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Elac Adante AS-61 Speaker Review

I am (good-naturedly, I assure you) accumulating a lot of bones to pick with this converstaion. I think we are getting a little detached from reality. :oops:

The Harman research tends to show that the litmus test is DBT of at least three speakers repeated enough times to be statistically reliable to see what the preference for people with good hearing is. I think there is here truly a lot of over-interpretation of graphs and imagined correlation between what a graph shows and what a person hears in their own listening space. Harman trained listeners, even speaker designers, give you garbage biased results on comparative sighted listening. We should take a lesson from that. The real deal is the DBT, no graphs in hand. The graphs are shorthand to roughly predict what would be preferred on a DBT. Or so the story goes.

I also like to leave some nooks and crannies in my brain for something other than the Harman / Toole / Olive school of thought.

I also note that people with good hearing tend to exercise the same preferences on DBT, no matter their training level or background. Harman trained listeners just tend to get to the same conclusions faster and more efficiently during blind testing. The outliers on preference tend to have defective hearing or be older.

This is all in Toole’s book, backed up by research, etc., etc.

I like to have good speakers because they are good speakers. :) Kind of like a blank canvas on which to project the aural image created by the recording artists and recording engineers. That’s my motivation. Get into the upper 7s and 8s and 1) the preference scores tend to under-rate the performance of speakers on DBT and 2) you’re likely to have a statistical tie as to preferences. The exciting truth is that good speakers can be inexpensive! And the data presented by @amirm is much more than sufficient to achieve the otherwise nearly impossible task of separating the wheat from the chaff. We now know tremendously more about these speakers than what you would know about a tire by reading the specifications on the tire wall (to paraphrase F. Toole).

Life is good! But for any variety of reasons this truth, that good speakers can be inexpensive, is often shunned or greeted with skepticism or even hostility. This is not a good thing from the standpoint of promoting the hobby by expanding the awareness of the consumer population.

And yet, even so, good speakers are really not needed. I can listen to a Sonos One at my bedside at 32-38 dB at 2 in the morning and greatly enjoy it. Why is that? Cause I’m nuts? Or because I really didn’t need Hifi to enjoy the music? Or it can fill up my whole bedroom. HiFi, nope. Enjoyable, absolutely. On the downside, this presents a lot of unchecked opportunity for corporate cynicism, sloppiness and deceit when it comes to motivations for manufacturers to provide consumers a product not commensurate in performance with dollars (or your currency of choice) spent.

Also the Harman school of thought on loudspeakers is ultimately founded on subjective preferences, objectively ascertained. Objectivist versus subjectivist is a false dichotomy in the context of speakers. It’s just really fortunate that such an admirable body of knowledge has been developed as to what people with good hearing will prefer, and how to make good (but not perfect by any means) predictions as to what people with good hearing will prefer based on measurements. This really sprang from Toole’s intuition at a young age that people would prefer a neutral speaker, and then was refined based on empirical data. If someone has hearing that is problematic to one degree or another, no problem, it’s just that their subjective preferences won’t translate reliably over to others. But their subjective impressions and preferences are certainly valid for them and their enjoyment of music is no less valid and may even be more informed (in the case of musicians with occupational hearing damage, etc.).

End of mild-mannered rant. :cool:

I agree that large scale blind test results should probably trump measurements, at least until we can get much better at interpreting those measurements; I don't think the current Preference Rating is there yet. I'm a huge advocate of blind tests, in many aspects of life. With no measurements available, I bought my current mains almost entirely based on how they did in blind tests.

Problem with blind tests is that they're hard(and expensive) to do, and it's unlikely you'll find test data between the speakers you're looking at. If we had a several hundred sample size blind level matched (with subs) test between these 2 Elacs, and that test strongly favored the Adante, then I would trust the results of that test over my(or the formula's) interpretation of these measurements.

However, with only measurements and a few subjective - sighted - impressions to go by, I lean more towards going by the measurements. Imo, measurements are more generalizable to others than solitary sighted impressions. Solitary sighted impressions are heavily influenced by both expectation bias and individual preference. Perhaps the person is one of the outliers Floyd talks about?
 
