One of the great things about being a small company is that it allows us to be close to our users. The people who answer the phone when you call, and reply to the email you send, are the same people who design the speakers you buy. We hear from you, directly, every day. You tell us what you like and what could be better. You tell us when things don’t work as expected, and work with us to solve problems. And you tell us on a near daily basis that we have helped you to enjoy your music, movies, and games more than ever.
The new Transparent One Encore Plus is the third generation of Vanatoo’s powered speaker systems. They are refinements of what were already an award-winning design. Refinements based on our daily interaction with you, our users.
The most visible T1E+ change is to the tweeter. The T1E was used about evenly as either a desktop or in-room system. In most environments they had a very similar sound signature when sitting on a desk as they had in a room. But in smaller and more acoustically reflective rooms, you told us that they could sound a little brighter at a distance than they did up close. The underlying reason for this is that the T1E had a little too broad of dispersion of high frequency sounds out to the sides, which bounces off the walls and sounds brighter. The new “waveguide” on the tweeter addresses this by doing exactly what the name implies; it slightly reduces the amount of sound going to the sides and guides it more forward. This combined with a mild reduction in the midrange makes the new T1E+ sound even better on your desktop while maintaining the same sweet sound in a wider variety of rooms.
The other visible change to the T1E+ is the reintroduction of the detachable/replaceable power cord. We did not love the captive cord on the T1E, and you didn’t either. It was necessitated by space constraints inside the amplifier assembly. Given time, we were able to move enough stuff around inside the T1E+ amplifier assembly to fit the IEC power cord socket on the rear panel. It’s a small, but to some, significant improvement.
Less visible changes happened inside the electronics. The most obvious is updating Bluetooth to the new Bluetooth 5 specification. This makes for better operation with newer computers and handheld devices. The “codecs” that communicate with your devices have also been upgraded. The T1E+ now has the AAC codec for Apple devices and aptX-HD for Android. Both lead to an upgrade in sound quality over their predecessors. While not quite bit-perfect, the new Bluetooth is truly “near-CD quality.” It is good enough to hear differences in source quality, and with anything less than true CD quality or Hi-Res sources is no longer the weak link in the audio chain.
The Transparent One Encore Plus includes the ability to adjust the output level of an attached subwoofer using the Vanatoo remote. This is a useful feature first introduced half-way through the original T1E production. New to the T1E+ is a left/right balance control. If your room arrangement forces you to sit off-center, the combination of the balance control with the speaker’s great off-axis behavior will allow you to bring the musical sound stage back to the center.
The bass response of the T1E+ has been slightly tweaked such that it is now even “flatter”. What was already pretty great has gotten even better. Set the system to the “Flat” configuration with the speakers on stands out in a room and the system response is tight and clean down into the lower 40’s of Hertz. This encompasses the full range of most traditional music while maintaining a small footprint and ease of use. And if you want to hear what your favorite EDM or Hip-Hop artist heard in the studio, the subwoofer output allows you to explore the low frequency limits of your hearing and your neighbor’s patience. And a subwoofer can add an extra dimension to your action movies.
Other electronics changes that are invisible but critically important revolve around the world-wide electronics parts shortages you have no doubt heard about. Having a continuous supply of products and spare parts is important to both us and you. The supply chain for some of the parts in the T1E had become unstable. We were able to identify the troublesome parts and design in newer and more readily available upgrades so that we will have a reliable supply of both speakers and spare parts for years to come.
Other electronics changes that are invisible but critically important revolve around the world-wide electronics parts shortages you have no doubt heard about. Having a continuous supply of products and spare parts is important to both us and you. The supply chain for some of the parts in the T1E had become unstable. We were able to identify the troublesome parts and design in newer and more readily available upgrades so that we will have a reliable supply of both speakers and spare parts for years to come.
Dictionary.com defines refinement as “an improved, higher, or extreme form of something.” The Transparent One Encore Plus embodies this definition. The Transparent One Encore was an award-winning system. Among other accolades, the T1E was rated as a Stereophile Class B Loudspeaker, has an Editor’s Choice award from The Absolute Sound, A Brutus Award from Positive Feedback, and 4.7 Star rating from real-world Amazon users. As good as the T1E was, we’re very proud of the fact that the T1E+ is even better. We listened to the speakers and we listened to you. The results will be available in August!
