Hello everyone,
first of all I apologize: I am Italian and I am using an automatic translator to make this post...
I just signed up to this forum and I would like some opinions on my new purchase and above all to know if anyone knows these speakers, totally unknown to me until a couple of months ago.
I am a happy owner of an Exposure 2010S integrated amplifier, but I have often changed speakers (from the Kef IQ7, to the Sonus Faber Lumina and then to the Sonus Faber Minima Amateur). But I have always been in constant search of something that would convince me more and without an audiophile budget.
I have just purchased a pair of Tetra Speakers 120U speakers directly from Canada and I wanted to share the listening experience and especially the purchase experience, as this brand is almost unknown but it really amazed me.
I would like to point out that I am not an audiophile passionate about frequency response diagrams, distortion, levels and coefficients, I trust only my ears and my brain. I never buy anything without having listened to it and fallen in love with it.
The purchase of these Tetra Speakers was a kind of birth, trying to overcome the general distrust and relying exclusively on a single lightning listening.
This is a photo of my speakers assembled just a couple of weeks ago (in the Christmas spirit...):
Since they arrived in my house, I spent a lot of my time listening to a lot of songs, mainly of my favorite genres (i.e. Jazz, Blues, Soul and Progressive Rock) before writing these two lines and I have to say that I am really enthusiastic about these speakers.
Closing your eyes and not perceiving speakers but only believing that Cassandra Wilson, Sarah Vaughan or Miles Davis are actually in front of you is truly priceless.
Their voice immediately takes the right share and the scene becomes magically stable. The reconstruction of the scene is truly remarkable and I have no trouble at all in identifying the sound levels and the performers, well blended but each with its own dimension. While listening to Diana Krall's song "My love is", the finger snap that acts as an intro is precise, the double bass takes over with its dark and dry timbre insinuating itself in my ears and heart, and at the first words "my love my love" I opened my eyes to look for Diana in my living room (maybe....).
In “Seven Steps to Heaven” by Miles Davis the sound levels are incredibly distinct, Herbie Hancock’s piano has a broad and relaxed breath, Davis’s trumpet and George Coleman’s sax chase each other gracefully and overlap while maintaining a precise identity, Ron Carter with his double bass hits you hard and it seems incredible to me considering that I don’t have any subwoofer connected.
I am overcome with emotion when Pino Daniele's guitar starts on "Again", a posthumous masterpiece released a few weeks ago: Pino is half a meter away from me, I can't believe these speakers and I didn't come from any speakers but from the Sonus Faber Minima Amateur (Serblin's masterpiece).
It is surprising when listening to how the details of the sounds are brought into focus, such as the rustling of the fingers on the guitar strings, the stick on the drum plate, the hammer on the piano string, so many small details that define the sound of the instruments to the maximum and that incredibly transmit a convincing reconstruction of live music.
In three words: power, palpability and presence. A highly dimensional and highly accurate reproduction.
It is also important to tell my purchasing experience. I had heard the 120U at the home of an Italian soccer coach and, despite the occasion, that background music had deeply distracted me: a crazy precision and presence despite the low volume, the jazz voices did not seem to come from a sound system but almost from a trio of artists in the corner of his house playing background songs in a Parisian “cave à jazz” while tasting a terrine of fois gras. I walk away, identify the system and see to my surprise my amplifier, an Exposure 2010S!!! “Good grief, but my system doesn’t sound like that!”, then I look at the speakers, two small wooden bookshelf speakers with a writing I had never heard in my life: “Tetra”. That voice couldn’t come out of there, I had never heard my Minima Amateurs sound like that… I look around but there was nothing else: the sound was coming out of there! I take a quick photo of the speakers and off I go.
