Triangle Borea BR03 Hi-Fi Bookshelf Speakers (Walnut, Pair)

I own pairs of each of these: ELAC Uni-Fi UB5 Klipsch RP-600M ELAC Debut B6.2 ELAC Debut B6 They're all AMAZING speakers that sound fabulous at twice, three times, and even five times their price tags. None of them is anything less than superlative. Indeed, reviewers have run out of superlatives to bestow on all of them. The original Debut B6 is the all-time, possibly never to be dethroned, bang-for-the-buck audiophile speakers. If you don't have at least one pair of them, you haven't lived, my friend! For $279, they simply turned Hi-Fi upside down, utterly reshuffling people's expectations for affordable speakers. They were easygoing. Laid back. Powerful in the lower octaves. They make every recording sound great regardless of source material or amplifier. I'm still speechless at what they did for THAT kind of money. It made EVERY other speaker company up their game. Dramatically. We owe a LOT to those speakers. Possibly the most easy to enjoy, most forgiving and easiest to please speakers of all time. I still use mine to this day, and I'll NEVER sell them. Every other speaker on this list exists SOLELY because of the ELAC Debut B6. Without them to show us all what's possible, for less than 4 or 5 figures, not many people would be getting into the Hi-Fi hobby/way of life. We owe Andrew Jones a debt of gratitude for designing them. The B6.2 had a bit more "grown up" sound. Simple as that. Lots of goodness there, and a bit more classy. And easier to position closer to the front wall because of the front port. The Uni-Fi UB5 brought affordable Hi-Fi to a whole 'nother level again. A true 3-way speaker with a coherence and holographic soundstage that leaves you breathless. Voices went from merely "gorgeous" to the point of "being kissed on the eyelids by angels". You've not heard voices sound like this, if you don't own a $3000-$5000 pair of speakers. Just make sure you have a GOOD, powerful, high-current amp to drive them, as they're not sensitive, and they're 4 ohm speakers on top of that. They're a glass of Châteauneuf-du- Pape, for ones who appreciate perfection and class. They aren't for people who prefer cheap beer and professional wrestling. The ELACs never put a foot wrong. Their Hugo Boss suits never have a wrinkle, nor do their Ferragamo loafers have a scuff. They point their pinkies. They're accurate. They have a pinpoint placement in the soundstage. But it takes a LOT of clean power to get them to drop the classy act and just light the place up, which they'll do if you ask nicely. And give them gifts. Known as low-distortion, high-current, high-wattage amplification. Remember: you don't get the most beautiful woman to settle for a ride in your 1985 IROC-Z, a six-pack of Bud Light and some cold McDonald's fries, nor can you feed that to these speakers and get away with it. Bring out the Porsche, the medium rare filet mignon, and a Vega Sicilia 1989, and you're golden. (You also get rewarded with ludicrously low, detailed, and powerful bass.) The RP-600M killed all the preconceived notions that horn speakers are shouty and harsh. Good GRIEF, did they ever! And they did it with ANY amplifier. And they are always ready to have FUN. So engaging, refined, and...LOUD. Not very much bass, but did I mention that they're fun? I'd say they're a really fine tequila. No salt or lime (or courage) needed. Plenty of flavor. Very effective. Lovely to sip in small amounts. But it's ALWAYS ready to join you for five more shots, get crazy, trash the hotel room, and jump from the 5th-floor balcony into the pool WHENEVER you say the word. (In an experiment, I ran just the pair of them in my theater room, which is 35x15 feet. I set them on top of my main towers, told nobody that it was ONLY them playing, and they practically flexed the windows with output. Nobody believed me when I told them that I was only running a pair of bookshelves, until they walked over to them. Stunning. Ludicrous. FUN.) Enter the Triangle BR03. Put simply, it's basically ALL of the best attributes of the others, but with little no none of the drawbacks. It makes recordings bring you to tears if they're great, but doesn't punish you for bad recordings. Its presentation of the soundstage is in front of the speakers rather than at or behind them (but not as far forward as the Klipsch), and startlingly real. It's almost creepy. Like you can reach out and touch it-kind of realism. Not quiiiiite as shockingly real as the ELAC UB5, but close enough. It's got class in spades, AND it can party like a rock star. It can play as loud as you want, and it doesn't demand fancy components. There are 2 caveats. To wit: 1) A new pair of loafers needs to soften and mold to your feet. The engine on a new Audi RS7 needs the right number of revs for the right period of time, in order to have all the moving parts get bedded in and seated in their permanent operational positions. A new house needs furniture, beds, and