E
earl of sodbury
Guest
System Review: Cairn 4808 amp, Stello CDA320 CD player and Triangle Stratos 260 “Naïa†loudspeakers:
I’d intended to do the usual separate reviews of my new system, but it’s difficult – any one of these components might possibly sound pretty duff slotted into the wrong system, but together they are making sweet-sweet music! So...
Cairn 4808
This is a full-width, French-built silver box (also available in black) with a blue porthole in the front and two mammiform :bouncey:controls to either side of it, while on top a series of six circular grille vents provide rather more than ample cooling to the transistors within. Styling is kind of “Chord liteâ€, but not cheesily so.
Casework is all anodised aluminium, with a simple semi-matt finish on the centimetre-thick alloy front panel, and brushed on the main wrap. Chassis is black-painted steel.
Around the back are 5 RCA inputs plus one XLR, and two RCA preamplified outputs, a tape loop, one set of the usual gold-plated multiway speaker binding posts, plusa dedicated headphone output – something of a rarity at this price level nowadays. All socketry is of decent quality – better than theiffy stuff seen on much similarly-priced equipment nowadays – with plugs fitting good and tight into robust sockets!
The display, for my taste, is the nicest I’ve ever seen – it’s a circular LCD screen in shades of agreeable blue-green. Volume is indicated both by a series of small bars resembling the minute/second digits on a clock and by a numeric log dB scale. Sources are labelled in the usual manner, while a miniscule symbol tells you which output is selected. The display can be switched off, indeed after a set time it switches itself off to save energy, which I find mildly annoying, but display brightness cannot be varied, which is a pity because it could usefully be brighter.
Although all functions can be controlled by the rather ordinary remote control, the main controls are a delight to use. That on the right hand controls on/standby (press and briefly hold) and volume (rotate); the system remembers previous settings when in standby mode, otherwise defaulting to a sensibly low output after a complete power-down. The left hand control defaults to source selection, but if pushed-in will deliver a series of options, including output selection, tape modes, and Left/Right channel balance.
Operation of any of these has absolutely no negative effect on sound whatsoever, and there is no discernable cross-channel interference. A big part of the reason for this is that all internal switching is relay actuated, even the resistor ladder-array volume control – which here is silent unlike other amps that have passed through my hands.
Internally, component quality is high – power is supplied by three transformers: a small encapsulated unit is dedicated to providing power to the pre-amp board, which is mounted behind the front panel; while two disproportionately large toroidals (actually sourced from Toroid in Sweden) supply power to left and right channels – this unit is fully dual-mono. Capacitors are a mixture of polypropylene, a few polyesters and aluminium electrolytics by a variey of middle-ground companies; resistors are all fine tolerance metal film - again from varied sources, while chips and small transistors are an assortment of middle-ranking to cheap – but never low-rent – brands. Functionality seems to have dictated choice throughout.
Component layout gives short signal paths via chunky PCBs, and places the transformers well away from signal circuitry - hidden behind the large thick-walled internal heatsink.
Operation is curious, this is the “Classe A†model (there’s a more-powerful “Face Nord†version), which outputs a mighty 30 Watts using temperature-mediated biasing to provide true class A in the first 10 Watts, A/B over the remainder. In operation this manifests itself as unexpectedly cool running (barely gets tepid no matter how hard it is driven - in stark contrast with the Musical Fidelity X-kit it replaces), with a warm smooth top end, and very liquid and articulate mids and most notably lower frequencies – which are uncommonly supple.
I’ve tried it with a variety of loudspeakers from Neat Elites to the mighty Focal Nova Utopias, and its sound clearly favours large, sensitive loudspeakers, preferably built in France! The Triangles provide a match made in… well… Zone Industrielle Les Etomelles to be exact – the same industrial estate as Cairn, and given the two companies use one-another’s kit in development, some useful synergy is to be expected…
…And that expectation is lived up to. The Cairn amp is indecently punchy in the bass for something of such seemingly low output: with the Triangles in its grip and suitable music playing, genuine visceral impact is achieved without strain or congestion.
