Focal Naim America has announced the introduction of re-designed Trio6 ST6 three-way studio monitors that join two other monitors in the ST6 range — Solo6 ST6 and Twin6 ST6 — that were released in 2022.
All-analog Trio6 ST6 monitors offer new dual Focus mode, user-controlled automatic stand-by, a redesigned laminar port, and a structurally enhanced cabinet. They retail for $3,499 USD each and are available to order at retailers in the U.S. and Canada now.
Sylvain Gondinet, product manager for the Focal Professional Division, states, “At Focal, we never rest on our laurels and always push the boundary of what we consider to be state-of-the-art. This is in our DNA. We’re constantly pushing the boundary of transducer design and acoustic performance, but when designing a tool used for creation it’s far more than just striving for the best measurement.
“As a mixer and a studio designer myself, I know that our understanding and interpretation of physics in audio is intimately linked to psychoacoustics and, therefore, our emotions. The product development team asked ourselves, ‘How do we improve on an already widely recognized Trio6 Be while staying true to our analog design values?’ It was a real labor of love. The R&D team really pushed to squeeze the most performance out of the speaker from a technical standpoint, but that wasn’t where we stopped.”
Made in France at the Focal workshops, Trio6 ST6 is equipped with an 8-inch subwoofer with a patented “W” cone – a patented Focal innovation joined by a 5-inch midrange woofer incorporating Focal’s TMD (Tuned Mass Damper) technology that’s stated to reduce distortion in the 1 kHz to 3 kHz frequency range by 50 percent. A new beryllium tweeter with proprietary IAL (Infinite Acoustic Loading) to control resonance rounds out the driver set.
The re-designed large laminar port is designed to limit port noise and the strengthened cabinet provides better rigidity and damping with fewer vibrations minimizing distortion. The dual Focus mode – either one driver or two drivers – essentially creates three different sounding monitors in one by expanding the Focus mode first in legacy SM9 monitors. These new configurations of loudspeaker drivers are available by spressing a pedal, with two configurations providing reduced frequency response to enable mix engineers to check how a mix might adapt to a smaller system.
Like Solo6 ST6 and Twin6 ST6, the new Trio6 ST6 includes a variable high-pass crossover and a 160 Hz parametric crossover to reduce reflections from the console. The European-required automatic stand-by mode can now be disengaged by the user via a switch on the back of each monitor, giving engineers a choice.
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