pictures on the walls (and time) for it to feel like "home". These aren't imaginary concepts. These aren't magical, esoteric fairy tales. These are facts. The same is true of the moving parts of a speaker. Trying to reduce it to mere test numbers on a graph doesn't measure what your ears tell you. So, back to the BR03. Right out of the box, they are BRIGHT BRIGHT BRIGHT, and the bass is merely "good". This is not only fine; it's also as normal as can be. Put on some good source material with plenty of vocals and cymbals for the mids and highs, crank it up, and give them 2 or 3 hours of a good workout. No, you don't need 100 hours. Yes, they'll continue to sound better, warmer, fuller, and less brassy the longer you play them, but 2 or 3 hours of loud-ish vocals and percussion will get them to open up to where you can get the proper idea of how these sound. This brings the brightness down to a still airy, but revealing and beautiful level...and it sends the bass into the stratosphere. I turn off my subs for music listening, and I had to go check the power switches on my subs. TWICE. It's ludicrous what these speakers can do down low. You'll be dumbstruck. That, or you'll laugh like a right bloody idiot. Or both. For the woofers, instead of playing bass-heavy music that I find disgusting and repugnant, I skipped the middle man, and I dialed up a test tone of 25 Hz, turned the volume DOWN, then slowly adjusted it to where the woofer cone was giving me about 8-10mm of excursion, and MOST CERTAINLY NOT bottoming out nor making ANY type of untoward noise. I did this five times, at one minute each time. Again: DO NOT do this at high volumes. The result? Ooooooooh MAN. So very, VERY sweet. And POWERFUL. So DO NOT judge them on the very first notes that come out of them. Even just half an hour makes a difference. The first full week you have them, they'll transform from great to AMAZING. 2) Play with the placement. If you do it correctly, you'll have a perfect sweet spot that spans the entire sofa (not just the middle seat), and the best part is that THE SPEAKERS WILL COMPLETELY DISAPPEAR. You won't be able to discern ANY sound coming from either of them. I'll tell you how I achieved that. I've got two wonderful children, so I HAD TO put them on actual bookshelves, right up against the front wall. Everybody will tell you that this is the wrong place to put your speakers. And they would be right. Generally speaking, your speakers are at the front of the soundstage and the front wall is the back of it. Spatially, that's how it sounds. In a perfect world, you should have these on stands, roughly 2 to 3 feet out from the wall. But I couldn't do that. Also, the bass gets radically stronger the closer they are to the front wall. These are so bass-rich, it might be too much for some people. You can fix that with a little bit of EQ, but I myself don't mind at all. The key to this all...is angling them inward. I learned from The Legend himself, Mr. John Strohbeen (and from New Record Day on YouTube, which has a speaker placement and soundstage tutorial that is amazing) that you can make a HUGE, wide "sweet spot" where the speakers vanish and all you hear is music in your room...By playing with some radical amounts of inward-angled "toe-in" angle. So I'll make this quick and easy: put your speakers 9-12 feet apart, and angle them in at about 45 degrees. Yes. You read that correctly: 45 degrees. First, try your speakers firing straight out into the room. They'll sound great, but the sweet spot will be in ONLY the one central seating position, and you'll likely still be able to discern sound coming from the speakers. But then try this: Angle the speakers inward at such an angle that the LEFT speaker is aimed directly at the next listening position to the RIGHT of the central "sweet spot" position. Then aim the RIGHT speaker directly at the next listening position to the LEFT of the central "sweet spot" position. Next, it would be a good idea to hold on to your hat, because it'll be blown away. Along with your mind. So buy a pair of these. Let them get a little exercise. Warm them up, so to speak. Then set them up correctly, put on Jennifer Warnes "Famous Blue Raincoat" or Lyle Lovett "Joshua Judges Ruth", and be amazed. You'll be changed forever. Believe the hype, folks. Today, in September of 2020, these are the best affordable speakers on the market. p.s. If you want one of the single best system tweaks I have EVER found, get a vacuum tube preamp. But not just any. Get the Schiit Vali 2+. And get an Electro Harmonix 6922 tube, or a Sovtek 6n1p, right here on Amazon, for less than $30. They're dual triode tubes, and most everybody finds them to be THE best way of getting a positively MONSTROUS soundstage in width, height, and depth, or razor-sharp stereo imaging. In short, you get thousands of dollars of genuine single-ended-triode tube sound out of your existing amplifier. For next to nothing. Genius. Hope this helps!