TRINNOV AUDIO ALTITUDE16 SURROUND SOUND PROCESSOR

I’VE BEEN reviewing A/V gear for over 15 years, and it’s rare that something new comes along that will intimidate me.

But all that changed when I found out I’d be reviewing the Trinnov Audio Altitude16, an $18,000 surround sound processor that’s arguably the most sophisticated and flexible offering of its kind on the market. To prepare myself, I even downloaded and starting reading Trinnov’s 172-page manual well in advance of the Altitude16’s arrival.

Once it arrived and was unboxed, I admired the Altitude16’s design—it has an industrial look that I personally love in an A/V component. The brushed aluminum front panel contains only a few controls: power, mute, volume adjustment, and source selection, plus menu navigation buttons. A large dimmable display shows volume, input, and audio format status, along with other information about incoming and outgoing A/ V signals.

The Trinnov offers 16 channels of processing with support for the three major immersive audio formats: Dolby Atmos, DTS:X Pro, and Auro-3d. It has eight 18Gbps HDMI 2.0 (HDCP 2.2-compliant) inputs and two HDMI 2.0 outputs (with EARC on output 1), dual coaxial and optical digital inputs (plus one output of each type), and analog XLR and RCA stereo inputs. Other connections include a trigger input, four trigger outputs (three configurable), an RS-232 control port, an Ethernet port for network connection and control, and two additional Ethernet ports labeled for future use. The unit is also Roon Ready and functions as a UPNP renderer.

Since the Altitude16 is based on a PC architecture, it features standard I/O options on the lower left side of its rear panel. In lieu of a chip-based DSP, Trinnov uses a Linux-based software suite that runs on a multicore Intel i3 processor.

The benefit to this design is that when a new processing mode comes along, the Altitude16 can be easily upgraded for it over the internet. (Trinnov also says that the modular hardware design allows for HDMI connections to be updated to version 2.1 when that upgrade becomes available.)

While the non-backlit remote control Trinnov includes is rather spartan, it’s also true that the main customer for an Altitude16 will likely have a custom-installed home theater that runs on an advanced control system. Hence, the unit supports Control4, AMX,

Creston, Savant, and RTI, and can be controlled via IP or RS232. (It also features integration with The CEDIA Designer home theater design software.) Since I don’t have a sophisticated control system in my own home theater, I instead used the supplied handset along with a URC MX-990 universal remote for my evaluation.

There are two other ways to connect to the unit for control. First, you can use the rear panel’s PC outputs to hook up a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Second, you can make a network connection via Ethernet and direct a web browser to the unit’s IP address—the more convenient option. I connected this way using both my PC and Samsung Galaxy Tablet. The user interface’s fixed font was very hard to read on the tablet’s 10-inch display without reading glasses, however, so I ultimately ended up using my PC with its 27-inch monitor. Once connected, you better have the manual handy for reference because the learning curve is very steep when you dig in to this beast.

SETUP

The Altitude16’s setup menu can be a bit overwhelming at first, so it’s easy to see why the recommended route for most users is custom installation. Even so, I decided to jump right in. Thankfully, Trinnov’s Wizard offers a Quick Setup option where you define the room’s speaker layout. This can range from a 2.0 system all the way up to a 9.1.6 configuration or anything in between—just remember, you’re capped at 16 discrete outputs. My room’s four subwoofers are run through an outboard MINIDSP HD processor and treated as a single sub by my reference pre/pro, so I chose an Atmos 7.1.4 configuration for my setup. Granted, there’s no reason for a Trinnov owner to use a MINIDSP since the processor has full bass management to redirect low frequencies in surrounds or height speakers and can indi

vidually handle multiple subs.

The next step in the setup process is to assign each output to a specific speaker and use the pink noise generator to confirm your assignment. You then move on to the Bass Management page, set crossovers for individual speakers (I chose a global 80Hz), and connect the Trinnov 3D microphone (an extra $800 option). Lastly, you start the Trinnov Optimizer calibration process, which takes a few minutes to run, with the processor then analyzing the data and applying corrections (see graphs below).

Once auto-calibration is complete, I’d say you will have achieved about 85-90 percent of what further tweaking could provide. But quite honestly, unless you’re the ultimate geek and love to obsessively tweak and fiddle with multiple settings, you’re better off paying a Trinnov-affiliated installer to set the Altitude16 up. When you spend $18,000 on a processor, you’ll want to ensure you’re getting 100 percent of its performance! (Another benefit to going the installer route: they will bring along their own 3D microphone.)

Trinnov’s Optimizer software has some powerful tricks up its sleeve. First, you can save up to 29 custom calibrations and assign each one by input. So, if you want one specifically for two-channel music-listening and another for movies, that’s easy to do. Also, you can switch between calibrations “on the fly” using the web interface, with only a slight audio dropout as the processor switches from one preset to the next.

Even though I was mostly pleased with the results, I reached out to Chuck Back, Trinnov Audio’s US Managing Director, to help me further refine my Optimizer settings. Connecting with the Altitude16 over the internet, Chuck discovered that I didn’t have the 3D mic pointed directly at the center speaker during my auto-calibration, so he asked me to rotate it about a quarterinch and we ran another series of measurements. While still not perfect, the error was within one degree, which he said was acceptable.

My seven main speakers are from M&K (S150 LCRS across the front and SS550S for the rear and back surrounds), and it just so happened that Chuck worked for the company for over 20 years and knew the speakers intimately. He manually applied a target curve to the Altitude16 customized specifically for my M&KS, and it transported me to audio heaven—my system had never sounded so good!

