So you want your music to be fun and exciting? Try these Triangles
Triangle’s speakers tend to be characterful. They are normally not the ones to go for if you are after tonal neutrality or class-leading refinement. But, if you want to have fun, they rarely disappoint. We could end this review right here, as that neatly sums up the Esprit Comete Ez on test here.
What? You want more? Okay, here goes. These speakers enter a tough part of the market. They are up against KEF’s mighty LS50 Meta, which are the current Award winners at this level and among the best all-rounders we have come across in years. There’s also Revel’s excellent M16 and Bowers & Wilkins 606 S2 available at a lower price. So, when we say that the Comete Ez are good enough to be a viable alternative to any of these options, you know that these French boxes deserve to be taken seriously.
Cash-backed construction
Triangle is on something of a golden run at the moment. Its budget Borea range is going great guns, picking up five-star reviews and Awards in the process. In a lot of ways the Comete Ez reminds us of the excellent Borea BR03, but with a far bigger build budget.
That extra money buys a solid and chunky 40cm-tall cabinet that’s deep at just over 32cm. There is a choice of four finish options – walnut, black ash and, for a broadly 25-30 per cent price premium, gloss black or gloss white. While things such as the aluminium rear terminal plate and smart metalwork around the tweeter horn look premium, the finish around some of the cabinet edges could be tidier.
In our experience, it’s in the drive units that Triangle’s products tend to stand out. The company has traditionally prioritised sensitivity and dynamics above all else, and the Comete Ez tows the same line. This explains the use of a horn-loaded tweeter – a type of design that tends to excel in those areas. Here, the tweeter uses a titanium dome with a compression chamber. The engineers have worked hard to improve the design’s dispersion and tried to reduce distortion with the use of a damped chamber behind the dome to absorb all that unwanted rear-firing sound.
This unusual tweeter is partnered with a front-ported 16cm mid/bass unit. It uses a paper cone and is designed to deliver strong dynamics over a wide frequency band. The combination of the horn tweeter and muscular mid/bass results in a relatively high-sensitivity standmounter that is rated at 90dB/W/m and has a claimed nominal impedance of 8 ohms. It should be noted that the speaker’s impedance curve dips dow