I agree that large scale blind test results should probably trump measurements, at least until we can get much better at interpreting those measurements; I don't think the current Preference Rating is there yet. I'm a huge advocate of blind tests, in many aspects of life. With no measurements available, I bought my current mains almost entirely based on how they did in blind tests.

Problem with blind tests is that they're hard(and expensive) to do, and it's unlikely you'll find test data between the speakers you're looking at. If we had a several hundred sample size blind level matched (with subs) test between these 2 Elacs, and that test strongly favored the Adante, then I would trust the results of that test over my(or the formula's) interpretation of these measurements.

However, with only measurements and a few subjective - sighted - impressions to go by, I lean more towards going by the measurements. Imo, measurements are more generalizable to others than solitary sighted impressions. Solitary sighted impressions are heavily influenced by both expectation bias and individual preference. Perhaps the person is one of the outliers Floyd talks about?

I would bet dollars to donuts the Adante is a very enjoyable loudspeaker heard in stereo and without direct blind comparison to significantly higher performing speakers. Ability to discriminate between quality of loudspeakers drops dramatically when moving from mono to stereo, with perceived quality moving up greatly in stereo and closing the gap with higher rated speakers, and then in surround sound or multichannel perceived sound quality takes yet another upward leap, mitigating greatly perceived differences in quality, to the benefit of lower-performing speakers. (See Toole’s book, figure 3.10, and surrounding pages.)

So he might be enjoying the hell out of his Adantes in stereo, without a whole lot to be gained from a higher performing speaker.

IMHO. :)
 
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Harman trained listeners, even speaker designers, give you garbage biased results on comparative sighted listening.
Ah.... this is not on the record. :)

Harman did test their own employees and they did produce different results sighted vs blind. These employees were not trained listeners.

I managed our trained listeners at Microsoft and I was one of them. Due to expense and long duration of double blind testing, 90% of the testing of our audio technology was performed by our trained listeners sighted. Yes, I did have a few instances of producing garbage as you say. But this was in the context of being right huge number of times.

I suspect trained listeners performing sighted testing are part of Harman design cycle. They however perform a double blind test prior to release of speakers as we did with our audio technologies.
 
Ah.... this is not on the record. :)

Harman did test their own employees and they did produce different results sighted vs blind. These employees were not trained listeners.

I managed our trained listeners at Microsoft and I was one of them. Due to expense and long duration of double blind testing, 90% of the testing of our audio technology was performed by our trained listeners sighted. Yes, I did have a few instances of producing garbage as you say. But this was in the context of being right huge number of times.

I suspect trained listeners performing sighted testing are part of Harman design cycle. They however perform a double blind test prior to release of speakers as we did with our audio technologies.

See Toole, pages 33-35. Your point depends on whether what Toole describes as Harman employee “experienced listeners, those who had previously participated in controlled listening tests” were also Harman “trained” listeners. I assumed so, but I honestly don’t know the answer. . .there is ambiguity in the text. :)
 
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See Toole, pages 33-35. Your point depends on whether what Toole describes as Harman employee “experienced listeners, those who had previously participated in controlled listening tests” were also Harman “trained” listeners. I assumed so, but I honestly don’t know the answer. . .there is ambiguity in the text. :)
Experienced in that context is defined as people who had taken blind tests. They may or may not have been trained.

I can speake from personal experience that training is super powerful. You are able to quickly identify issues, immediately going past music as art and using it as a sort of a test signal. Problems become very clear and obvious. Trained listeners get graded all the time on their performance as their feedback is used to find issues and compared to others. To the extent their opinion leads to identification of problems that are objectively found, proves their usefulness and continued use of them in quick tests.

As I mentioned, sighted testing with trained listeners is not fool-proof, but the data is definitely well above garbage level. :)
 
Experienced in that context is defined as people who had taken blind tests. They may or may not have been trained.

I can speake from personal experience that training is super powerful. You are able to quickly identify issues, immediately going past music as art and using it as a sort of a test signal. Problems become very clear and obvious. Trained listeners get graded all the time on their performance as their feedback is used to find issues and compared to others. To the extent their opinion leads to identification of problems that are objectively found, proves their usefulness and continued use of them in quick tests.

