Triangle Manufacture Electroacoustique
Soissons is an hour and a half north east of Paris and seems like a quiet place, it has two cathedrals and one of them still has a roof on, but otherwise it is a typical small French town. But there is plenty going on behind the quiet facades not least loudspeaker production by a brand with over fifty years under its belt and an enthusiastic young MD in the shape of Hugo Decelle. It was he who cycled to the Gare du Nord to meet a group of British journalists off the Eurostar and joined us for the journey to Soissons.

Founded in 1980 by Renaud de Vegnette, Triangle has had its ups and downs but remains an independent company that spends its resources on research and development and produces a range of loudspeakers that has just been joined by a new wireless example. The Capella is a bookshelf two-way that has active drive and can be wirelessly hooked up using the popular Wisa system that we are seeing with a number of brands. Triangle take the trouble to pair each Platin hub with its speakers and the Capella app so that the customer doesn’t have to.

Triangle’s signature has always been the horn loaded metal dome tweeter, a driver normally associated with full horn loudspeaker systems but whose efficiency means that Triangle’s designs are generally less power hungry yet capable of high power handling. The distinctive bullet shaped phase plug is there to minimise directivity and give the tweeter wide dispersion. Another Triangle speciality is speed of sound, they really don’t like overblown bass, the philosophy that making woofer a stop is more important than how fast it starts. It’s an approach that meant up until Renaud retired the biggest drive units Triangle used were 6.5inch, in the original Magellan flagship four of these are used above and below the mid and treble.

In the Soissons facility engineer Sebastian Miquel showed us around his research ‘kitchen’ with its bank of resistor connections for crossover development and studio style window into an anechoic chamber next door. This space is big enough to measure speakers down to 50Hz, if he wants to establish what’s happening lower down the range he uses the university chamber in his home town of Le Mans.

Designer Julian Thaller has a wall of prototype speakers in a room full of projects new and old, among these are variations on the frame that raises the new Capella up so that the reflex port in its base can operate. He uses 3D printing for the prototyping and this has resulted in a very nicely executed aluminium frame with gold anodising that adds a touch of quality to the finished speakers. Combined with the luxurious finishes and matching oval grilles created for the range this gives Capella a look that raises it above expectations for a bookshelf two-way design.

Hugo showed us around the archive of past Triangle products that he has been building up since joining the company, these include some very distinctive looking speakers and even more radical electronics. Sadly the latter never saw the light of production and apparently bankrupted the business in the process. The room also contains the first example of the tall Magellan flagship with a partnering subwoofer for those in search of extra gravitas. The Magellan Grand Concert was the last of its kind and a pair were at the back of the Triangle dem room. What we heard in there was the new wireless Capella which is a fully active design with 50W of power for each drive unit, a DSP crossover and the Platin wireless connection system for £2,299. The DSP means that this speaker can be equalised to suit different environments and listening preferences and the wireless hub acts as a streamer for Spotify, Chromecast and both analogue and digital sources including HDMI (ARC). It uses the Wisa protocol so can be integrated with other systems that use this in a multi room situation.

Sebastian set these speakers up up using the optional Zen microphone and Triangle’s dedicated Capella app and despite the room being quite large and well damped the Capellas delivered plenty of level without difficulty. The frame under each speaker means that a dedicated stand is necessary if they are not put on a shelf or furniture, Triangle have built the S05 stand for this purpose and if memory serves are not charging the earth for it even though there are four colour options to match the various finishes of the speakers.






Jason Kennedy