynamics and a sense of “aliveness” often associated with horn designs without the unpleasant colorations often found in horn-based designs.

The subject of this review is the newly introduced Tekton Design Encore Monitor, which I selected for last year’s Stereo Times “MOST WANTED COMPONENTS” list as my budget loudspeaker of the year. When I unpacked the Encore Monitors, I chuckled because they reminded me of a miniature version of the Moab speaker I reviewed in 2019. The Moabs are close to six feet tall and weigh 135 pounds. The Encore Monitors weigh 42 pounds; the dimensions are H 34.5″ by W 8.81″ by D 10.75.” Like their much bigger brother, the Moabs, they dual seven-driver midrange arrays (with a 30mm tweeter) used in a D’Appolito M-T-M design. All the drivers used in this configuration are Wavecor fabric domes. The ones used in the array measure 22 mm in diameter, and the center tweeter measures 30 mm. The flanking top/bottom 6″ pulp woofers are from SB Acoustics. The Encore Monitors frequency response is 40Hz to 30kHz. Its sensitivity is 92db 2.83V @ 1m and is a nominal 4 Ohm load. Around the back is one port and a pair of high-quality Cardas brass speaker wire terminals. The physical appearance of the demo pair of the Encore Monitors was exceedingly beautiful because of its sleek form factor and highly polished gloss black piano lacquer finish. My spouse is a piano instructor, and she recently had a recital that used a Steinway Spirio grand piano, a $240,000 model. The Encore Monitor’s finish looked precisely the same in the density of its color and its perfect mirror finish as the Steinway piano!

I put the Encore Monitor speakers in my upstairs system, a smaller acoustic space, before going into my huge listening space, where I review larger floor-standing models. They were located four feet off the front wall, with slight toe-in, and six feet apart from the inside of their cabinets. The central experimentation was the height to get the tweeter to produce the optimum details and air in the high frequencies and blend perfectly with the upper mid-range. You get superlative results if you sit approximately four inches above or below the tweeter. In my room, the stands I used were fourteen inches high.

With my first selection, “The Cosmic Scene Duke Ellington’s Spaceman,” on the Mosaic singles label, I heard all the Tekton Design’s sonic attributes that have endeared their speakers to many listeners,  including me. First, a sense of “aliveness” that can be startling depending on the recording became immediately apparent. In this case, when the Ellington brass section hit a crescendo, the pop and kick were on total display. In analytical terms, the Encore Monitor has superb transient speed and tight control over micro-dynamics because it responds to a transient and just as quickly stops. Secondly, the Encore Monitors completely disappeared, creating a deep, large, and accurately layered soundstage. If you did not know that you were listening to a relatively small box-enclosed speaker, you would assert that you were listening to a large planar speaker with total continuity from top to bottom frequencies. From the airy simmering high frequencies to a tonality pure mid-range with palpable 3D individual images, and finally down to a taut and harmonically correct foundation for the bass frequencies. However, unlike planar speakers that often struggle with bloated image size and the air/space between individual instruments, the Encore Monitors do not struggle with either of these shortcomings. There was one new addition I was experiencing with the performance of the Encore Monitor speakers. There was a touch of warmth and denser/richer tonality and timbres. Dare I say it reminded me of the beauty in the classic Sonus Faber speakers designed by the legendary founder Franco Seblin. I asked Eric Alexander about these new additions, at least in the Encore Monitor, and how this was achieved. Alexander responded:

“You’re right to pick up on the added warmth and denser tonality. It’s not necessarily a characteristic universally present in all our designs, though we are constantly working to refine and improve our models. As the designer, I’ve honed and refined the Encore Monitor over the last two years, producing at least five iterations. We’ve indeed found the sweet spot you describe. Without giving away all our secrets, the driver sourcing, tuning techniques, and meticulous measurements with voicing adjustments have contributed to the warmer sound and world-class mid-range accuracy. These changes, combined with our patented mid-range array technology, have allowed us to achieve the desired balance of detail, dynamics, and that touch of warmth you so aptly described. The fabric domes we use convey a specific, believable texture in the reproduction that we don’t want to part ways with anytime soon.

