ACA Trinity:
The suckers are big too! I don't think Hugh does anything little ... I've seen all the pictures of these things but didn't realize how big they were until I unboxed them and got them on their stands. They really are deep! It's not a bad thing at all, just an observation. I personally like the imposing size. Of course, I have Mini's and an X-Voce and I think they're a bit on the small side Fit and finish is classic Sound Art China (whose building the cabinets for ACA): Beautiful veneer, perfect seams, sturdy, overall very top quality. You'd have to spend A LOT more to get better cabinets.
Onto the sound (what matters). These have an extremely different tonal character than my Mini's. Go figure, they remind me a lot of the Onix REF3's I will let Hugh give the background of these but basically they were originally designed as a center channel to match with the REF3's, minus the ERT supertweeter. They use the same 7" Atohm drivers and Vifa XT tweet as the REF3's. I haven't heard these with the REF3's yet but I think they would make a much better center than the old REF100 that was the standard center for the REF series.
The Vifa tweeter has much more sparkle and resolution than the top end of my Mini's. At first it appeared to me too bright but after enough listening I realized they weren't too bright but were bringing forth details that were pushed down to almost inaudibility with my Mini's. The bass on the Trinity wasn't as deep as the Mini's (40hz for Trinity vs 27hz for the Mini's) but was much more clearly defined. I've found the Mini's bass to be good at low levels but tends to get too boomy at higher levels. This did not come out with the Trinity as they were much more controlled through the entire operating range than my Mini's. Bass was hard hitting and detailed without getting bloated. I really liked the resolution these presented.
For HT, I have to say my room has never sounded so good. Everyone commented that my room is overly bright as I have no room treatments. With my Bostons that are usually in that room it doesn't appear to me to be much of a problem With the greater resolution of the Trinity, the room did seem to be too bright in certain scenes. Since these were designed originally as a center its critical to know how they do in that application. Verdict: LIGHT YEARS AHEAD OF THE OLD REF100! I used to have the REF100. I liked it as it had great vocal detail. Virtually everything else was very "boxy" in its presentation. It always sounded like the dialog/effects/etc was coming from a box rather than coming from the screen. The Trinity CS does not suffer from this. My eyes were constantly locked to the screen and the sound seemed to naturally come from the center of the screen, not from below the screen as its set up in my room. I have to say, the full setup was incredibly coherent. Panning was completely seamless and they simply presented a wall of sound. I sat mostly off center and it did not appear to me that off axis intelligibility suffered at all. I don't think my room has ever sounded as good as it does right now. I really don't want to send these speakers back!!