I go home and spend the night on the internet, I start my research on Tetra: I find their site https://tetraspeakers.com/ a very simple site, almost home-made and I start to get information. Very few reviews except on sites dedicated to Jazz, all reviews made in the early 2000s. However, I start to read some names that make my ears ***** up: Herbie Hancock has Tetra Speakers at home and recommends them on his personal site, a video of Ron Carter at his home playing the double bass accompanied by Tetra Speakers for the other instruments (and look look he drives them with an Exposure 3010S ...), Keith Richards, Dave Holland, Wynton Marsalis, Benny Golson and other users of these unknown speakers. Then I read about Rob Fraboni, an American sound engineer and record producer (known for his work with Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, and many others, winner of a Grammy in 2002), who collaborated with Tetra Speakers to design the Tetra Fraboni 606 v.2 speakers.
I continue my research to understand where to buy them but there are no international distributors or even a site that sells them online: they go exclusively by word of mouth! Tetra Speakers indicates on its website that it “has adopted a direct approach to listener sales. Not only does going to market this way mean we can sell better for less, but it also allows us to personally know each of our customers. Write or call us today to learn more”.
No sooner said than done: I write an email to the address listed in the contacts on their website. Tetra CEO Adrian Butts responds directly, asking me immediately how I had heard about them. From there begins an epistolary relationship (93 emails exchanged, always answered by Adrian himself), which followed me from the initial information, to the estimates, from the choice of wood with his cabinetmaker Bruce and the coloring with lots of photos of the possible woods, to the process of creating the cases with lots of photos, from shipping to checking customs duties, up to the verification of listening and requesting feedback from me. Crazy!
I have never seen such an important customer care in the HiFi field by the manufacturer, where now marketing wins with advertising that makes you think that "more expensive means better" for products that are actually industrial or pseudo-industrial (the era of Serblin is over!), a world dominated by extremely aggressive marketing and based on exclusivity rather than goodness (poor Sonus Faber purchased by Bose, a clear example of the pinnacle of marketing described above...).
I remember that at the end of the speaker construction process, Adrian wrote to me saying that he was waiting for the cabinets from the cabinetmaker to then "apply his magic touch". And so it was, I assure you. I can only recommend at least listening with the ears of someone who loves music.
As Rob Fraboni says "the best compliment you can give to a speaker is that they disappear from listening."
Sorry to everyone for my bad english. Waiting for your feedback, please.
first of all I apologize: I am Italian and I am using an automatic translator to make this post...
I just signed up to this forum and I would like some opinions on my new purchase and above all to know if anyone knows these speakers, totally unknown to me until a couple of months ago.
I am a happy owner of an Exposure 2010S integrated amplifier, but I have often changed speakers (from the Kef IQ7, to the Sonus Faber Lumina and then to the Sonus Faber Minima Amateur). But I have always been in constant search of something that would convince me more and without an audiophile budget.
I have just purchased a pair of Tetra Speakers 120U speakers directly from Canada and I wanted to share the listening experience and especially the purchase experience, as this brand is almost unknown but it really amazed me.
I would like to point out that I am not an audiophile passionate about frequency response diagrams, distortion, levels and coefficients, I trust only my ears and my brain. I never buy anything without having listened to it and fallen in love with it.
The purchase of these Tetra Speakers was a kind of birth, trying to overcome the general distrust and relying exclusively on a single lightning listening.
This is a photo of my speakers assembled just a couple of weeks ago (in the Christmas spirit...):
Since they arrived in my house, I spent a lot of my time listening to a lot of songs, mainly of my favorite genres (i.e. Jazz, Blues, Soul and Progressive Rock) before writing these two lines and I have to say that I am really enthusiastic about these speakers.
Closing your eyes and not perceiving speakers but only believing that Cassandra Wilson, Sarah Vaughan or Miles Davis are actually in front of you is truly priceless.
Their voice immediately takes the right share and the scene becomes magically stable. The reconstruction of the scene is truly remarkable and I have no trouble at all in identifying the sound levels and the performers, well blended but each with its own dimension. While listening to Diana Krall's song "My love is", the finger snap that acts as an intro is precise, the double bass takes over with its dark and dry timbre insinuating itself in my ears and heart, and at the first words "my love my love" I opened my eyes to look for Diana in my living room (maybe....).