Mids are superbly articulate – though not impinging on the best valve or fully class A kit, they at least give the latter something to think about – vocals in particular can be unnervingly convincing: plays can have me leaping to answer the phone or go to the door if my attention wanders… Oh well, I need the exercise…
Compared to a lot of solid state kit the top end is warm and even very slightly fuzzy – it’s here that the Cairn will be loved or loathed. Personally I’m tired of shrieky squeaky trannies, so it has come as a great relief to me - and not one I am growing tired of. Again synergy with the Triangles’ horn-loaded Titanium tweeter is a big part of the answer: nothing seems to be missing, yet nothing splits the eardrum unless the mastering engineer intended it… (the git)
Stello CDA320
In some respects the Stello CDA320 bears a remarkable likeness to the Cairn amp – same “soft†looking silver finish to the thick, full-width aluminium front panel, same brushed alloy wrap, even the buttons are rounded and mammiform – if smaller than the Cairn’s pair of whoppers.
The display is an old-style and fairly basic blue fluorescent – it is at leastreasonably clear, but is annoyingly bright, and cannot be either dimmed or switched-off: this is by far my biggest source of annoyance with this machine – so pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things.
Sonically, when teamed with other amps, its soundbears some resemblance to the Cairn, perhaps due to its fully balanced class-A output stage, but more of that later.
Physically it’s a big brute, both significantly taller and deeper than the amp, and weighing nearly as much, and that space is not for show, as the interior is packed. Besides "red-book" CDs, it's happy with PCM CD-Rs and CD-RWs, but not much else - HDCD, MP3, SACD and DVD-A formats are not utilised.
The CDA320 is a versatile piece of kit – it’s a 24 bit non-upsampling CD player, it’s a 24 bit 96KHz upsampling CD player, it’s a 24 bit 192KHz upsampling CD player, and it’s a DAC with the same options – one that can accept 3 different external digital sources (2 x Toslink, 1 x RCA)! And its final output can be rendered via unbalanced RCAs or fully-balanced XLRs…
If that smacks of gimmickry don’t despair, because MOST of it works very well indeed – the exception arguably being the switchable upsampling, which even though using discrete circuits with quite different chips, makes only sonically insignificant changes to the sound. I tend to stick with 24/192 as this gives the best soundstaging and most usefully extended and “airy†treble. 24/96 can seem more “organic†somehow, and 24/0 can avoid congestion in a few tracks – but the differences are not to me important.
However this machine’s ability as a versatile DAC is one hell of a godsend if you use other digital sources. In particular DAB radio has been transformed beyond what I would think possible – it’s not just listenable, it’s thoroughly enjoyable! Even lower bitrate stations sound good, and with my current (admittedly budget) tuner, I now much prefer the DAB versions of radios 3 and 4 to their FM progenitors.
Inside the box is scarcely any floorspace (MF: get your coat:minikiev
– boards are packed, power supplies carefully regulated with each subsection getting its own regulated supply, while overall the digital and analogue stages are as discrete as possible – each having its own dedicated toroidal transformer. The transport and laser are the familiar Philips VAM 1202/16, though I note the associated digital board seems better specified than the otherwise identical unit in the MF X-RayV3.
Component quality isalso very good, with notably pricey regulators sprinkled around, Burr-Brown op-amps, and a clearly carefully-selected mixture of metal and carbon film resistors, often significantly over-specced. Board layout places digital and analogue sections well apart at the cost of slightly more tortuous signal paths.
Sonically, this player had to slot into a familiar system which used a much-modified MF X-RayV3 as transport, much-modified X-DACv3 (24/192) and very-much modified X-10v3 tube buffer with external power supplies for the latter two, giving a 4-box system capable of performing well beyond its original price range. Add to that that I didn’t expect the Stello to sound much different because, in common with a few forumites, I’d become quite jaded about the sonic differences (or lack) between widely-differing CDPs – not least because the Stello used an identical drive to the MF.
So maybe it’s that class-A output stage mentioned earlier, or maybe it’s some deep secret ofpainstaking design, or maybe it's a woo-woo mystery of system synergy - I don’t know, but what I do know is that the Stello takes what the MF kit could do – tremendous insight and detail, and adds levels of pace, drive, rhythm and musical involvement that the MF never had. At the same time the Stello subtracts the MF’s ruthlessness – gone is the searing treble and glare of early CD masters. Add to that the one-box convenience and the transformation of digital radio, and for my needs at least the CDA 320 is true World Class audio!
