Elac Carina BS243.4 Review (Bookshelf Speaker)

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

I own them. Paid $999 pair at Crutchfield AND they came with free matching stands which MSRP for $500. First off the stands are 23” which is a bit low for these small speakers. Like Amir says they sound best sitting at or below tweeter height. Also, $500 for these stands is a complete ripoff, but I have pets and kids, so being able to screw them down was important. But as I said they were free, so I guess I can’t complain much about the stands. You can see from the measurements they have very good bass response for their size and are very neutral. That said I use them with an SVS 1000 pro crossed at 55HZ. I can also confirm Amir’s review that they do like a bit of power and are inefficient. They would not be my first choice in a large room. But in my small 2nd living room (12’ x 20’) they are plenty loud and then some for my taste. I also think it’s a bit unfair to compare them to Genelecs in terms of value and could certainly argue they are better in that regard. But if money is no object then yes there are other options I may have chosen.

Compare to Revel M16.

 

[amirm]

$999 a pair or for a single speaker?

A pair.

 

[DMill]

Compare to Revel M16.

The Revels are discounted to $700/pair now. At the time I bought my budget for my second system was $1000 all in. So with stands they were a tiny bit more than budget. At their current price… nice. I also considered Elac dbr62 (girlfriend hated vinyl wrap). I was able to directly compare the kef 50 meta in my room which a friend owns. I liked the Elacs more, he liked his kef. And so it goes.

 

[Basjebas]

Great little speakers!
-899€ in Germany incl. 19% tax.
-1069€ in the Netherlands incl. 21% tax.
You can order it in Germany and have it delivered all over Europe for 20€.

 

[Streamc]

These are very small speakers not mentioned in the review. They almost make it without a sub which I thought was a nice advantage vs the Kef 50. But a sub without a doubt helps.

How can speake cover all frequencies without subwoofer?

 

[DualTriode]

"It attempted to produce sub-bass but what came out was clearly distorted."

??

 

[Thunder22]

$999 a pair or for a single speaker?

Usually active/powered speakers are listed/sold as singles. Passives are almost always sold as a set, at least as far as I can tell.

 

[FeddyLost]

Decent implementation of basically .. disputable design. AMT with hard cone in passive 2-way is an expensive pain.
But with notched out woofer resonance it would be little better.
For sure, Elac couldn't use HF dome in waveguide due to their marketing reasons, so the result if what we see here. Must be a lesser evil than other solutions.

 

[hyfynut]

Usually active/powered speakers are listed/sold as singles. Passives are almost always sold as a set, at least as far as I can tell.

Perhaps usually, but is this the case with these? I see jbl and other powered speakers advertised as pairs all the time.

 

[DMill]

Perhaps usually, but is this the case with these? I see jbl and other powered speakers advertised as pairs all the time.

In the case of the ELACs the pair of speakers came in one box. Not sure you can buy them as single speakers but I’m guessing if you contacted ELAC or a distributor they would sell them individually. Money talks

 

[mmuetst]

BBC dip….Andrew Jones is British, that explains everything

 

[Robbo99999]

My take on the product/review (not read other comments - saying this in case someone thinks I'm replying to someone above).......my take is that I'm surprised to see quite a bit of lack of bass given it's a 5" woofer, I would have expected more, like from the JBL 305p Mkii as just one example, although I'll temper that by saying that the Elac has a very smooth/slower roll off in the bass that might work well with room bass reinforcement....but I'm still surprised by the lower amount of bass. I think the large dip at 1800Hz is quite a large compromise to make, I wouldn't like to see that in my speaker. What is interesting though is the wide 70 degree dispersion in the horizontal directivity! I was expecting this speaker to get a fair panning (negative review) when I saw the spinorama, but I would wager the wide directivity saved this speaker when it came to Amir's listening impressions. I mean, how many speakers have we seen with a wide 70 degree horizontal dispersion? Normally we have around 60 degree horizontal dispersion as pretty much best case right? So maybe the extra 10 degrees of horizontal dispersion is really what is making this speaker a pleasure to listen to???

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

My take on the product/review (not read other comments - saying this in case someone thinks I'm replying to someone above).......my take is that I'm surprised to see quite a bit of lack of bass given it's a 5" woofer, I would have expected more, like from the JBL 305p Mkii as just one example, although I'll temper that by saying that the Elac has a very smooth/slower roll off in the bass that might work well with room bass reinforcement....but I'm still surprised by the lower amount of bass. I think the large dip at 1800Hz is quite a large compromise to make, I wouldn't like to see that in my speaker. What is interesting though is the wide 70 degree dispersion in the horizontal directivity! I was expecting this speaker to get a fair panning (negative review) when I saw the spinorama, but I would wager the wide directivity saved this speaker when it came to Amir's listening impressions. I mean, how many speakers have we seen with a wide 70 degree horizontal dispersion? Normally we have around 60 degree horizontal dispersion as pretty much best case right? So maybe the extra 10 degrees of horizontal dispersion is really what is making this speaker a pleasure to listen to???