As I mentioned, sighted testing with trained listeners is not fool-proof, but the data is definitely well above garbage level. :)

With respect to both experienced and inexperienced listeners, and in fact universally, Toole states unequivocally, ”These findings mean that if one wishes to obtain candid opinions about how a loudspeaker sounds, these tests must be done blind.” (Page 35, emphasis in original.)

Beyond that I would not know where to take the discussion. At best I can grant you that you are much more skilled than I am. :)
 
I can speake from personal experience that training is super powerful. You are able to quickly identify issues, immediately going past music as art and using it as a sort of a test signal. Problems become very clear and obvious./QUOTE]

This seems dangerous. I worry that the heightened sensitivity towards speaker flaws would lead to me enjoying my speakers less. Perhaps it's better to live in blissful ignorance.
 
This seems dangerous. I worry that the heightened sensitivity towards speaker flaws would lead to me enjoying my speakers less. Perhaps it's better to live in blissful ignorance.
It is a problem to be sure in all manner of training.
 
I'd say that the Adantes are all but guaranteed to sound better in a sighted comparison, just based on the way the human brain works. And when I say "sound better", it's not like it's "fake" per say. They really will sound better, even if the sound entering the ear canal is of lesser quality. So when people that own both speakers chime in saying the Adantes sound way better, I believe them, and I don't think that conflicts with the science. Increasing the price will increase the sound quality we hear, even if nothing else changes. Then you add a nicer looking cabinet. The science is based on blind listening tests, so sighted impressions don't contradict the measurements.

I think this is a really interesting example. The measurements are far enough apart for us to say that ~85% of people should prefer the cheaper model under blind level matched(with sub) conditions, yet the biases introduced by sighted comparison not only flip the results around to the opposite, but do so to the degree that it's "not even close". This is precisely the problem that the science is intended to fix. This is where you must ask yourself whether or not you believe the science. If the answer is no, then all these measurements are somewhat worthless. If we can't conclude that a 7.4 should beat a 5.9(most of the time), then there are truly very few scenarios in which we can conclude anything based on measurements. Personally, I choose to believe the science, but I also know that placebo is a real phenomenon(even in medicine), and we almost always listen sighted, so in some sense, what is preferred blind doesn't really matter.

I also don't think this negatively reflects on Andrew Jones. It's clear that Andrew was working in new territory here, whereas with the Pioneers he was right in his element. In loudspeaker design, implementation matters more than the materials used. It doesn't surprise me that a cheaper model could outperform a more expensive model under those circumstances. Also, as you mentioned, those results only apply under level matched and low passed conditions; without those, I would expect the Adante to win.
This thing is: how long will the visuals affect you? Until you're visually used to them and left with a crappy sound, that's what. You may get used to the crappy sound, though.
 
This thing is: how long will the visuals affect you? Until you're visually used to them and left with a crappy sound, that's what. You may get used to the crappy sound, though.
Yeah, and why this is so dumb/absurd, sighted/unsighed, bite me... applies for the 1st hour and you need move along quickly or get a cookie cutter review done. Living with a speaker's a different thing. Who caaaares how pretty it is, it'll be dumped as soon as possible if it *sounds* like shit. Adante survived the honeymoon / or a great girlfriend. Low rez flat graphs give you a baseline, it's not a CPU perf chart. A 2.5" whizzer cone can measure superbly.
 
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Yeah, and why this is so dumb/absurd, sighted/unsighed, bite me... applies for the 1st hour and you need move along quickly or get a cookie cutter review done. Living with a speaker's a different thing. Who caaaares how pretty it is, it'll be dumped as soon as possible if it *sounds* like shit. Adante survived the honeymoon / or a great girlfriend. Low rez flat graphs give you a baseline, it's not a CPU perf chart. A 2.5" whizzer cone can measure superbly.
I don’t think he was saying the adante itself is terrible. Take me for example, when I was comparing the ls50 to the r5 I had in my mind I really wanted the r5 more. So I could tell that every time I heard the r5 o was immediately seeking out proof. This blind was the only option. However, any differences between them, if such existed, would eventually become apparent if I 1: spent time paying attention. 2: knew what to listen for. 3: spent enough time with them. Therefore, the boa we present based on our desires or assumptions will certainly influence us for a time, but will it last for years, or, if we are capable of recognizing the deficiencies, will they eventually start to bother us. I suspect the latter.
 
