StereoNET: Triangle Elara LN01A Active Speaker & Turntable Review

NOVEMBER 2017

ELARA LN01A REVIEW / TRIANGLE / ELARA LN01A TURNTABLE AND ACTIVE SPEAKERS

TRIANGLE

ELARA LN01A Turntable and Active Speakers

The cliché insisting that the more

The short answer is money and

things change, the more they

logistics. In that order.

stay the same, is usually a lazy and mostly inaccurate summation of life and the universe.

When it’s applied to students and audio systems, it’s as true as night follows day.

$1499 AUD RRP

lot of money, and the digs they typically rent don’t provide much room for an audio system.

Indeed, that was the case back in the seventies when I cobbled

Which is why French specialist

together a system made up of a

speaker brand, Triangle put

clunky Garrard SP25 turntable,

together a multi-featured audio

cheap entry level Shure cartridge,

package comprising the Elara

Armstrong integrated amplifier and

LN01A active speakers and

Goodman Maxim speakers.

matching turntable.

Distributed by: Audio Marketing

Undergraduates don’t have a

How so? Do we hear you ask?

Back then, the Triangle Elara active speakers and sleek turntable would have seemed mana from audio heaven for one overriding reason: I moved a lot. So often I forgot where I was renting.

Everything I owned had to be moved by my ’57 VW. Whatever couldn’t be fitted in this vehicle or strapped to its roof rack was left behind as a gift to the next impoverished student who took my room.

The VW was the arbiter of my ‘less is more’ commodities philosophy. It’s lucky I didn’t own

much. A hi-fi system, about 150

for students and for that matter,

chicken wire from speakers to

What’s sweet about this package

LPS, a bed, handful of clothes,

financially challenged first-time

our amps, for all they cared.

is the sound of the money

three fruit boxes, and some

audio buyers in search of musical

books were the summed total of

quality at an affordable price.

my material worth as a student.

The other major plus point that can’t be overstated is the hoary

And … my old system would

problem of component matching,

Two of the fruit boxes served

be much more expensive if its

as it’s totally erased from the

as speaker stands and places

buying price were translated into

buying equation. A huge plus

to store some LPs and clothes;

today’s money.

point for greenhorns stating their

the third held my bed light and school books.

No matter how rose coloured my audio memories, sound-wise the

initial foray into the wonderful, wacky world of audio.

Moving was a fine art. The

Triangle gear stomps all over what

Newbies can also link their

precious hi-fi system went in the

I used to begin my audio journey.

smartphones to the Elara’s

back seat, and the LPs were stacked on the passenger seat and its foot-well.

Buy the Triangle package, and you verily get a lot for your hard-earned. Your money buys

Comparing what this new

a package that’s neat, sweet

Triangle package offers to what

and petite.

I used for music making then, is a no-brainer. The Triangle active speakers and turntable are outright winners.

Neat, because the amplifiers are built into the Elara speakers. And neat because you can erase the price of decent speaker cables

They’d be a cinch to transport.

from your budget. You won’t

And the features on offer such

need them.

as an inbuilt phono stage and Bluetooth connectivity, it’s light years ahead of those on my Garrard/Armstrong/Goodman’s audio system.

A good thing compared to back in the day when no one gave a passing toss to speaker cables.

As far as audio journalists were concerned, cables were cables

The Triangle package sells for

and frankly their approach was

$1499. This hits the sweet spot

so arrogant we could have run

built-in Bluetooth receiver within moments, and allow its codec circuitry to start streaming music from an Android or Apple device.

you save by not taking the conventional path to a stereo system that could comprise speakers, an integrated amplifier with built-in streamer, speaker cables, phono stage and a turntable.

The Triangle package is particularly petite because the Elara speakers are so compact they can be tucked under each arm and carried to your car, assuming you’re a student with or without a ’57 VW.

Vital Statistics So, what does your $1499 buy? It gets you

Drivers built into the Elara are a 25mm silk

the stars of this audio show in the shape

dome tweeter crossing over to a 135mm

of the Elara speakers finished in refreshing

woofer that has a treated paper cone. The

gloss white.

tweeter uses a Neodymium magnet.

Peek at the back of the speakers, and you’ll

The Elara is said to have a power output of

discover your money buys analogue and

50-watts and a frequency response of 56-

digital inputs that simply invite the connection

20,000 Hz measured at one metre +/-3dB.

of a TV.

The Elara’s are very compact and measure

There is another vital set of inputs. These are

291mm high, 165mm wide and 291mm

for the Triangle turntable. But they can also be

deep. The right speaker with the amplifier

switched to a line level input using a slider.

and electronics weighs 5.05kgs, and the left

There’s a dedicated 3.5mm line level input

speaker is 4.5kgs.

along with the optical and digital audio inputs.

The matching turntable finished in gloss white

There’s even an output connection to drive a

is made for Triangle by Pro-Ject, but branded

subwoofer for those wanting more bass.

as a Triangle product.

Bluetooth circuitry is built into the Elara

A close squiz reveals it has a high standard

speakers. This supports the aptX codec for

of finish and that it will play 33 and 45 rpm

Android devices and SBC for iPhones.

records.

Triangle supplies a remote control but

The motor drives the MDF platter with a belt

provides a volume knob on the rear of the

while a straight, aluminium tonearm is pre-fitted

right speaker. This knob also works as an

with an Ortofon moving magnet cartridge.

input selector switch but one that must be pressed to move through the inputs.

