Introduction

The Gorilla from Telegrapher is a high end, analogue three-way active midfield studio monitor, designed for precision and accuracy in larger rooms, aimed at both mixing and mastering applications. Telegrapher is a professional monitor manufacturing company based in Istanbul, with a very specific design philosophy, making it premier league studio monitors. The Gorillas were their first product and took many years to design with a “no holds barred, no expense spared” type of approach in regards to the build quality and manufacturing process. In the flesh, they are very elegant, imposing and heavy duty but also very refined. These are midfield monitors so they are slightly larger than average, and they are hefty units made of heavy and solid birch plywood in a sealed cabinet design with extremely capable drivers powered by three powerful and separate active amplifiers.

Design Philosophy

Telegrapher took their time over the concept behind these speakers, this being Telegrapher’s first product, the conception and philosophy very much apparent, and one can tell there’s been a labour of love approach, by careful, thought out refining and tweaking to get things right, and there’s very much a specific approach at play here, These speakers are all analogue, no DSP in sight, and this no frills approach is something I really admire, no complicated set-up, no fiddling around with calibrations, or extraneous controls at the rear. The Gorilla’s minimalist approach to controls reflects its focus on pristine analogue sound and quality over extraneous DSP and complicated features. The rear panel includes just the essentials: a power switch, balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA inputs, and a user-controlled standby mode. This simplicity ensures that the focus remains on performance, which is very refreshing.

The sealed cabinets are finished in an automotive-grade finish, and there’s a choice of five different colours; Crow Black, Telegrapher Grey, Jaipur Orange (featured above), Menton Yellow, and Trooper White. Fun fact: The high end automotive industry, including Aston Martin, among others, also use this very same painting process apparently! These cabinets are made of heavy, dense, birch wood to minimise resonances, with elegantly rounded corners, further minimizing resonance, and the internal acoustic suspension of the enclosures is a key feature that adds up to keeping internal resonance at a minimum, contributing to the Gorilla’s superb transient response and particularly fast and accurate bass reproduction.

Unlike ported designs, the sealed enclosure eliminates airflow-induced resonances, delivering tight and controlled low frequencies without unwanted artifacts or coloration. This design choice also reduces phase distortion, ensuring that what you hear is an accurate representation of your program material. Four Sorbothane-like semi-circular rubbery feet are also supplied with each speaker, which adhere to their base in order to minimise vibrations and to de-couple them from whatever surface they are mounted on. In conjunction with the solid wood cabinets, these rubbery feet ensure that the speakers have minimum interferences from vibrations to achieve their optimal sonic performance.


Drivers

The Gorilla employs Scan Speak drivers from Denmark, which has long been a premier source of drivers for many high-end loudspeakers and have a pristine reputation in both pro audio and audiophile worlds. They certainly sound fabulous and the tech specs are impressive as well. The bass driver is a 8.5’’ woofer with an anodised aluminium diaphragm, a rubber surround and a generously sized magnet. The mid range driver is a 4.5’’ patented paper cone, with an exceptionally clear and natural tonality. In fact, the mids in the Gorilla are really quite lovely, and listening to lots of classic, tried and tested tracks through these speakers had me smiling with the clarity and definition of things I’m very familiar with. Lastly, the tweeter is a 1’’ coated textile diaphragm design and to my ears they sounded amazingly natural and open.


Amplification

The Gorilla features three Class-D amplifiers per speaker, providing a combined peak power of 1200W (480W RMS). These high wattage values, at first glance, seem overkill and somewhat insane, but it’s all about the headroom, and certainly, given the outstanding low distortion specs it’s a sound philosophy, as again, speed of transient response across the range is excellent, but certainly in the bass, which after all is the trickiest thing to get right in loudspeakers, and in many can be the weak link, but here, it works and it works marvellously. The amplifiers display exceptionally low total harmonic distortion and noise (THD+N) values, which further ensures pristine audio reproduction. It also features a heatsink to keep temperatures in check. Kudos to Telegrapher here, these amplifiers really deliver, there’s headroom for days and it really shows in the exceptional performance and clarity, and that is even at high volume: these things can get very loud if required, in fact a lot louder that I would ever like to or even consider when monitoring!

Listening tests

I took delivery of the speakers, and got in touch with Nick Watson at Fluid mastering in Bristol, UK, who has a lovely professionally designed and treated room and listens through his big PMCs (BB5-XBDA with Bryston Amps). We set the GORILLA’s up next to the PMCs and proceeded to listen to a ton of classic tracks that we knew quite well. We listened to everything…. a slew of classic tracks from all eras. 70s Floyd, Beatles stuff (remasters), The Cure Seventeen Seconds (An album I love, and which is beautifully produced), Duke Ellington Far East Suite, Mingus (Ah Um, Black Saint & The Sinner Lady, Miles Davis (Bitches Brew, In a Silent Way), older stuff like Django and Billie Holiday (to examine the flaws in the recordings which were exposed admirably), some electronic music, Aphex Twin, bits of dance music and a whole load of stuff, including a future Jethro Tull project Nick was mastering at the time of the test. Obviously at Fluid, the comparison between these and the PMCs was quite different. Different speakers, different tonality, different size, but golly, they held their own, even next to those giants.

