Tri 35SE Integrated Amplifier and CD4SE CD Player

By Brent Burmester

March 2010

Tri 35SE Integrated Amplifier ($3300) and CD4SE CD Player ($3300)

There are no thermionic valves amidst the thousands of miles of circuitry in the Large Hadron Collider. I didn’t read that anywhere, and I certainly didn’t bother to ask anyone who’d know: it just must be true. Who, in their right minds, would build anything remotely important relying on a fragile, short-lived, temperamental, and expensive light bulb, if they really didn’t have to?

Am I claiming, then, that sound recording and reproduction, where valves continue to find a use, isn’t important? That would be an unlikely move for a hi-fi reviewer. Maybe my contention is that a great many audio professionals are insane? While quite possible true, that is incidental. My point, and I do have one, is that we still use valves in high fidelity sound reproduction, because we have to. Really.

Stranger than fiction

Now, if you’re sitting across from a megawatt of semiconductor-saturated amplification, you may have reason to think me wrong. Some of us measure quality in undistorted decibels at 25Hz, and valves are certainly at a disadvantage there. Similarly, you’ll find my claim contentious if your budget for new components is less than $1k, you don’t have room for 3m wide horn-loaded speakers, you could never trouble yourself to switch your system off once it was plugged in, or maybe you occasionally let your separates bounce down a flight of stairs, just to air them out. Anyway, I see the point you’re making.

To see, or rather, hear, my point, I recommend you find yourself an audio set-up featuring products from the Triode Corporation of Japan, or Tri to its friends. If the Japanese, the People of the Transistor, still have time for valves you know they must be special (the valves). While Tri’s speciality is amplification, it also makes a source component in the form of the CD4SE CD player. I had the good fortune to enjoy the pairing of this player with the firm’s 45 watt 35SE integrated amplifier.

Mysterious ways

You could make a case for owning these beauties on the grounds of looks alone. Valve amps, in their glowing finery, deserve to be on display. The matching aesthetics of CD player and amp is very pleasing, provided you like red, and the quality is not merely skin deep in the case of the Tri hardware. Both CD player and amplifier are solidly made and feature high quality connecting hardware on their back panels and carefully selected and laid-out gubbins within.

As is often the case with valve amplifiers, the 34SE offers a 6 or 8 ohm speaker load option. Initially, I played safe with the 8 ohm option, in keeping with the nominal impedance of my Magnats. Listening with my reference sources, rather than the Tri player, I was immediately struck by the full-blooded sound that greeted me. I was reminded that 45 watts per channel is a lot of valve power. The tangibility of every musical performance was a marked improvement on similarly powered, even similarly priced, transistor amps. I was not disappointed by obvious ‘valve-ish’ weaknesses bemoaned in certain hifi circles. The frequency response was not limited to the mid-range, with a dulled top end and a detached and flaccid bassline, nor was it given an extra coat of varnish, or three.

My only reservation was with respect to the bass. It wasn’t weak or tuneless, but there was a discernible rounding off on the leading edges of thumbed bass guitar or synthesised percussion. When I experimented with the 6 ohm outputs I found a improvement in this regard, and a more precise control of volume as well, although it’s true that transistor amps in this price range would strike harder.

As a torture test – valve-lovers skip to the next paragraph! – I let loose the Chemical Brothers, Orbital, and the Prodigy, and still found the grins arriving at the right moments. That was reassuring, but these artists don’t show the 35SE to best advantage. Mary Black, Tori Amos, John Renbourn, Jacques Loussier, anything recorded on ECM, now you’re talking. The 34SE can hammer if called upon, but it’s real intention is to draw the listener into the melodic charms of the music, rather than the rhythmic.

Born to be alive

Introducing the Tri CD4SE player to its amplifying team-mate shifted the game to a new venue. This player features 24/192 upsampling and a valve in its output buffer for improved impedance matching. While an excellent unit in isolation, seldom have I head a source and amp combination from one manufacturer work so harmoniously together. They were very hard to fault, giving highly expressive accounts of everything they were fed.

Working together, the two lacquered beauties imparted a captivating vitality to live recordings, from Jethro Tull to Cirque de Soleil. I suppose my only complaint would be that my poorly engineered CDs didn’t get a dose of that Vaseline-on-the-lens effect that valves are supposed to impart. Oh, that’s not a fault at all.

However they might be compromised, we continue to rely on valves in hi-fi because, at their best, they are just a little more alive than the alternative. Tri’s 35SE and CD4SE are about back-to-basics two-channel audio, so if your system has to have multi-room, multi-channel, multi-media compatibility, never mind. This combination is worthy of consideration by everyone wearying of the anaemic or fussy performance of their solid-state hardware, and those who want the indispensable discs in their collection to be as arresting as when they were first heard.