Triangle Antal Anniversaire 40th Loudspeaker Review

Posted on 21st January, 2022
Triangle Antal Anniversaire 40th Loudspeaker Review

Rafael Todes samples this swish new French floorstanding loudspeaker…

Triangle

Antal 40th Anniversary

Floorstanding Loudspeakers

£3,000

Triangle Antal 40th Anniversary Loudspeaker Review

Triangle is celebrating forty years of success with the Antal Anniversaire 40th floorstander and the Comète Anniversaire 40th, a smaller standmount version. The company was founded in 1980 by Renaud de Vergnette and is located in the town of Soissons, sixty miles northeast of Paris. I visited the factory a few years ago and was impressed by the sizeable anechoic chamber and the use of a 3D printer to test and listen to subtle changes in the design of the tweeter caps, as well as the care with which the engineers listened to tiny changes in the speakers' build.

The £3,000 Antal is an impressively turned out three-way, four-driver speaker. My review pair looked striking in its highly-polished Rosewood finish; with Sycamore being your alternative option. There can't be many speakers in this price range that have this quality of finish. There is a copper tag on the front baffle that proudly disports the speaker's name and a plinth upon which the speaker sits, connected to a spiked black glass platform to minimise resonance. Sensitivity is quoted at a healthy 92dB/w/m, which should make it relatively easy to drive, especially considering its claimed 8 ohm nominal impedance.

Triangle Antal 40th Anniversary Loudspeaker Review

This anniversary edition differs from the standard Antal Ez (£1,899) – now in its seventh iteration – in several important ways. The tweeter is of the horn-loaded compression variety, with a 25mm rose gold anodised magnesium alloy dome. Previously this used heavier titanium, so distortion should be down and transient speed up. For the bass drivers, Triangle previously used a 135mm cellulose pulp membrane cone, but the updated cones fitted to this are a composite of pulp, carbon, fibre and flax, mounted on rubber suspensions. All drive units are built in-house. There is a front-facing reflex port, so the speaker shouldn't be too fussy with regards to rear wall placement. Round the back, there's the opportunity to bi-wire if desired.

Triangle Antal 40th Anniversary Loudspeaker Review

It's definitely on the large side for floorstanders in this price category, measuring up at 300 x 1,128 x 424mm (WxHxD), including the plinth base. The cabinet is made from high-density fibreboard – unlike many at this price which opt for medium density – and is internally braced with 23mm panels and straps. The result is a pretty heavy 29.8kg total weight, which is just about a one-man lift – and even then, it's better to do it with two people. Fitting the plinth is highly recommended for optimum performance, and this is done by turning each speaker upside-down, attaching the plinth and then flipping it back. All in all, the Antal 40th is a beautifully made and presented product at the price.

Triangle Antal 40th Anniversary Loudspeaker Review

For this review, my system centred around VAC Phi 200 power amplifiers with a Townshend Allegri Reference Plus preamplifier, driven by a dCS Bartok streaming DAC. I used Townshend F1 speaker cables and Fractal interconnects, and gave the speakers a good week connected to my system to break in.

THE LISTENING

This is a most fine-sounding loudspeaker, considering its price point. It offers up a highly refined sound, with everything in place where it should be and no obvious non-linearities. Soundstaging is expansive, with good if not exceptional imaging, and overall the Antal 40th has great weight and power for its class.

Triangle Antal 40th Anniversary Loudspeaker Review

I was most impressed with how this speaker handled Haydn's Symphony no 88 with Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. Firstly, there was a surprising sense of the orchestra's power and unexpectedly accurate handling of orchestral timbre. Strings were rich and detailed and went down unexpectedly low, lacking little except the very bottom octave. Across the midband, things were linear with no nasty peaks. This being a mid-price speaker, I could hear some cabinet colouration, but it's nowhere near as bad as some I've heard in the same market sector.

The Antal did a first-rate job of communicating the witty and complex emotions in this Haydn piece and handled the dynamics very well. The loud passages sounded solid, massive even, and the quiet passages had a thoroughly engaging litheness. I heard this same endearing character with jazz music. Miles Davis's So What is, of course, a ground-breaking track that arguably changed the genre, and the Antal gave an excellent rendition – showing it to be a beautifully recorded piece.

Triangle Antal 40th Anniversary Loudspeaker Review

The opening double bass momentarily went slightly below the radar, but the instruments generally sounded true-to-life and with a nice body. The trumpet was uncannily realistic, with excellent focus. Although I am aware of the panning used for this recording, I didn't get a completely natural sense of spatiality. Yet still, the sound was quite compelling and great fun to listen to. I was particularly struck by the speaker's superb drive unit integration. It's obviously been well-engineered and the product of many hours of careful voicing.

Varese Ionisation is a percussion-only piece, exploring a vast array of sound that a rhythm section can produce. It has many effects and is consequently an eye-opener in terms of how a speaker copes with rapid transients, volume changes and the decay of a drum or other percussion instrument. This recording with the Los Angeles Percussion Ensemble on the Decca label throws up some interesting results. The big Triangle scored exceptionally well for reproducing scale, giving some of the best results I've heard for the snare drum recently – I'm currently running Quad ESL-63s and big Magneplanars, so that's no small claim!

There was a naturalness to the quality of the snare drum, its attack and the organic release of the note. This made it possible to imagine myself in the recording venue. There was a damped quality to the end of the note, which was a sign of this life-like recording. Many other percussion instruments on this recording were carried superbly, too, making this crazy piece come to life thanks to the Antal's ability to portray scale, even if the decay of some of the percussion can't match the very best loudspeakers that money can buy.

Triangle Antal 40th Anniversary Loudspeaker Review

Swapping my dCS DAC for a Chord DAVE and M-Scaler, I found the soundstage opened up even more. This further impressed me and raised my regard for the Antal. Listening to Zubin Mehta conducting Dvorak's New World Symphony on the Decca label, the sense of air and space was profound. The M-Scaler brought a natural spatial depth to the soundstage and also cleaned up the bass, making for a dazzlingly enjoyable sound. I felt that I could still do with a bit more low bass from my review pair of Antals, but perhaps that's me being greedy considering the price – there's really little wrong with the existing low-end offering.

This loudspeaker's excellent clarity was brilliantly showcased by Ray Gelato's Basin Street Blues, beautifully recorded on the Linn label. Gelato's voice was full-bodied yet nicely nuanced, and the percussion came across as sharp and highly rhythmic – showing the Antal's superb timing. This aspect steadily improved in the three week run-in period that I gave my review pair before I sat down and listened to them in anger, so to speak. This pair has undoubtedly been on a journey, and by the time I wrote this review, it was far more fluid and dextrous sounding.

THE VERDICT

Triangle's Antal 40th is an extremely impressive loudspeaker for the money. It's not the best at any price, of course, but it hides its few mistakes well and excels in a number of ways musically, such as dynamics, tonal balance, bass weight and scale. In addition, it has obviously been voiced with great care by people who know how to listen to music. Then there's the fantastic build quality and finish; I can't think of any other floorstanders at this price that are as well screwed together and presented. So I have no hesitancy whatsoever in recommending it to anyone looking for a high-value mid-price floorstander. Hear a pair if you possibly can.

Visit Triangle Electroacoustique for more information

Posted in: Hi-Fi

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