When I cued up Winter Songs by Terje Isungset on the ICEMUSIC label, which is one of my newer test discs for world-class bass extension and sub-sonics along with dramatic sound-staging effects, the Encore Monitors surprised me with how they pressurized the room with effortless room shaking bass, that I could feel. Certain images were floating almost around the back of my head. I would not call the sounds on this disc great music for my tastes, but they are great fun and a way to test your system’s ability to handle powerful dynamics and spatial qualities. Again, I asked Eric Alexander if my assumption was correct that the Encore Monitor was a scaled-down version of the much larger floor-stander Moab, which is a great speaker in its own right for smaller acoustic spaces.

“You’re right to pick up on the similarities between the Encore Monitor and the Moab. They both share the D’Appolito configuration, and you’re also correct that the Encore Monitor is essentially a scaled-down version of the Moab. The core design principles remain the same. While the Encore Monitor is physically smaller and more suitable for smaller acoustic spaces where the Moabs might be overwhelming, their fundamental sonic character and performance are remarkably consistent. As you noted, they both function identically in their design approach. Beyond that, our minimum-phase crossover design plays a critical role. It allows us to harness this topology’s inherent advantages – precise phase coherence, excellent transient response, and seamless integration of the drivers – in both the Moab and the Encore Monitor. Both of these contribute significantly to the shared sonic signature.”

Remember, the Encore Monitor’s polished gloss black piano lacquer finish rivals the appearance of a $240,000 Steinway Spirio grand piano, offers beautiful musicality in its timbres/tonality, excellent transient speed/aliveness, compelling dynamics, and bass extension, airy/shimmery highs, presents overall as if it was a much bigger speaker but still has precise location of instruments in its soundstage. You get all this for a very reasonable retail charge of $3,000. Is this a great speaker for the money? Absolutely, but it’s a great speaker, regardless of its cost. Here’s an interesting comparison. I have an excellent speaker, the Qualio IQ Ultra, for review, which retails for $13,000. That extremely well-built speaker has many wonderful sonic attributes and has received many positive reviews. It deserves the accolades it has received from these other reviewers. However, I constantly return to the Tekton Design Encore Monitors because I connect much more emotionally with the music and enjoy myself considerably more than when listening to the much more expensive Qualio IQ Ultra speakers. With all that I shared in this review, you can easily comprehend why I made the Encore Monitors my 2024 budget speaker of the year.

Specifications:

Price: $3000

Made under U.S. Patent 9247339
Proprietary 3-way loudspeaker design
Proprietary patent pending 15 dome compact radiating hybrid MTM
high-frequency array
Proprietary controlled directivity with 90% lower moving mass than the finest planar electrostatic loudspeakers – acoustically superior proprietary polygon-oriented, dual seven tweeter midrange frequency array. This array disperses a precisely focused acoustical power pattern of that of a horn or waveguide without the audible ringing influence of horn flare walls constraining the soundwave for acoustically superior mid-range and high frequency performance
Dual 6.5′′ Transducers
94dB 2.83V@1m sensitivity
4 Ohm design for optimum performance (8 Ohm available please inquire)
40Hz-30kHz frequency response
120 Watt power handling
Height 34.5 ′′x Width 8.81′′ x Depth 10.75′′
Weight 42 lbs
Manufactured in the USA

Website: www.tektondesign.com

Terry’s Associated Equipment
Source:
Pass Labs DAC-1
Reimyo DAP-999EX Toku DAC
Mark Levinson 31.5 transport
Pro-Ject reference CD transport & LTA power supply
Wadia 22 transport
CEC T-3 belt-driven transport
Amplification:
Coda 5.5 amplifier
SPL S1200 amplifier
Plinus SA-50 amplifier
SPL Director preamplifier
Aric Audio Super SET 300B amplifier
Aric Audio Motherlode MKII preamplifier
Loudspeakers:
Tekton Design Ulfberht
Rosso Fiorentino Arno 40
NSMT System Two
Music Design Knight One
Accessories:
Jena Labs Symphony XLR ICs
Jena Labs reference AES/EBU digital cable
Kirmuss Audio Adrenaline speaker wires
Krolo Design reference rack & footers
Puritan Audio power conditioner & grounding system
Audio Archon power cords