Triangle Naïa loudspeakers
Triangle make a lot of loudspeakers that shouldn’t work – teetering 9 foot tall pillars with whole driver arrays hidden round the back, and massive standmounts that can do bass in room down to 25Hz but can be a bitch to integrate. The hifi press reacts accordingly, with suspicion and scepticism, at least until they hear them, then they lavish praise. Likewise the buying public are wary of big brash floorstanders where far more has been spent on the drive units and crossovers than on the charcoal painted baffles and vinyl-wrapped cabinets of their best-known “Esprit†range. And they’re French, too…
I was one of those, and in spite of a number of people who actually know what they’re talking about espousing their virtues, I kept a closed mind right up to the point when I first heard the Cairn amp, and discovered Cairn’s relationship with Triangle…
But why the Naïas? Well that’s pure happy accident – until I checked Triangle importers UKD’s website (http://www.ukd.co.uk/) I didn’t even know they existed! But there they were – Graaf had ordered a pair of them as demonstrators, changed their mind about finish and cancelled these and ordered another colour. So a brand new pair of speakers for half price, in beautiful real cherrywood veneer.
Only one small problem – they were far too big for my tiny house..
In theory…
Bollocks to theory – only one way to find out…. Well nigh killed me lugging around those damn great 40 Kilo boxes on my own, but am I ever glad I did, because they’ve proved to be the speakers I’ve been hoping for!
The Naïas are second up the Stratos range, which sits between the much better-known and excellent Esprits, and the super high-end Magellans. They utilise much-braced 22mm MDF/HDF cabinets with flawless real wood veneers, and drivers slightly dumbed-down from the Magellan range.
The main drivers are based on massively strong 6-inch diameter cast-alloy baskets, huge magnets, and cellulose cones; the midrange driver adds low hysteresis fabric surrounds and a fixed rubber phase-plug, while the 2 bass drivers use neoprene surrounds and dome-in-cellulose-cone diaphragms. Treble is provided by a large, time aligned cast-alloy horn-loaded titanium diaphragm compression unit, which weighs more than the bass units in most of the speakers I’ve owned before…
They are true 3-ways, with the enclosure divided into 2 - the smaller upper part embracing the treble and midrange drivers is unvented, while the much larger lower chamberhas a single large front port to enhance the bass; both chambers are undamped, making the cabinet a little lively at times, but benefitting in a very fast, open sound. They stand a not insubstantial 1.2 metres high in their socks, and are a little wider than average nowadays, and deep as well….
Crossovers are complex, fourth-order double-decker designs that use quality PIO caps etc., mounted to the very solid cast-alloy binding-post holders: even the bits you don’t see are beautifully put together. Sensitivity is high at 93dB, but impedance can drop near 4 Ohms, though is nominally 8 Ohms. In practice, 30 Watts is Plenty!
They also come supplied with complicated cast alloy bases with a huge spike at the front plus four more in an outrigger arrangement: I’ve yet to actually assemble and try these as they simply sound great on my home-made isolating platforms, and are a little less visually intrusive that way!
Much is made in the hifi press and amongst self-appointed pundits of “brightness†in Triangle speakers, and I almost sort of agree – they certainly leave nothing out in the upper ranges, but what they never do in my system is get shrill, shouty or metallic: they simply refuse to cause me acoustic pain at any time – I just can’t say that of any other pair of speakers I’ve ever had in my system!
Midrange too is utterly adorable – due in no small part to that dedicated midrange driver. I Really like proper 3-way speakers, they appeal to the head, because drivers can be more carefully tuned to their task with a narrower bandwidth to handle, and they appeal to my heart, because in my experience they simply sound more convincingly musical and real.
