triangle Borea BR03 Hi-Fi Bookshelf Speakers (Black Ash, Pair)

I auditioned a pair of BRO3’s for a couple of weeks and I wasn’t impressed with their sound. They’re not a bad pair of speakers, but they’re not a great pair of speakers, either. Ultimately I paid a bit more for a pair of Elac UB52’s and I couldn’t be happier with their performance at roughly the same price point. The UB52’s offer stunning mid/high resolution without sounding metallic or shouty like the BRO3’s. The Triangle’s can sound veiled at the expense of midrange detail. They’re a weirdly inconsistent speaker… In addition to their superior detail retrieval, the UB52’s have an incredible ability to soundstage from all corners of your listening space. It’s almost as if sound emanates from 3-4 speakers instead of two. long story short: If you’re willing to pay an extra $100-$150, you can find a few other options that offer FAR MORE detail and sophistication.

I compared these to the Klipsh RP-600M + Elac Debut 6.2 + Polk XT20 + Sony SSCS5 all side by side. I was using a Sony 100W $600 amp with a subwoofer. The Arrow were far and above the standouts, only the Klipsch competed, but severely lacked imaging and emotional response and dynamic range by comparison. It did have a lower mid base that seemed a bit more full at times. The Arrow sound amazing from Classical to Rock to Vocals. The paper cones have an incredible ability to reach into your chest and command emotion in a way that none of the others did whatsoever, adding a whole other dimension to music, there is a sweetness and magic to the listening. Zero Fidelity audio review on Youtube called them his favorite speakers under $1,000. There is ton of acclaim for the others in this list but I would ignore it. Maybe compare them to the Klipsh but not the others. The Elac 6.2 was very boring and flat (on mid range 100W equipment), the next step up from them is supposed to be better. The PolkXT20 were very low quality by comparison but also cost less. The Sony were great for $120 range but were lacking in base. There was also an audiophile comparing them with me who agreed with all of the above, I dont claim that but I have a good ear. I had the mahogany ones for anyone comparing colors to sound reviews. Note: make sure to try them without tone controls, they sounded far better without. All that being said, while they definitely have strong base, sometime they seem a bit lacking in the mid bass volume.

Fabulous sound that fills the room. Great speakers.

These speakers sound quite good. Compared to my 50 year old Wharfdales, it takes quite a bit more oomph from the amplifier to drive them. Thats my only complaint, really. The bass is good (its a bookshelf, folks), maybe a little boomy in the low end. It depends on the material. I am happy with my purchase.

Best speakers I have tried so far. I replaced my B&W 607 for these in the living room and I have no regrets. I even prefer them to the KEF R3 because of their better high-end clarity. At first the low-end wasnt much to write home about but it develops over time. They definitely have a break in period before they sound their best, so make sure you dont return them right away if you think they are lacking. Id say these compete with the Klipsch RP600M MK2 for a much cheaper price.

I own pairs of each of these: ELAC Uni-Fi UB5 Klipsch RP-600M ELAC Debut B6.2 ELAC Debut B6 Theyre 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 dont have at least one pair of them, you havent lived, my friend! For $279, they simply turned Hi-Fi upside down, utterly reshuffling peoples 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. Im 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 Ill NEVER sell them. Every other speaker on this list exists SOLELY because of the ELAC Debut B6. Without them to show us all whats 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. Youve not heard voices sound like this, if you dont own a $3000-$5000 pair of speakers. Just make sure you have a GOOD, powerful, high-current amp to drive them, as theyre not sensitive, and theyre 4 ohm speakers on top of that. Theyre a glass of Châteauneuf-du- Pape, for ones who appreciate perfection and class. They arent 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. Theyre 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 theyll do if you ask nicely. And give them gifts. Known as low-distortion, high-current, high-wattage amplification. Remember: you dont get the most beautiful woman to settle for a ride in your 1985 IROC-Z, a six-pack of Bud Light and some cold McDonalds 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 youre 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 theyre fun? Id say theyre a really fine tequila. No salt or lime (or courage) needed. Plenty of flavor. Very effective. Lovely to sip in small amounts. But its 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, its 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 theyre great, but doesnt 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. Its 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. Its got class in spades, AND it can party like a rock star. It can play as loud as you want, and it doesnt 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 arent imaginary concepts. These arent 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 doesnt 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; its 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 dont need 100 hours. Yes, theyll 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. Its ludicrous what these speakers can do down low. Youll be dumbstruck. That, or youll 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, theyll transform from great to AMAZING. 2) Play with the placement. If you do it correctly, youll 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 wont be able to discern ANY sound coming from either of them. Ill tell you how I achieved that. Ive 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, thats how it sounds. In a perfect world, you should have these on stands, roughly 2 to 3 feet out from the wall. But I couldnt 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 dont 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 Ill 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. Theyll sound great, but the sweet spot will be in ONLY the one central seating position, and youll 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 itll 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. Youll 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. Theyre 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!

