Jones And Cerreta Troubadour Speakers Make Their UK Debut At Spiritland

JONES AND CERRETA LAUNCH THE TROUBADOUR AT SPIRITLAND LONDON

Launched at the last AXPONA, the Jones and Cerreta Troubadour speakers were making their UK debut in London last night, and we were fortunate enough to be invited along to take a listen.

The evening was held at Spiritland, which many of you reading this will be well aware of. For those who aren’t, it’s a high-end listening bar that hosts DJs, specialist music evenings and more. Last night, it was the turn of Jones and Cerreta to introduce their Troubadour speakers to the great and the good of the HiFi world. A room usually given over to enjoying music seemed a pretty fitting place to do it.

It was a London event, but we managed to bump into a good few folk from the continent, including François, the CEO of French distributor Ana Mighty Sound. These evenings are always a good opportunity to catch up with familiar faces, though the main reason for being there was, of course, to hear what Andrew Jones and his partners have been working on.

Andrew Jones And The Cerreta Brothers

Andrew Jones is a bit of a legend in the loudspeaker world, with KEF, Pioneer, ELAC and MoFi Electronics on his CV. However, this Los Angeles-based venture marks the first time his name has been attached directly to a brand he has co-founded.

Joining him are brothers Jamie and Bill Cerreta. Jamie brings more than 25 years of experience as a music industry executive, while Bill is an electrical engineer with a background in Silicon Valley product development. Between the three of them, there’s a fair bit of experience in designing things, making them work and understanding the music they are ultimately there to reproduce.

I managed to catch a few minutes with Andrew to natter about the new speakers, and the story behind them is interesting. It stems from a meeting with the Cerreta brothers in the States. One of the brothers is a huge fan of “old” loudspeakers powered by SET amps, and the conversation soon moved on to how a loudspeaker could combine the qualities he enjoyed in those older designs with the requirements of a modern speaker.

That conversation has culminated in the Troubadour.

Field Coils And Concentric Drivers

The Troubadour is a floorstanding loudspeaker that uses a 12-inch field-coil concentric midrange/tweeter driver allied with a 12-inch bass driver. There’s an interesting mix of established ideas here, brought together in a new design.

For those unfamiliar with field coils, the principle involves replacing the permanent magnet normally found in a loudspeaker driver with an externally powered electromagnet. It’s an approach with a long history, but one that remains relatively uncommon in modern loudspeakers because of the added complexity and cost.

The concentric arrangement places the midrange and tweeter on the same axis. The intention is to have those parts of the musical picture originate from the same location, helping them behave as a coherent source. Put that together with the field-coil system and you begin to see how the conversation about older loudspeakers found its way into the finished product.

Listening To The Troubadours

After the introduction, we got to have a listen, and the sound matched the dimensions of the speakers. These are substantial loudspeakers, and there was a suitably substantial sense of scale to the presentation.

What will particularly interest some readers is that we were told the speakers, with their 95dB sensitivity, would work quite happily with 8W SET amps. Lovers of 300Bs will rejoice. A big loudspeaker doesn’t necessarily need a big amplifier, and compatibility with those lower-powered amps was clearly part of the thinking behind the Troubadour.

This was an opportunity to get a first taste of the speakers in a listening bar, rather than a full review, but it was good to hear them and to have Andrew on hand to explain how the design came about.

A question-and-answer session followed, and after that we had a bit of free time to mingle, enjoy a drink and nibble on some of the food. There’s a lot to be said for being able to hear a new product, talk to the people responsible for it and then carry on the conversation with fellow music and HiFi enthusiasts.

What a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Linette and Stuart Smith