But bass is where the surprise lies – it should overwhelm in my small front room, but it never does: the bass simply never booms – even when it’s forcing your liver up into your ribcage! It’s very controlled – these are not in-your-face bass-monsters - but not dry or light in any way. It is very lyrical – obviously that’s in no small part the work of the amplifier, but for the amp to do its best the drive units must be both powerful and easy to control: quite a difficult thing to reconcile in practice. First impression will depend on music played, too, because what these transducers do give you as near as they can, is just the music on the disc – if there’s no low bass, you won’t hear Any, but if there is it goes loooooooooooooow….....a test track that kicks-in at 25Hz is immediately audible in-room on start-up…
Another criticism I’ve seen levelled at larger Triangles is that they tend to stratify sound – meaning all treble at one altitude, all mid next, then bass lower down. This is as fine a piece of psychoacoustic babble as I’ve seen: occasionally imaging may coincide to give something of that impression, but what these speakers do more than anything I’ve heard this side of a giant pair of Focals on a super high-end system, is to layer the soundstage top to bottom, as well as side-to-side and front-to-back. The effect is downright strange on some recordings, being chiefly the result of studio tinkerings, but where a more natural acoustic exists, then voices and instruments are presented just where they ought to be. The soundstage has all of the dimensionality my room can allow - scale, presence and height like no-other I've yet used.
Similarly, it’s often said that the dispersion of horn-loaded tweeters is very beam-like. While that may be true of some, the Naïas are noticeably less directional than both of their predecessors (silk dome and area-drive ribbon respectively); indeed they’re pretty unfussy about room position, though due probably to room modes I do like to get in just as close to these as I did with the PMCs – mebbe it’s just me?
Golly, I do like these!
In summary, for the (ex-dem) price I paid for this (nearly) new system I could buy a boring-but-effective secondhand car of about 5 years age – so to some I have been hopelessly extravagant (especially considering the growing decrepitude of my own vehicle); similarly in the Ship of Audiophools, the sum spent is trivial compared to many. But for me this is Baby Bear’s Porridge: music is my chief recreation, I don’t give a stuff about cars, I don’t even have a telly, so this is just right – if I get fair prices for my previous kit I shouldn’t be much out of pocket, and the new ensemble would for me be Very difficult to beat*. Just witness all of the sleepless nights lately… Are You still playing Your music when the cocks start crowing?
Pleased of Sodbury :green:
*feel free to quote me in 6 months time!
I’d intended to do the usual separate reviews of my new system, but it’s difficult – any one of these components might possibly sound pretty duff slotted into the wrong system, but together they are making sweet-sweet music! So...
Cairn 4808
This is a full-width, French-built silver box (also available in black) with a blue porthole in the front and two mammiform :bouncey:controls to either side of it, while on top a series of six circular grille vents provide rather more than ample cooling to the transistors within. Styling is kind of “Chord liteâ€, but not cheesily so.
Casework is all anodised aluminium, with a simple semi-matt finish on the centimetre-thick alloy front panel, and brushed on the main wrap. Chassis is black-painted steel.
Around the back are 5 RCA inputs plus one XLR, and two RCA preamplified outputs, a tape loop, one set of the usual gold-plated multiway speaker binding posts, plusa dedicated headphone output – something of a rarity at this price level nowadays. All socketry is of decent quality – better than theiffy stuff seen on much similarly-priced equipment nowadays – with plugs fitting good and tight into robust sockets!
The display, for my taste, is the nicest I’ve ever seen – it’s a circular LCD screen in shades of agreeable blue-green. Volume is indicated both by a series of small bars resembling the minute/second digits on a clock and by a numeric log dB scale. Sources are labelled in the usual manner, while a miniscule symbol tells you which output is selected. The display can be switched off, indeed after a set time it switches itself off to save energy, which I find mildly annoying, but display brightness cannot be varied, which is a pity because it could usefully be brighter.
Although all functions can be controlled by the rather ordinary remote control, the main controls are a delight to use. That on the right hand controls on/standby (press and briefly hold) and volume (rotate); the system remembers previous settings when in standby mode, otherwise defaulting to a sensibly low output after a complete power-down. The left hand control defaults to source selection, but if pushed-in will deliver a series of options, including output selection, tape modes, and Left/Right channel balance.
Operation of any of these has absolutely no negative effect on sound whatsoever, and there is no discernable cross-channel interference. A big part of the reason for this is that all internal switching is relay actuated, even the resistor ladder-array volume control – which here is silent unlike other amps that have passed through my hands.
