I ordered the Elac Debut Ref 6.2 just because I was curious. My wife told me to buy and resell if I am not happy with them.
I really like the spirit of the creation: the Master Of Speakers Design offers for a budget price (I know it is a sum for some people but in the HiFi world it is nothing especially when you consider you can spend 6000$ to obtain a pack of shit like the Jeff Rowland infamous amp measured elsewhere) something really interesting. Just what you want: a conventional form factor, something really WAF compliant, low price, excellent measurements and a google internet consensus about the qualities.
I listened carefully the speakers. I know I am not a measurement tool, but let me explain this fact: I know what I want. I really enjoyed the Elac in some parts of the business. It seems the speakers are not exciting the room like my previous pair, bass is cleaner and enjoyable. Soundstage and 3D effect also, and paired with my amp the system is very dynamic. But since the beginning something sounded wrong. Middle and high. It was wrong.
Considering this pair of speaker is going to be a best seller, I was hoping we will have some tweaking ideas in the following months and it will be interesting to try to exploit more potential. Until the last hour.
I've tried to experiment since a week and my wife and I spent some time to go for two amps instead of one.
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This afternoon it was finished (newer finished, we live in the home lab and nothing is here to stay) and we fired the system with a lot of watts ready to push up the level.
One more time the pair of Elac was deceptive, again something wrong in the highs.
I decided to connect my old pair of speakers. Better highs, but the Elac are better in all other parameters.
So I decided to connect back the Elac to the amps. There is something I do not understand and I do not like that, I was doubting and I was lost. Ok, this is just Hifi, so let's have a cup of coffee, this is the real thing.
After the coffee, I found something in one speaker. One tweeter grid was not correctly inserted. I took a picture, exaggerating the thing to show it clearly:
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So the grid is easily removable. It is a nice engineered part. There are six centering pins and each one is inserted in a a kind of rubber damper, not so bad for a cheap pair of speaker, thank you Andrew.
Two of the rubber dampers are not in a good shape and this is why it was not inserted correctly.
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In the picture below you can see some holes are with the dampers and other without.
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Then I decided to remove the grids. My pure subjective feeling is that now it is ok. Potentially I am really wrong, the design is with the grid, and now there is a dips and bump in highs and bla bla bla. Anyway, I am happy and that's the story.
So, I just can add few words: have a look on your grids and check they are perfectly aligned. In bonus, do you want to test without and report your feeling here?
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