First, they sound terrific. I have them connected to a Cambridge CXA60, and this is a great combination. I tried them with other budget receivers--Onkyo A-9110, NAD C 316BEE--they all sound good, but the CXA60 is a really great complement. I realize the CXA60 is hard to find now, but get something comparable--one good step up from the entry level, and you will have a system that you could be happy with for many years. Everything sounds good--all different kinds of music, though female vocals really shine. They have a sense of scale that is unusual at this price level--the music immerses you in lovely sound. Not bad at all in critical listening mode, though not the equal of pricier speakers like the KEF LS50s. If you can just want to enjoy the music, this is really easy to do with these speakers. Sound profile: the most prominent qualities are a highly addictive, in-your-face midrange and wide, airy soundstage. Fortunately, the treble is well-balanced, so no fatigue. The bass is ok; I think a subwoofer is a good addition. Clarity is good, imaging is good, soundstage is excellent. There are some excellent competitors in the $500-ish price range, something good for every taste--these BR03s are flat out good for kickin back and enjoying music. Not a transformative audiophile experience, just a lot of fun. A few comparative listening experiences: 1) Melody Gardots Baby Im a Fool is simply stunning on the BR03-CXA combo, outdueling KEF LS50-Musical Fidelity M2si with a lighter-than-air yet massive soundstage; 2) Big Stars Thirteen is satisfying but the LS50-M2si wins here with greater density in the sound--the thinner sound (some might call it airiness) of the BR03s suffer by comparison, and the precise imaging of the LS50s get lost in the BR03s, where Alex Chilton does not always feel dead-center; 3) Post Malones Circles wins on the LS50-M2si on style points: both are punchy and infective but the LS50-M2si team combines it all together with a more organic feel, but its close, especially with the wider and airier soundstage of the BR03-CXA setup; 4) Alicia de Larrocha playing Albenizs Iberia, El Puerto wins on the LS50-M2si with better resolution of the dense chords and better precision in the piano transients despite the bigger soundstage of the BR03-CXA60 setup; 5) Rafael Kubelik & the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra playing Mahlers Symphony #1, 2nd movement again wins on the LS50-M2si, and this time, its not close, as the BR03-CXA60 just sounds off--the instruments lack the real quality of strings and woodwinds; the sound is nice but not realistic. Summary: The BR03s are a lot of fun, and the price is affordable. Theyre less accurate and lack the weight and density of sound in comparison to more expensive speakers, such as the KEF LS50s, but they have a fantastic soundstage and airiness for the price. Female vocals are especially strong with these speakers.

I paired these with a Cambridge AXA35 amplifier, a Cambridge ACX35 CD and various inputs (TV, Pandora, TuneIn, iMac) via an Echo Link and an old iPod. I am blown away by how good this sounds for the money - and how much better this sounds than my old - much loved - hi-fi (an earlier Cambridge Audio amp from Richer Sounds) through Celestion speakers that I left behind when we moved from London to the USA.

Having listened to ELAC UB52, JBL 530, KEF Q150, these stand out as my favorite. I would be willing to recommend these without hesitation to anyone in the market for bookshelf speakers in this price range. I admit the KEFs and JBLs are great alternatives, and I imagine the KEF Q350 would match or exceed the triangles, but likely at a higher cost. Would not recommend the ELACs, which didn’t make sense to me and didn’t sound true to the music.

An absolutely outstanding option at, or around, the $300 price point. For that matter, its a good option at the $599 price point. It has a sound to it, as compared to a studio monitor or an exceptionally neutral loudspeaker, but that sound will be quite pleasing to most people.