In use, all the electronics and amplification built into the right speaker connect to the passive left speaker via a supplied 3-metre cable.

“It gets you the stars of this audio show in the shape of the Elara speakers finished in refreshing gloss white”

“The Elara’s handled the track’s acoustic instruments and preserved the warmth of the vocals so well”

Performance Using the Triangle turntable as a source playing

While I’m on the record as a streaming

Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother, brought

agnostic, I do love the format’s ease of use,

back hilarious memories of a typical night’s

versatility, and ability to playback a vast library

listening session with other student friends.

of all kinds of music on command.

After imbibing some of nature’s finest herbs, it

Using my iPhone, I tapped into my Tidal

was always a chore to change LPs when the

playlist and selected Glory to the Day by the

tonearm reached the end of a side.

late Jesse Winchester, and was anchored

That was assuming someone could defy gravity and dawdle to the turntable through the haze in the room.

Thinking back, most of the time the listening session arrived at a point where the stylus reached the end of the groove and stayed

in my listening chair by the Elara’s musically communicative nature.

The Elara’s handled the track’s acoustic instruments and preserved the warmth of the vocals so well; I was surprised given their price.

there, as the platter spun round and round for

Lacking from the musical presentation was a

what seemed like an eternity.

level of transparency evident when I reviewed

I now know why my cartridge required a new stylus much more often than it should. So do more abstentious music lovers.

Which raises the question: what would we have paid to enjoy the convenience of Bluetooth in the 70s? Plenty, allow me to assure you.

The Triangle package is light years ahead of the audio gear I owned as a student.

There’s no contest. Not measured in terms of features, sound or price.

the budget-priced Triangle Titus EZ last year for another publication.

The Titus also delivered more treble detail and dug deeper in the bass. What both Elara and Titus do have in common is an immediacy and ability to time, that’s complimentary to the music played through them.

Moving to Bruce Cockburn’s Beautiful Creatures showed the Elara’s have a commendable macro dynamic response.

Surprisingly so. And this was evident as Cockburn’s voice accelerates from chord to chord.

The track’s violins, cello, and acoustic guitars

As the guitars introduced the opening lyrics

emerged from the Elaras and into our listening

and Reed’s quizzical opening vocals declaring

room with tons of communicative pathos,

he “doesn’t know where he’s going”, it

exciting the emotions as good gear is meant

becomes clear that the vinyl version is much

to do.

more dramatic than the one that’s streamed.

As my wife remarked, these little speakers

As the track rises in intensity and gains

have plenty of soul saying: “They appeal to

speed, the impact of the vinyl recording is

the heart and not the head.’’

more profound than the streamed track. The

Which is a way of pointing out the Elara’s might lack the subtle informational cues of more sophisticated models, but they preserve and present the musical message

Elaras were proving perfectly capable of reproducing the leading edges of the vinyl copy, but also highlighting their omission on the digital stream.

with an immediacy and tonal naturalness that

The Reed track on both formats was fun to

defrays criticism.

hear via the Elaras. This is a quality I’d enjoyed

Moving to vinyl is always a relief after a session with streamed music. It’s not so

with the Triangle Titus, and clearly, it comprised a large part of the Elara’s sonic qualities.

much that streaming is lacklustre per se.

It isn’t. Especially for audio beginners who enjoy steaming for what it is and don’t obsess about its presentation in the way seasoned audiophiles do.

It’s merely a case of analogue‘s excellence highlighting what digital streaming lacks.

It’s only when a direct comparison is done between the two that it becomes bleeding obvious to audio novices that the gap between say, vinyl and digital is fairly vast.

A notion put to the test playing the same version of Lou Reed’s Heroin; one streamed, the other pressed on vinyl.

“They appeal to the heart and not the head.”

The Elaras are above all a fun machine

What’s missing in comparison to larger

because being active, they’re immensely quick

speakers is musical weight. Small woofers

to respond to music’s troughs and peaks.

can only move so much air in a room. And it’s

Their timing quality eluded to previously, came

churlish to expect more than you get.

to the fore with Bowie’s paean to the Berlin

Which is not to say that the Elaras don’t go

wall, called Heroes using vinyl.

loud. They do. Or that they sound small, ‘cos

As this track’s speed and intensity rises, the

they don’t, especially when they’re used in a

Elara’s engage the emotions with spot-on

compact room.

timing, decent amounts of informative bass and above all an addictive midrange allure.

money package, the Elaras were connected

They can’t unravel the dense production values of Heroes to reveal the track’s innumerable strands. But neither do much more expensive speakers. The Elara’s do conjure up a large soundstage with plenty of well-defined images of performers and instruments.

Tailing off the time spent with this value for to our 50-inch Pioneer Kuro plasma TV. Playing a variety of content including the evening news, sports events, movies and of course, an endless number of ads, the family’s verdict was the Elara’s enhanced each program.

Not by a small measure either but by a considerable margin. Let’s face it, TVs have lousy sound systems. Improving this lacklustre, threadbare sound can be done via a jack-of-all-trades Soundbar or by adding a kosher pair of active speakers.

If you’re savvy enough to choose the latter, the Elara package is a fine choice offering nice styling, discrete size and sound quality that’s oodles of fun.

I’d say with the Elara package, it’s mission accomplished for Triangle.

WORDS: Peter Familari

“they’re immensely quick to respond to music’s troughs and peaks”