This is a review and detailed measurements of the Elac (USA designed) Adante AS-61 stand-mount (large bookshelf) speaker. It was kindly purchased by a member new and drop shipped to me. This is part of the series designed by Andrew Jones who is probably the most famous speaker designer in consumer world. The AS-61 has a retail price of US $2,500 for a pair but I see it on sale for US $1,500.

The AS-61 is incredibly heavy for a small speaker and beautifully finished in glossy black:

I am not a fan of the look of the front without the grill though. It looks rather bland and industrial.

The back panel shows large and beautiful multi-way speaker connectors:


Speaker has slanted sides which made it harder for me to align on my measurement rig. But is a nice touch to make it less boxy.

This is a 3-way speaker but the woofer is hidden inside with a port. It then couples to the passive radiator that looks like a woofer. This design uses the filtering that the acoustic coupling provides to also cut out the harmonic distortions of the woofer. This downside is high complexity of the internal design.

Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections. It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room. All measurements are reference to tweeter axis with the grill removed.

Over 1000 points around the speaker were measured (from 20 to 20 kHz) which resulted in well under 1% error in identification of the sound field emanating from the speaker. Final database of measurements and data is 1.4 Gigabytes in size.

Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker can be used. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:

View attachment 50418

For whatever reason, I expected to see a much more flat response. We have a dip at 200 Hz where the crossover is from the woofer to mid-range. Maybe it is hard to better tune this with the internal woofer? Regardless, the room will obliterate this part of the response so what you get at the end of the day, is not this dip although we do want to start with flat response if we can.

The dip around 7 kHz seems to be typical of coaxial drivers and disappears off-axis. Don't have an explanation for the final dip as we approach 20 kHz. It seems to be designed that way.

Since the graph is calibrated to 2.83 volts at 1 meter, the frequency response also becomes your sensitivity graph. Overall, it seems to average around 84 dB. However, in my analysis of my music library, the peaks are around 40 Hz. There, the sensitivity naturally drops like a rock to just 75 dB. So don't go by online calculators to compute how loud a speaker gets. Single number sensitivity scores do not give you correct information.

Looking at predicted in-room response, we see the same chewy response:
View attachment 50420

My experience in testing speakers with non-flat response is that with some music those highs get excited and can get annoying. And the dips help to reduce presence in those regions especially in low frequencies.

That's it for high level picture. Don't read the rest if you are not into speaker design and analysis.

Basic Speaker Measurements
Impedance and phase show a couple of kinks that indicate resonances:

View attachment 50422

The first resonance doesn't show up in frequency response so not material. The second one though, does correlated with a couple of peaks in the CEA-2034 spin data so that is more significant.

Since reducing distortion is a key design goal in this speaker, let's look at those metrics:

View attachment 50423

View attachment 50424

It seems like low frequency distortion below 200 Hz is indeed very low. But then it peaks likely because the mid-range can't handle such low frequencies well.

We also have rising distortion around the crossover frequencies indicating the midrange is starting to get unhappy before the tweeter takes over.

Note that all of this is gated in-room response so not the most reliable data.

Speaking of unreliable data, here is the waterfall:

View attachment 50425

Advanced Speaker Measurements
Directivity index when zoomed shows that on and off-axis response are not very aligned:

View attachment 50426

That 7 kHz dip definitely does a number here. You wouldn't be able to correct it with EQ since that would apply both to the sound of the drivers and diffraction from edges. So zero sum game.


View attachment 50427

View attachment 50428

Coaxial drivers show off better vertical directivity due to concentric center of the two drivers:

View attachment 50429

Not sure how much value there is there if you have carpet on the floor and tall ceiling.

I have colorized this graph to show what you get if you move the speaker off-axis (e.g. having it face forward instead of toward you):
View attachment 50430

There is a sharp drop-off in highs as you go off-axis. So maybe you can use that to taste especially since it provides smoother response (up to a point).

View attachment 50431

I had a hard time figuring out the alignment of the speaker relative to robotic axis. Looks likes it is tilted 10 degrees or so toward the left:

View attachment 50432

I am going to work to see if I can correct this in software.

