How do you like your speakers? Unobtrusive, blending into the background but delivering fantastic sound? How about a statement piece that you could make the focal point of your living room—but that still delivers a great 360-degree sound?

Well, the TreSound1 from Trettitre is just what you've been looking for, a beautifully crafted conical speaker that will look at home in any office, living room, or kitchen. Complete with a unique three-way speaker design to ensure a balanced listening experience, the TreSound1 is certainly eye-catching, but how does it stack up as an actual speaker? Is it all looks and no substance?

Design and Style

Let's dive into the first thing you notice about the TreSound1: its conical design. Inspired by mountain ranges, the TreSound1's circular base and sloping sides immediately set the speaker apart from the regular black and gray rectangular boxes you'll find elsewhere. No, the TreSound1 uses a conical design that immediately sets it apart, the circular tones helping it blend into a room.

The TreSound1 is available in three colors at launch: Snow Peak, Majestic Mountain, and Green Hill. Each option looks sublime, and the Snow Peak version sent to us for review is the cleanest design of the three. Interestingly, Trettitre has opted for what they're calling a "piano paint finish," which gives the exterior of the TreSound1 a wonderfully smooth and reflective surface. The white finish on the bottom half of the speaker means the TreSound1 reflects light and adds to your lighting setup, drawing your eyes towards the mountain, as it were.

You'll note the speaker features two different textures. Above the polished bottom half is a metal mesh covering the tweeters and speakers. The mesh, manufactured from 304 stainless steel, adds a nice touch to the TreSound1 and is also vital for airflow into and out of the speaker unit.

Now, the TreSound1 isn't the smallest speaker around. It stands 400mm (15.74 inches) tall, and its base is 300mm (11.81 inches) wide. It's not an absolute behemoth, and it doesn't take up nearly the same room as a standing floor speaker would, but it's worth picturing where you'll feature it before purchasing. It also weighs 6kg (13.22 lbs), which again, isn't heaps, just make sure you account for that if you're going to place the TreSound1 on a specific ledge, shelf, or unit.

One feature I really like is the low-level LED lighting ring found around the bottom of the unit. It's not an RGB lighting ring, which some users would definitely prefer, but the white light adds a nice delicate edge to the speaker.

Another nice touch for the Trettitre TreSound1 is the sound control dial at the top of the cone. The metal peak is easy to turn and means you can control the sound with the turn of a dial. There is a small orange light at the top of the TreSound1 indicating your Bluetooth connection status. While this is absolutely a minute point, matching that light with the LED lighting at the bottom of the speaker would have been a nice touch, but it's far from an actual issue.

Connectivity

Connectivity comes from Bluetooth 5.1, which isn't the very latest Bluetooth version at the time of review but is more than good enough to maintain a proper connection to your devices for audio playback. It'll also connect quickly when you attempt to pair, and during playback, there were almost zero glitches or dropouts.

The main Bluetooth codec in use here is aptX HD, though regular aptX, SBC, and AAC are also available. Trettitre's TreSound1 documentation doesn't really make the use of aptX HD clear, yet the high-resolution Bluetooth codec is definitely in use, which means you can use the TreSound1 to stream 24bit/96kHz audio. Of course, you'll need a high-res audio streaming service (like Tidal or Qobuz) or music stored locally that uses high-res audio formats like FLAC.

Whether or not you can hear the difference between high-res audio and "regular" audio is another question entirely. You're definitely going to get more quality using aptX and aptX HD versus AAC and SBC, as both aptX and aptX HD transmit at a higher bitrate than those two standardized Bluetooth codecs. For example, AAC has a maximum bitrate of 264 kbps, while aptX's maximum bitrate is 352 kbps. That figure rises to 576 kbps with aptX HD, and the bit depth increases from 16-bit to 24-bit. When it comes to bit depth, higher is better and allows for greater clarity and detail throughout your music, so it's worth using where you can.

In that, it's good to see Trettitre including aptX and aptX HD. The conical speaker isn't an audiophile piece of hardware, but the company is definitely taking audio output seriously and wants your music to sound as good as possible through its speaker.

