We’ve long been fans of Triangle’s approach to music replay. The company may not always produce the most rounded speakers, but in our experience its products rarely lack entertainment value.
The Titus EZs, the only standmounters in the French company’s new Esprit range, are a fine example.
Build quality
They’re well made and nicely finished. Finish hasn’t always been Triangle’s strength in its more affordable ranges, so it’s nice to see progress here.
If you don’t like the walnut of our review sample, white- or black-gloss alternatives are available for a £100 premium.
Performance
Listen to these standmounters straight out of the box and you might well wonder what the fuss is about. They sound tonally uneven and have a peaky treble that needs little encouragement to sound harsh and aggressive. Triangle has long promoted horn-loaded tweeters so it’s no surprise to find one here. It’s a titanium dome fronted by a distinctive and rather aggressive-looking phase plug.
Give the Titus EZs a couple of days of use and things improve considerably. The speakers’ high frequencies gain in smoothness and integration improves. We would still recommend taking care in partnering electronics (avoiding brighter-sounding kit).
The result, when you do take care, is excellent. We tried a range of amplifiers – from NAD’s D 3020 and Arcam’s A19, right through to our reference Bryston BP26/4B SST2 – and at each stage these Triangle speakers have the transparency to take a notable step up in performance.
They’re small, standing just over 30cm, so really deep bass isn’t on the menu. Accept this innate limitation and you have one of the most articulate and expressive speakers we’ve heard below the £1000 mark.
Positioned around 30cm from a rear wall on some solid stands, the Titus EZ speakers sound fast, responding to leading edges and dynamic shifts with admirable precision. Play a complex piece of music such as Hans Zimmer’s Gotham’s Reckoning and they take it all in their stride, keeping a multitude of instrumental strands under control and refusing to blur things even when the music becomes demanding.
Both large-scale and low-level dynamics are delivered with infectious enthusiasm and no sense of the rounding-off of which many rivals are guilty. The result is an involving sound that pulls you in and holds you until the music ends.
Moving on to Tracy Chapman’s Goodbye shows the Titus’s subtler side. There’s finesse here, with a nuanced rendering of Chapman’s distinctive voice leaving us spellbound. We’re impressed by the way these speakers deliver rhythms and the way they portray changes of pace.
All the energy and drive, particularly in upbeat tracks such as Bruce Springsteen’s Radio Nowhere, is delivered with determined skill.
Verdict
We rate the Triangle Esprit Titus EZs very highly (even if they are harder to track down than alternatives from better-known brands, it’s well worth the effort).
In a suitably-talented system, these classy standmounters will excel.
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