Vertical though is right on the money:
View attachment 50433

Eye-candy Speaker Measurements
It is always fun to use the full visualization of soundfield around the speaker as computed. Here is what happens during that dip around 7 kHz:


View attachment 50434

This is looking into the speaker in front of you. We see the highest amplitude as represented by darkest shade of red is spread around and mostly pushed towards the corners. This seems to indicate diffraction (little speakers singing along). An ideal response would be a "hot" center and dropping to the sides.

Informal Speaker Listening Tests
I have a decent fixture for proper comparison of nearfield monitors. It requires interactions with the PC which I current can't do with my main stereo system where I evaluated the AS-61. There, I can just play music like you would (except I test one speaker, not two).

As with the measurements, I was again not hearing what I like. I went through my list of good sounding tracks and few impressed me. I then switched back to Revel Salon 2 and all the fidelity was there (that speaker was right next to the AS-61). FYI, I had the speaker toed out a bit from angle of my ears.

The sound emanating seemed quite large and this may be part of the problem as my room is very much on the live side (huge space).

At higher SPLs, I could feel the speaker pressurizing with all sides heavily vibrating with bass notes. Whether that was too much power, I don't know. My amp is rated at 1000 watts into 4 ohms so there. :)

After 30 minutes, I gave up. I need a proper way to perform AB tests. For now then, it just wouldn't be a speaker I would like to have in my system. Beyond that, don't draw any conclusions please.

Conclusions
Some reviews I hate to do and this is one of them. I very much respect Andrew Jones and have enjoyed very much his demos and talks at shows. So I went into this review hoping all stars would align and I could just rave about the speaker. Alas, neither the objective or subjective data demonstrated that. Andrew joined our forum a couple of years ago when we were young. I sent him a message last night but I did not hear back today so I went ahead and post the review. I am hoping he does see it eventually and can help provide his perspective on the data.

Searching online, I only found one measurement which was not all that well done so no other reference to double check our work here.

So no recommendation one way or the other for Elac Adante AS-61.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Weather is warming up early this year so soon I need to get going on my vegetable starts. Alas, I spent all my money on measurement gear for speakers so need money for seeds, soil, etc. Please donate a few dollars so I can eat healthy come this summer using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Hi amir

in the first graph of the eye candy measurements are the two axes representing physical dimensions?
If so, Would it be possible to have units of measure and numbers along the axes?
With this info, would It be possible to understand if It is the transition from the tweeter to the midrange the cause or the midrange surround or baffle edges?
 
I wonder if this design would be more susceptible to extreme cold than most, given the internal woofer and possible temperature variations in different moving parts as a result?
 
So I bought the AF-61's on sale. I managed to find the last center speaker about a week ago in matching colors. The center speaker is drilled incorrectly, and I can't mount it to the center stand.

But...I connected it anyway since I did all that work and I quickly noticed that the bass output on the center speaker was much deeper, louder, and more rumbly than my floor standers.

Is there ANY reason a smaller center (it's still pretty big) channel with two woofers should put out significantly more bass than a 3 woofer floorstander? The sound seems so unbalanced in 3 channel stereo, because all the bass is coming straight from the center of the room rather than being all-encompassing and homogeneous. I put my ear on the woofers to make sure I'm not hallucinating, but sure enough the center's bass is much deeper, rumbly, and audibly noticeable. I even measured the diameter of the woofers to make sure the center woofers weren't larger than the floorstanders, but all of them are the same diameter.

So, my center channel was drilled incorrectly (and one screw stripped) and I'm guessing my floorstanders are leaking inside due to construction issues. I read about a guy who opened his floorstanders and found gaps everywhere and sealed them. Also, some light scratches on some of the metal faces that are barely visible but there, amongst other issues such as not great PVD coating on the feet that looks like it's staining and turning black (instead of silver). I'm guessing this is why the Adante's got discontinued due to all the quality issues.

Am I right to assume the 2 floorstanders should output bass that at least equal to the center channel? I'm not very knowledgable about speakers and sound terminology but I enjoyed reading the reviews on this forum and probably should have listened to Amirm, amongst all the other warnings signs. I really liked the look of them ever since they were released, but now I guess I'm kind of screwed.