Internally, component quality is high – power is supplied by three transformers: a small encapsulated unit is dedicated to providing power to the pre-amp board, which is mounted behind the front panel; while two disproportionately large toroidals (actually sourced from Toroid in Sweden) supply power to left and right channels – this unit is fully dual-mono. Capacitors are a mixture of polypropylene, a few polyesters and aluminium electrolytics by a variey of middle-ground companies; resistors are all fine tolerance metal film - again from varied sources, while chips and small transistors are an assortment of middle-ranking to cheap – but never low-rent – brands. Functionality seems to have dictated choice throughout.
Component layout gives short signal paths via chunky PCBs, and places the transformers well away from signal circuitry - hidden behind the large thick-walled internal heatsink.
Operation is curious, this is the “Classe A†model (there’s a more-powerful “Face Nord†version), which outputs a mighty 30 Watts using temperature-mediated biasing to provide true class A in the first 10 Watts, A/B over the remainder. In operation this manifests itself as unexpectedly cool running (barely gets tepid no matter how hard it is driven - in stark contrast with the Musical Fidelity X-kit it replaces), with a warm smooth top end, and very liquid and articulate mids and most notably lower frequencies – which are uncommonly supple.
I’ve tried it with a variety of loudspeakers from Neat Elites to the mighty Focal Nova Utopias, and its sound clearly favours large, sensitive loudspeakers, preferably built in France! The Triangles provide a match made in… well… Zone Industrielle Les Etomelles to be exact – the same industrial estate as Cairn, and given the two companies use one-another’s kit in development, some useful synergy is to be expected…
…And that expectation is lived up to. The Cairn amp is indecently punchy in the bass for something of such seemingly low output: with the Triangles in its grip and suitable music playing, genuine visceral impact is achieved without strain or congestion.
Mids are superbly articulate – though not impinging on the best valve or fully class A kit, they at least give the latter something to think about – vocals in particular can be unnervingly convincing: plays can have me leaping to answer the phone or go to the door if my attention wanders… Oh well, I need the exercise…
Compared to a lot of solid state kit the top end is warm and even very slightly fuzzy – it’s here that the Cairn will be loved or loathed. Personally I’m tired of shrieky squeaky trannies, so it has come as a great relief to me - and not one I am growing tired of. Again synergy with the Triangles’ horn-loaded Titanium tweeter is a big part of the answer: nothing seems to be missing, yet nothing splits the eardrum unless the mastering engineer intended it… (the git)
Stello CDA320
In some respects the Stello CDA320 bears a remarkable likeness to the Cairn amp – same “soft†looking silver finish to the thick, full-width aluminium front panel, same brushed alloy wrap, even the buttons are rounded and mammiform – if smaller than the Cairn’s pair of whoppers.
The display is an old-style and fairly basic blue fluorescent – it is at leastreasonably clear, but is annoyingly bright, and cannot be either dimmed or switched-off: this is by far my biggest source of annoyance with this machine – so pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things.
Sonically, when teamed with other amps, its soundbears some resemblance to the Cairn, perhaps due to its fully balanced class-A output stage, but more of that later.
Physically it’s a big brute, both significantly taller and deeper than the amp, and weighing nearly as much, and that space is not for show, as the interior is packed. Besides "red-book" CDs, it's happy with PCM CD-Rs and CD-RWs, but not much else - HDCD, MP3, SACD and DVD-A formats are not utilised.
The CDA320 is a versatile piece of kit – it’s a 24 bit non-upsampling CD player, it’s a 24 bit 96KHz upsampling CD player, it’s a 24 bit 192KHz upsampling CD player, and it’s a DAC with the same options – one that can accept 3 different external digital sources (2 x Toslink, 1 x RCA)! And its final output can be rendered via unbalanced RCAs or fully-balanced XLRs…
If that smacks of gimmickry don’t despair, because MOST of it works very well indeed – the exception arguably being the switchable upsampling, which even though using discrete circuits with quite different chips, makes only sonically insignificant changes to the sound. I tend to stick with 24/192 as this gives the best soundstaging and most usefully extended and “airy†treble. 24/96 can seem more “organic†somehow, and 24/0 can avoid congestion in a few tracks – but the differences are not to me important.
