Κώστας Φ.
Truth hurts. Here's a teddy bear.
- Μηνύματα
- 8.978
- Reaction score
- 895
"The Esprit Comete Ex ($1295/pair) has a horn-loaded tweeter, which flares from the 1" titanium dome at its throat to a mouth that measures some 2.5" in diameter. A longish phase plug, evidently made of brass and held in place with two radial strips, obscures much of the dark-gray dome. The tweeter's housing is molded from a smooth and apparently sturdy plastic; I at first took it to be sealed, but then noticed a tiny opening at the apex of its rear surface: a resistive load intended to increase output, perhaps, or a vent to equalize the pressure on the thin titanium diaphragm.
The 6.3" bass driver has a pulp cone with a smooth outer surface, and is shaped in a mild flare, as opposed to being straight-sided; its own phase plug is proportionately short, and made of hard rubber. Rubber of a much more pliant sort is used for the half-roll surround. The basket is a light cast alloy, with an integral frame for the textile spider.
Those drivers, which are both beautifully made, are held to the machined MDF baffle with hex-head wood screws, the ones for the tweeter being hidden behind a trim ring of hard rubber. The baffle is also home to a pair of molded reflex ports 1.5" in diameter and 2.75" long, mildly flared. Internal wiring is Triangle's own stranded copper cable, fastened with slip-on connectors. The crossover board, whose capacitors also carry Triangle's trademark, is fastened to the rear surface of the MDF cabinet, which is also home to a relatively thin cover of acoustic foam. The cabinet looks unremarkable except for a series of small braces that apparently serve the same purpose as the ribbon lining inside a stringed instrument: to provide additional gluing surfaces for the front and back.
...
Conclusions
The Esprit Comete Ex is a fine thing: a much better and more musical loudspeaker than one usually finds at this price and size, or from such a mainstream company. It's a shame to think that some Cometes will end up in boring systems driven by boring amps playing boring CDs; having now heard the very sensitive Cometes driven by one of the finest amps on the planet and fed a reasonably steady diet of good recordings from a classic record player, I know what heights it can reach. By the end of a review period I'm often at least somewhat anxious to get rid of the product on loan, so I can go back to the things I know and love; the Cometes could have stayed here indefinitely, and I wouldn't have minded at all.
If you're looking to assemble a vinyl- or SACD-based system around a very-high-quality amplifier of 10–70Wpc, and especially if your living arrangement allows for nearfield listening to a loudspeaker placed well away from the room boundaries, the Triangle Esprit Comete Ex is a very strong recommendation. Unless something better for the price comes along, I could see the Comete Ex remaining in our "Recommended Components" list for an awfully long time, if not quite eternally." -- Art Dudley
"The Comete Ex's measurements are not at all bad considering its price, and suggest that the speaker's owner can experiment with toe-in and placement to get the optimal balance between the high- and low-frequency regions. Its high sensitivity will also allow it to work well with low-powered amplifiers. But I am suspicious of the fact that the port resonance, the cabinet panel resonance, and the slight peak in the farfield response coincide within a quite narrow region of 620–900Hz." -- John Atkinson
Full Review: Stereophile.com