I did contact support and waiting to hear back but I don't see how this could go in my favor...

Thanks for any insight!
Michael
 
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So I bought the AF-61's on sale. I managed to find the last center speaker about a week ago in matching colors. The center speaker is drilled incorrectly, and I can't mount it to the center stand.

But...I connected it anyway since I did all that work and I quickly noticed that the bass output on the center speaker was much deeper, louder, and more rumbly than my floor standers.

Is there ANY reason a smaller center (it's still pretty big) channel with two woofers should put out significantly more bass than a 3 woofer floorstander? The sound seems so unbalanced in 3 channel stereo, because all the bass is coming straight from the center of the room rather than being all-encompassing and homogeneous. I put my ear on the woofers to make sure I'm not hallucinating, but sure enough the center's bass is much deeper, rumbly, and audibly noticeable. I even measured the diameter of the woofers to make sure the center woofers weren't larger than the floorstanders, but all of them are the same diameter.

So, my center channel was drilled incorrectly (and one screw stripped) and I'm guessing my floorstanders are leaking inside due to construction issues. I read about a guy who opened his floorstanders and found gaps everywhere and sealed them. Also, some light scratches on some of the metal faces that are barely visible but there, amongst other issues such as not great PVD coating on the feet that looks like it's staining and turning black (instead of silver). I'm guessing this is why the Adante's got discontinued due to all the quality issues.

Am I right to assume the floorstanders should output more bass than the center channel? I'm not very knowledgable about speakers and sound terminology but I enjoyed reading the reviews on this forum and probably should have listened to Amirm, amongst all the other warnings signs. I really liked the look of them ever since they were released, but now I guess I'm kind of screwed.

I did contact support and waiting to hear back but I don't see how this could go in my favor...

Thanks for any insight!
Michael

The extra woofer on the floorstanders shouldn't necessarily lower its bass extension. It all depends on the internal dimensions of the boxes and the tuning of the passive radiators (i.e. how much mass has been added to the diaphragms).

If we assume that each woofer/passive radiator is in a similar-sized enclosure with the same passive radiator tuning (which I think is a fair assumption), the extra woofer on the AF-61 would allow it to play louder/with lower distortion, but the bass extension would not be any different. Alternatively, it's conceivable (although unlikely IMO) that the speakers are tuned differently (i.e. the internal dimensions are greater or the passive radiator has more added mass) such that the centre channel has lower bass extension. I don't see any reason why that would be the case, though.

An additional possibility is that the difference in perceived bass extension/level is due to placement. If your floorstanders are away from any walls while your centre channel is flush against a wall or inside a cabinet of some kind, that would increase the relative amount of bass coming out of the centre channel (all else equal).

Or if, due to placement, the location of your centre channel is exciting a room mode that your floorstanders are not (or are cancelling) or if, when you listen up close to your centre channel you are standing in a location in the room where there is a room mode peak(s), while when you listen up close to the floorstanders you're standing in a location where there are nulls, that could also account for the perceived difference.
 
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Hey Adreasmaan,

It's a very, very noticeable difference. Placement is about same distance from wall (no back ports) and each woofer is enclosed in a similar sub enclosure within the speaker from Elac's advertising images as far as I can tell. Like, if I put my ear to it, its really a big difference. Tweeter is same or non-distinguishable. Overall the setup gives the perception that I have all this bass blasting from the center channel and nothing from left or right, which is weird. The center channel is dominating the bass output.

A guy posted his story about fixing his Adante floorstanders here:
https://forum.polkaudio.com/discussion/184771/elac-adante-af-61-took-some-diy-to-make-perfect

I have a feeling maybe mine have the same issue. He found not all edges were sealed and there was a lot of internal chamber leaking that reduced bass output. He basically opened it up and caulked all the edges. I'm thinking that might be the most logical reason for this huge disparity, but I'm just guessing at this point.

It's just weird, and I think probably not intended. However, if I didn't buy the center speaker I wouldn't have known. Something seems wrong to me. It's like the first thing I noticed after 2 minutes, like, where is all the bass coming from suddenly!? I would say the center has a very full bodied sound thanks to the bass extension and the floorstanders are mostly tweeter with very light bass.
 