However this machine’s ability as a versatile DAC is one hell of a godsend if you use other digital sources. In particular DAB radio has been transformed beyond what I would think possible – it’s not just listenable, it’s thoroughly enjoyable! Even lower bitrate stations sound good, and with my current (admittedly budget) tuner, I now much prefer the DAB versions of radios 3 and 4 to their FM progenitors.
Inside the box is scarcely any floorspace (MF: get your coat:minikiev
– boards are packed, power supplies carefully regulated with each subsection getting its own regulated supply, while overall the digital and analogue stages are as discrete as possible – each having its own dedicated toroidal transformer. The transport and laser are the familiar Philips VAM 1202/16, though I note the associated digital board seems better specified than the otherwise identical unit in the MF X-RayV3.Component quality isalso very good, with notably pricey regulators sprinkled around, Burr-Brown op-amps, and a clearly carefully-selected mixture of metal and carbon film resistors, often significantly over-specced. Board layout places digital and analogue sections well apart at the cost of slightly more tortuous signal paths.
Sonically, this player had to slot into a familiar system which used a much-modified MF X-RayV3 as transport, much-modified X-DACv3 (24/192) and very-much modified X-10v3 tube buffer with external power supplies for the latter two, giving a 4-box system capable of performing well beyond its original price range. Add to that that I didn’t expect the Stello to sound much different because, in common with a few forumites, I’d become quite jaded about the sonic differences (or lack) between widely-differing CDPs – not least because the Stello used an identical drive to the MF.
So maybe it’s that class-A output stage mentioned earlier, or maybe it’s some deep secret ofpainstaking design, or maybe it's a woo-woo mystery of system synergy - I don’t know, but what I do know is that the Stello takes what the MF kit could do – tremendous insight and detail, and adds levels of pace, drive, rhythm and musical involvement that the MF never had. At the same time the Stello subtracts the MF’s ruthlessness – gone is the searing treble and glare of early CD masters. Add to that the one-box convenience and the transformation of digital radio, and for my needs at least the CDA 320 is true World Class audio!
Triangle Naïa loudspeakers
Triangle make a lot of loudspeakers that shouldn’t work – teetering 9 foot tall pillars with whole driver arrays hidden round the back, and massive standmounts that can do bass in room down to 25Hz but can be a bitch to integrate. The hifi press reacts accordingly, with suspicion and scepticism, at least until they hear them, then they lavish praise. Likewise the buying public are wary of big brash floorstanders where far more has been spent on the drive units and crossovers than on the charcoal painted baffles and vinyl-wrapped cabinets of their best-known “Esprit†range. And they’re French, too…
I was one of those, and in spite of a number of people who actually know what they’re talking about espousing their virtues, I kept a closed mind right up to the point when I first heard the Cairn amp, and discovered Cairn’s relationship with Triangle…
But why the Naïas? Well that’s pure happy accident – until I checked Triangle importers UKD’s website (http://www.ukd.co.uk/) I didn’t even know they existed! But there they were – Graaf had ordered a pair of them as demonstrators, changed their mind about finish and cancelled these and ordered another colour. So a brand new pair of speakers for half price, in beautiful real cherrywood veneer.
Only one small problem – they were far too big for my tiny house..
In theory…
Bollocks to theory – only one way to find out…. Well nigh killed me lugging around those damn great 40 Kilo boxes on my own, but am I ever glad I did, because they’ve proved to be the speakers I’ve been hoping for!
The Naïas are second up the Stratos range, which sits between the much better-known and excellent Esprits, and the super high-end Magellans. They utilise much-braced 22mm MDF/HDF cabinets with flawless real wood veneers, and drivers slightly dumbed-down from the Magellan range.