The bass was tight, and defined, but the palpable presence of the low information was there, unhyped, but I was able to identify the lowest octave of information in the bass. In particular, this low end representation was very impressive in my honest opinion. It is fast, no delay, and even though Nick was used to his existing setup, we both remarked on the bass of these things. It’s really quite fabulous and glorious. The mid range was glorious too, and the detail and articulation heard on some classic records was forensic almost, the sound of fingers on guitar strings, and little background sounds in mixes, flaws and coughs, extraneous ‘mistake’ noises inherent in the original records, studio and room noise was revealed in all its minute detail. There was a certain presence at the 3k region, not strident but definitely a good presence. A very enjoyable experience and they really shone. The transient response was second to none, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to a lot of favourites through them.

I also listened to a whole load of stuff at my modest home studio, which has some decent treatment, and in a more near field capacity, due to the rooms smaller size, and yet, they still sounded great, and made mixing incredibly easy, when I put them through their paces on some material I was working on at the time. The results were revelatory. Subsequently over the next few weeks as I listened to things through them it became apparent to me, that despite their accuracy and listening for extended periods, they were not fatiguing in the slightest and were never anything but a pleasure to sit in front of and run a whole gamut of wildly different program material through, old, new, from all eras and styles, organic and electronic, old school, modern, you name it, I tried running everything I could think of through them and they performed commendably.

I’m not sure if I’ve had this with very accurate speakers before, there’s always a point where I’ve had to take breaks, but with the GORILLAS it really didn’t bother me at all, even after hours of listening. Far out! Suffice to say, after living with them for a good extended period of time, I rather grew to love them quite a lot, and worked on some mixing and mastering projects of my own, and others, and they were easy to work with to the extent that mixing became somewhat of a breeze, and I found myself able to pinpoint accurately certain things in mixing, quickly, and with the minimum of fuss. Their ability to identify things in a mix, flaws, frequency clashes and conflicts, was quick and easy, and the ability to focus on these problematic sonics in program material and mixes was extremely easy.

Taking material I mixed through them afterwards and listening to it on different systems from good vintage hi-fi, to various sets of quality headphones, and even a phone, everything translated really well. I could definitely work on these speakers for mixing, tracking and mastering. I would have no hesitation to do so, in fact they sped up my process, made me not have to second guess, and I found after a while, and some testing things on various systems, I felt quite secure in the fact that if I could get it good on these speakers, then the need for cross referencing was reduced, and I didn’t feel the need to go check on other systems. Very, very cool. Really useful tools indeed. They excelled at all the tasks I could throw at them. I’m impressed, for real!


Conclusions

Do I have any criticisms? Well, not really to be honest! Perhaps there is the fact that they are very heavy, I hurt my back a bit lifting them out of the sturdy crates/boxes that they arrived in - the Gorillas are heavy beasts weighing in at 21 kilos (46Ibs) each! The paint job, although impressive, is subject to easy marking, and certainly as we had to move them around a bit from place to place, in the reviewing process, certain marks did appear, but this is a small criticism really, as if just unboxing them and placing into the desired position in the studio, this shouldn't really be too much of a concern, but it is worth noting, as the paint job seemed delicate, and kid gloves need to be employed to keep them in pristine aesthetic condition. Of course, they are pricey, no doubt, but these are speakers that have been built to be as good as they can be and not designed and manufactured to a price point, so you really are getting what you pay for, and no corners have been cut.

Having had good communication with the team at Telegrapher it’s obvious that they are very proud and passionate about the products they are building, and there is a very thorough vibe going on with these guys and they obvious love what they are achieving with the speakers they are making. The feeling is palpable, and an inspiration, they are really into it. I’m very glad to have had the opportunity to review them and if chance arises, I’d love to hear the other speakers they are manufacturing as I feel this is a company to watch. This is top tier stuff. These are very, very, beautiful sounding, accurate and revealing to a tee, and incredibly useful in various applications, versatile, and elegant speakers.

This level is a rarefied atmosphere, and only for those serious enough to make the investment, but by golly, they’re really nice. The only other speakers, that I’ve had the pleasure to work on in my modest career of making records, mixing, and mastering, that could hold a torch to these are perhaps PMCs and ME Geithain, but these really are worthy of serious consideration, and to my mind at least, these tended to be less fatiguing than both those, even though they also are beautiful sounding and accurate speakers in the high end where these speakers, deservedly, and firmly, reside.

The only question now is how on earth am I going to find the dosh right now to snag them for my studio here, I really don’t want to let them go, so I better see if I can remortgage, or sell my granny, or some of my treasured vintage gear, or something, in order to keep them. Yes, I’m totally serious!

No hesitation in recommending these speakers whatsoever. If you can justify the expense, and are looking at the high end, and need speakers that can do the business, and you are putting together a short list of things to listen to, and you’re getting the work in, you really need to have a listen to these, really.

In one word: bravo!

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