In “Seven Steps to Heaven” by Miles Davis the sound levels are incredibly distinct, Herbie Hancock’s piano has a broad and relaxed breath, Davis’s trumpet and George Coleman’s sax chase each other gracefully and overlap while maintaining a precise identity, Ron Carter with his double bass hits you hard and it seems incredible to me considering that I don’t have any subwoofer connected.
I am overcome with emotion when Pino Daniele's guitar starts on "Again", a posthumous masterpiece released a few weeks ago: Pino is half a meter away from me, I can't believe these speakers and I didn't come from any speakers but from the Sonus Faber Minima Amateur (Serblin's masterpiece).
It is surprising when listening to how the details of the sounds are brought into focus, such as the rustling of the fingers on the guitar strings, the stick on the drum plate, the hammer on the piano string, so many small details that define the sound of the instruments to the maximum and that incredibly transmit a convincing reconstruction of live music.
In three words: power, palpability and presence. A highly dimensional and highly accurate reproduction.
It is also important to tell my purchasing experience. I had heard the 120U at the home of an Italian soccer coach and, despite the occasion, that background music had deeply distracted me: a crazy precision and presence despite the low volume, the jazz voices did not seem to come from a sound system but almost from a trio of artists in the corner of his house playing background songs in a Parisian “cave à jazz” while tasting a terrine of fois gras. I walk away, identify the system and see to my surprise my amplifier, an Exposure 2010S!!! “Good grief, but my system doesn’t sound like that!”, then I look at the speakers, two small wooden bookshelf speakers with a writing I had never heard in my life: “Tetra”. That voice couldn’t come out of there, I had never heard my Minima Amateurs sound like that… I look around but there was nothing else: the sound was coming out of there! I take a quick photo of the speakers and off I go.
I go home and spend the night on the internet, I start my research on Tetra: I find their site https://tetraspeakers.com/ a very simple site, almost home-made and I start to get information. Very few reviews except on sites dedicated to Jazz, all reviews made in the early 2000s. However, I start to read some names that make my ears ***** up: Herbie Hancock has Tetra Speakers at home and recommends them on his personal site, a video of Ron Carter at his home playing the double bass accompanied by Tetra Speakers for the other instruments (and look look he drives them with an Exposure 3010S ...), Keith Richards, Dave Holland, Wynton Marsalis, Benny Golson and other users of these unknown speakers. Then I read about Rob Fraboni, an American sound engineer and record producer (known for his work with Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, and many others, winner of a Grammy in 2002), who collaborated with Tetra Speakers to design the Tetra Fraboni 606 v.2 speakers.
I continue my research to understand where to buy them but there are no international distributors or even a site that sells them online: they go exclusively by word of mouth! Tetra Speakers indicates on its website that it “has adopted a direct approach to listener sales. Not only does going to market this way mean we can sell better for less, but it also allows us to personally know each of our customers. Write or call us today to learn more”.
No sooner said than done: I write an email to the address listed in the contacts on their website. Tetra CEO Adrian Butts responds directly, asking me immediately how I had heard about them. From there begins an epistolary relationship (93 emails exchanged, always answered by Adrian himself), which followed me from the initial information, to the estimates, from the choice of wood with his cabinetmaker Bruce and the coloring with lots of photos of the possible woods, to the process of creating the cases with lots of photos, from shipping to checking customs duties, up to the verification of listening and requesting feedback from me. Crazy!
I have never seen such an important customer care in the HiFi field by the manufacturer, where now marketing wins with advertising that makes you think that "more expensive means better" for products that are actually industrial or pseudo-industrial (the era of Serblin is over!), a world dominated by extremely aggressive marketing and based on exclusivity rather than goodness (poor Sonus Faber purchased by Bose, a clear example of the pinnacle of marketing described above...).
I remember that at the end of the speaker construction process, Adrian wrote to me saying that he was waiting for the cabinets from the cabinetmaker to then "apply his magic touch". And so it was, I assure you. I can only recommend at least listening with the ears of someone who loves music.
As Rob Fraboni says "the best compliment you can give to a speaker is that they disappear from listening."
Sorry to everyone for my bad english. Waiting for your feedback, please.
Last edited:
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