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So I bought the AF-61's on sale. I managed to find the last center speaker about a week ago in matching colors. The center speaker is drilled incorrectly, and I can't mount it to the center stand.

But...I connected it anyway since I did all that work and I quickly noticed that the bass output on the center speaker was much deeper, louder, and more rumbly than my floor standers.

Is there ANY reason a smaller center (it's still pretty big) channel with two woofers should put out significantly more bass than a 3 woofer floorstander? The sound seems so unbalanced in 3 channel stereo, because all the bass is coming straight from the center of the room rather than being all-encompassing and homogeneous. I put my ear on the woofers to make sure I'm not hallucinating, but sure enough the center's bass is much deeper, rumbly, and audibly noticeable. I even measured the diameter of the woofers to make sure the center woofers weren't larger than the floorstanders, but all of them are the same diameter.

So, my center channel was drilled incorrectly (and one screw stripped) and I'm guessing my floorstanders are leaking inside due to construction issues. I read about a guy who opened his floorstanders and found gaps everywhere and sealed them. Also, some light scratches on some of the metal faces that are barely visible but there, amongst other issues such as not great PVD coating on the feet that looks like it's staining and turning black (instead of silver). I'm guessing this is why the Adante's got discontinued due to all the quality issues.

Am I right to assume the 2 floorstanders should output bass that at least equal to the center channel? I'm not very knowledgable about speakers and sound terminology but I enjoyed reading the reviews on this forum and probably should have listened to Amirm, amongst all the other warnings signs. I really liked the look of them ever since they were released, but now I guess I'm kind of screwed.

I did contact support and waiting to hear back but I don't see how this could go in my favor...

Thanks for any insight!
Michael

Position is huge when it comes to bass. Tiny differences in position can cause very large differences in the sound of the bass. Can you switch the position of the center and one of the mains to see if the main now has more bass(in the center's position).

Also, can you measure? Doing so could potentially highlight room modes that are responsible for what you're hearing.
 
Hey Adreasmaan,

It's a very, very noticeable difference. Placement is about same distance from wall (no back ports) and each woofer is enclosed in a similar sub enclosure within the speaker from Elac's advertising images as far as I can tell. Like, if I put my ear to it, its really a big difference. Tweeter is same or non-distinguishable. Overall the setup gives the perception that I have all this bass blasting from the center channel and nothing from left or right, which is weird. The center channel is dominating the bass output.

A guy posted his story about fixing his Adante floorstanders here:
https://forum.polkaudio.com/discussion/184771/elac-adante-af-61-took-some-diy-to-make-perfect

I have a feeling maybe mine have the same issue. He found not all edges were sealed and there was a lot of internal chamber leaking that reduced bass output. He basically opened it up and caulked all the edges. I'm thinking that might be the most logical reason for this huge disparity, but I'm just guessing at this point.

It's just weird, and I think probably not intended. However, if I didn't buy the center speaker I wouldn't have known. Something seems wrong to me. It's like the first thing I noticed after 2 minutes, like, where is all the bass coming from suddenly!? I would say the center has a very full bodied sound thanks to the bass extension and the floorstanders are mostly tweeter with very light bass.

If there's leakage between the woofer enclosures or between the passive radiator enclosures, this won't change the bass output significantly. Three woofers and three passive radiators in individual enclosures will perform similarly to three woofers in a single enclosure 3x the size of one woofer enclosure plus three passive radiators in a single enclosure 3x the size of one PR enclosure. If there's leakage between the woofer/PR chambers and/or between either the woofer/PR chambers and the chamber housing the coaxial driver, that could certainly affect performance.

I'm a little sceptical of that post on the Polk forum. Firstly, there are no measurements. Secondly, the poster doesn't actually say anything about the speakers' perceived bass response. He just says "Sound even better (I would hope) than before." Pretty unclear what that means. Without measurements the perceived difference could be just as easily attributable to expectation bias.

Having said that, it's possible that there is a real problem with the speakers I guess. Before you pull them apart though, I suggest you take measurements, or if that's not possible, at least do what @richard12511 suggests and swap the speakers' positions and listen again. I'd be very surprised if this issue you have is attributable to anything other than room modal behaviour. Most likely the centre channel is exciting a room mode that the floorstanders are not.
 
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