The main drivers are based on massively strong 6-inch diameter cast-alloy baskets, huge magnets, and cellulose cones; the midrange driver adds low hysteresis fabric surrounds and a fixed rubber phase-plug, while the 2 bass drivers use neoprene surrounds and dome-in-cellulose-cone diaphragms. Treble is provided by a large, time aligned cast-alloy horn-loaded titanium diaphragm compression unit, which weighs more than the bass units in most of the speakers I’ve owned before…
They are true 3-ways, with the enclosure divided into 2 - the smaller upper part embracing the treble and midrange drivers is unvented, while the much larger lower chamberhas a single large front port to enhance the bass; both chambers are undamped, making the cabinet a little lively at times, but benefitting in a very fast, open sound. They stand a not insubstantial 1.2 metres high in their socks, and are a little wider than average nowadays, and deep as well….
Crossovers are complex, fourth-order double-decker designs that use quality PIO caps etc., mounted to the very solid cast-alloy binding-post holders: even the bits you don’t see are beautifully put together. Sensitivity is high at 93dB, but impedance can drop near 4 Ohms, though is nominally 8 Ohms. In practice, 30 Watts is Plenty!
They also come supplied with complicated cast alloy bases with a huge spike at the front plus four more in an outrigger arrangement: I’ve yet to actually assemble and try these as they simply sound great on my home-made isolating platforms, and are a little less visually intrusive that way!
Much is made in the hifi press and amongst self-appointed pundits of “brightness†in Triangle speakers, and I almost sort of agree – they certainly leave nothing out in the upper ranges, but what they never do in my system is get shrill, shouty or metallic: they simply refuse to cause me acoustic pain at any time – I just can’t say that of any other pair of speakers I’ve ever had in my system!
Midrange too is utterly adorable – due in no small part to that dedicated midrange driver. I Really like proper 3-way speakers, they appeal to the head, because drivers can be more carefully tuned to their task with a narrower bandwidth to handle, and they appeal to my heart, because in my experience they simply sound more convincingly musical and real.
But bass is where the surprise lies – it should overwhelm in my small front room, but it never does: the bass simply never booms – even when it’s forcing your liver up into your ribcage! It’s very controlled – these are not in-your-face bass-monsters - but not dry or light in any way. It is very lyrical – obviously that’s in no small part the work of the amplifier, but for the amp to do its best the drive units must be both powerful and easy to control: quite a difficult thing to reconcile in practice. First impression will depend on music played, too, because what these transducers do give you as near as they can, is just the music on the disc – if there’s no low bass, you won’t hear Any, but if there is it goes loooooooooooooow….....a test track that kicks-in at 25Hz is immediately audible in-room on start-up…
Another criticism I’ve seen levelled at larger Triangles is that they tend to stratify sound – meaning all treble at one altitude, all mid next, then bass lower down. This is as fine a piece of psychoacoustic babble as I’ve seen: occasionally imaging may coincide to give something of that impression, but what these speakers do more than anything I’ve heard this side of a giant pair of Focals on a super high-end system, is to layer the soundstage top to bottom, as well as side-to-side and front-to-back. The effect is downright strange on some recordings, being chiefly the result of studio tinkerings, but where a more natural acoustic exists, then voices and instruments are presented just where they ought to be. The soundstage has all of the dimensionality my room can allow - scale, presence and height like no-other I've yet used.
Similarly, it’s often said that the dispersion of horn-loaded tweeters is very beam-like. While that may be true of some, the Naïas are noticeably less directional than both of their predecessors (silk dome and area-drive ribbon respectively); indeed they’re pretty unfussy about room position, though due probably to room modes I do like to get in just as close to these as I did with the PMCs – mebbe it’s just me?
Golly, I do like these!
In summary, for the (ex-dem) price I paid for this (nearly) new system I could buy a boring-but-effective secondhand car of about 5 years age – so to some I have been hopelessly extravagant (especially considering the growing decrepitude of my own vehicle); similarly in the Ship of Audiophools, the sum spent is trivial compared to many. But for me this is Baby Bear’s Porridge: music is my chief recreation, I don’t give a stuff about cars, I don’t even have a telly, so this is just right – if I get fair prices for my previous kit I shouldn’t be much out of pocket, and the new ensemble would for me be Very difficult to beat*. Just witness all of the sleepless nights lately… Are You still playing Your music when the cocks start crowing?
Pleased of Sodbury :green:
*feel free to quote me in 6 months time!