Of course, if wireless audio listening isn't your cup of tea, you can always use the TreSound1's 3.5mm input.

Sound Quality

Onto the main event: how does the Trettitre TreSound1 sound? Is this mountainous music player capable of outputting audio as it was meant to sound?

First, consider the hardware inside the TreSound1. Trettitre's circular speaker requires audio to emanate from the entire unit rather than focusing on a single direction. As such, the TreSound1 includes a multi-speaker design covering the entire unit, housing two 1.25" tweeters and two 2.25" full-frequency speakers behind the metal mesh, and a separate 5.25" subwoofer in the wooden base. The result is a conical, circular speaker that, remarkably, sounds exactly the same, no matter where you stand.

It's not mind-blowing technology, but it is cool, works well, and makes the TreSound1 a useful speaker to have at a party or in the garden when you have people milling around in different places.

Trettitre really wanted to push the bass with the TreSound1. You'll find marketing images with cups next to the TreSound1 displaying perfect concentric circles rippling outwards, which is a little overkill. The bass on the TreSound1 is decent, but I wouldn't go so far as to say perfection. The multi-speaker, combined-chamber design of the TreSound1 means that, at times, the all-important low-end is lost as it mixes with the mids and top-end, all of which use the same metal mesh to escape through and draw air through. The result is that it feels like the bass is overly competing with other areas of the EQ for relevance, despite Trettitre's best efforts to make it boom.

Then, at other times, it sounds perfectly clear and really does get your table rumbling with low-end, you can feel the bass pulsing through your keyboard as you type and the subtleties of the sub-bass found in dance music and other genres are evident.

It's a similar story for the top-end, though for a different reason. Without being completely balanced with the bass, the top-end can sometimes overwhelm the overall sound—but again, not all of the time. Interestingly, the mid-range of the TreSound1 is probably the most balanced area of all. When listening to complex arrangements, the spacious mid-range provides ample room for individual instruments to shine through, allowing most compositions to sound accurate throughout.

Overall, the TreSound1 is a good listen. It won't become your go-to for all audio experiences, and the sound output isn't what you'd call flat or neutral. But then, it's not overwhelmingly tuned at either end of the spectrum, either. The audio curve for the TreSound1 doesn't swoop down from the low-end, through the mids, and rise towards the high-end, so most of the time, the music you hear is pushing towards a faithful representation.

It's Time to Buy a Conical Mountain Range Speaker

Trettitre's TreSound1 is first available for purchase through their Indiegogo campaign, which will run from May 17 through June 17, 2022. If you're early, you can pick the TreSound1 up at the Super Early Bird price of $399.99 (50 orders) or the Early Bird Price of $449.99 (200 orders).

The actual retail price of the TreSound1 is $799, which means the TreSound1 definitely isn't the cheapest bit of audio hardware to consider. But, consider the outright strengths of the TreSound1 before you balk at the cost.

First, it is a great-looking bit of kit. Whether the mountain-inspired design speaks to you or not will depend on your personal taste and perhaps whether you think there's a space in your home for this wonderfully-crafted speaker to occupy. It would certainly become a statement piece, drawing the eye of visitors.

Second, although the idea of "360-degree" sound is a bit of a gimmick, it is something that Trettitre has had to work with and think about, and the multiple speakers and tweeter combination enable the TreSound1 to deliver the same sound, no matter when you stand. When you consider that most speakers are directional and you sit in front of them or near them to experience the best sound quality (and many speakers come with recommended listening distance suggestions), that this circular unit pushes out audio equally without issue is a neat party trick.

Finally, the TreSound1 does sound good. It's not sublime audiophile quality, but it works well. The longer you listen, the more your ears adjust to the speaker configuration, and your audio improves in quality over time.

So, the Trettitre TreSound1 might not be the first speaker you think of when you hit the shops, but its unique features, stylish circular design, and polished finish definitely make it worth your consideration.