The Altitude16 has several software features that I found to be fun and useful. The Dolby Atmos Object Viewer displays a three-dimensional depiction of your room and indicates which speakers are active during playback. Viewing it, you’ll quickly discover that some Atmos soundtracks make much more active use of overhead speakers than others. Another valuable tool is having the ability to control the processor’s output. This essentially provides a mixing board so you can mute channels during playback or isolate a single channel. While that’s not something you’d use every day, it’s a great way to highlight how prominent the center channel is in a soundtrack mix, or to demonstrate the contribution of overhead effects channels.

PERFORMANCE

After living with Trinnov’s processor for a month, I fell in love with it. The company was founded on the premise of providing realistic 3D sound and the Altitude 16 delivers that in abundance. It was able to take my multipurpose space (the room opens up to another area of the house) and make it sound like a fully enclosed theater. No other room correction system I’ve evaluated has performed as effectively—the Trinnov Optimizer is literally in a class by itself.

Right out of the gate, my collection of Dolby Atmos demo discs showcased how great the processor was. Whether it was trailers that emphasized the overhead speakers, or music videos (I’m partial to Enrique Iglesias’ “Bailando”), “amazing” wouldn’t even begin to describe the experience. Discrete pinpoint sound effects moved around the room in a precise manner, while the Optimizer’s bass management allowed for a seamless transition from my main speakers to the subs without any audible peaks or dips— like I said above, my system never sounded better.

The Greatest Showman is one of my favorite movies so far this century, and its

Atmos soundtrack is to die-for. (According to Trinnov, Greg Wells, Showman’s sound mixer, uses a Trinnov ST2 Pro processor for his studio work.) Watching the opening scene with the Altitude16, bass impact

was off the charts and Hugh Jackman’s voice never lost intelligibility. One thing I noted about the Altitude16 was that I never felt any ear fatigue even after a long listening session at or close to reference level. The sound was consistently balanced and natural: highs were clean, lows punchy and dynamic, the midrange fullbodied and inviting.

To prepare for the premiere of Godzilla vs. Kong on HBO Max, I watched a 2014 reboot of Godzilla that had just been released on Ultra HD Blu-ray with a remixed Dolby Atmos track. This is arguably one of the best-sounding mixes to come out of Hollywood in the last 10 years, and it certainly didn’t disappoint with the Trinnov processor in my system. The soundtrack has enough LFE impact to wake the dead, but the Altitude 16 really distinguished itself through its ability to widen both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the soundstage. Helicopter fly-bys didn’t just swoop overhead but conveyed a precise sense of the aircraft’s altitude. And the train attack sequence was simply jaw-dropping, with discrete effects bombarding the room as Godzilla emerged and all hell broke loose.

For stereo music-listening, I streamed numerous FLACencoded titles stored on my home server using a Logitech Squeezebox. Before I knew it, hours had passed as I advanced from track to track. I set up two separate outputs for stereo sources— one straight two-channel and the other processed in Auro-3d using the Auro-matic upmixer. I’ve owned an Auro-3d capable processor in the past, but it didn’t sound nearly as refined as what I heard with the Trinnov, and as time went on I found myself more exhilarated by the Auro-3d upmix versus the standard stereo version. It was as if I were transported directly into a live concert setting with every track I listened to.

Speaking of concerts, music performances mixed in Dolby Atmos really highlighted the Altitude16’s audio prowess. I started with the John Williams Live in Vienna concert Blu-ray, a disc that offers multiple audio format options including Dolby Atmos and both 5.1 and 2.0 24-bit/48 khz DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks. Listening in Atmos, my favorite of the three, “The Imperial March” from

Star Wars sounded powerful, dynamic, and completely mesmerizing. I’ve never been to the Vienna concert venue, but after that experience I doubt

I’ll really need to because the Altitude16 delivered such an authentic-sounding rendition of its superb acoustics and spaciousness.

ERGONOMICS

As much as I appreciated the Altitude16’s performance, it does have a number of minor quirks that need to be mentioned. First, since it’s Pc-based, it takes nearly a minute to power up. This wasn’t a big deal for me because it takes nearly that long for my

JVC RS2000 projector to warm up, but it might be an issue for others. To minimize this concern, Trinnov recommends that you leave the processor powered on 24/7 and reboot it once per week. (I ended up setting a “Sleep” profile that would turn off my system’s amplifiers when the processor wasn’t in use.)

A second quirk is that HDMI lock on an audio signal can take up to 3 seconds, which made TV channel-surfing and fastforwarding through shows on my Tivo DVR a bit of a drag. On the plus side, the Altitude 16’s HDMI video lock is possibly the fastest I’ve ever experienced in an A/V processor.

Finally, the Trinnov has an annoying green LED— part of the computer motherboard— that blinks every couple of seconds, beaming light through the top surface vents. This won’t be a concern for users with a dedicated equipment room, but for others it could become an issue depending on where your gear is located.

CONCLUSION

If I haven’t already made it clear, I absolutely loved Trinnov’s Altitude16, which is by far the best-sounding surround sound processor I’ve had the privilege to use. While I was initially overwhelmed by the complexity of the software interface, in time I was able to navigate it with ease even though I’ve barely scratched the surface of the processor’s capabilities. Fortunately, I’ll have plenty of time to dig into the Altitude16 because I’ve made it a permanent fixture in my system. It’s by far the most expensive piece of gear I own, but after putting two kids through college it’s nice to finally spend money on myself instead of sending a check to the California University system. Needless to say, the Altitude16 receives my highest recommendation and I’m putting my money where my mouth is.