Maybe the extra horizontal dispersion is a good thing, depends on preference listening and the room
I saw this speaker it's 3 way, I didn't notice that

• Type:
• 3-way Vented box
• Woofer:
• 1 x Aluminum cone 5-1/4″
• Midrange:
• 1 x Aluminum Cone 5-1/4″
• Tweeter:
• JET folded ribbon
• Crossover frequency:
• 100Hz / 3kHz

 

[Robbo99999]

Maybe the extra horizontal dispersion is a good thing, depends on preference listening and the room
I saw this speaker it's 3 way, I didn't notice that

• Type:
• 3-way Vented box
• Woofer:
• 1 x Aluminum cone 5-1/4″
• Midrange:
• 1 x Aluminum Cone 5-1/4″
• Tweeter:
• JET folded ribbon
• Crossover frequency:
• 100Hz / 3kHz

Yes, it looks like a 2-way, but it's a 3-way, not sure how the heck that happens....I had noticed it say crossover at 100Hz on the Elac website so that confused me when I thought it was a 2-way from looking at the pics. Where is that 3rd speaker?

But with regards to the wide dispersion that I mentioned - maybe that's what caught Amir's ear to aid in his positive review.....otherwise I don't see it as such a great speaker from the other measurements. I voted this speaker as "Fine", I was intrigued by the wide dispersion and Amir's positive listening impression, which is the only reason I voted this "fine" rather than "not terrible" (given it's fairly high price).

 

[thewas]

Maybe the extra horizontal dispersion is a good thing, depends on preference listening and the room
I saw this speaker it's 3 way, I didn't notice that

• Type:
• 3-way Vented box
• Woofer:
• 1 x Aluminum cone 5-1/4″
• Midrange:
• 1 x Aluminum Cone 5-1/4″
• Tweeter:
• JET folded ribbon
• Crossover frequency:
• 100Hz / 3kHz

Can you post the link of that? I see 2-way both on the German and English sites

Carina BS243.4

Entwickelt, um in die Fußstapfen der vielfach ausgezeichneten Serie 240 zu treten. Tradition und Moderne im Blick: bei der Entwicklung der Carina Serie wurde der Erfolg Serie 240 gewürdigt und gleichzeitig der Blick auf die Moderne gerichtet. Nach dem JET-Prinzip gefalteter Hochtöner, spezielle T

www.elac.de

Carina BS243.4

Building upon its performance, Carina continues ELAC’s tradition of utilizing the JET tweeter, chosen for its amazing clarity, dynamics and attack. To match this capability, a new in-house developed proprietary compound curvature aluminum coned woofer is seamlessly blended via a sophisticated multi

www.elacaudio.ca

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

Can you post the link of that? I see 2-way both on the German and English sites

Carina BS243.4

Entwickelt, um in die Fußstapfen der vielfach ausgezeichneten Serie 240 zu treten. Tradition und Moderne im Blick: bei der Entwicklung der Carina Serie wurde der Erfolg Serie 240 gewürdigt und gleichzeitig der Blick auf die Moderne gerichtet. Nach dem JET-Prinzip gefalteter Hochtöner, spezielle T

www.elac.de

Carina BS243.4

Building upon its performance, Carina continues ELAC’s tradition of utilizing the JET tweeter, chosen for its amazing clarity, dynamics and attack. To match this capability, a new in-house developed proprietary compound curvature aluminum coned woofer is seamlessly blended via a sophisticated multi

www.elacaudio.ca

ELAC Carina Bookshelf Speakers - BS243.4

Looking for more information on ELAC Carina Bookshelf Speakers - BS243.4? Click to learn more and shop now from ELAC!

www.elac.com

From here

Im very confused now, look below at thier specs

 

[thewas]

ELAC Carina Bookshelf Speakers - BS243.4

Looking for more information on ELAC Carina Bookshelf Speakers - BS243.4? Click to learn more and shop now from ELAC!

www.elac.com

From here

Im very confused now, look below at thier specs

It seems they erroneously copied the specs from the center https://www.elac.com/center-channel-speakers/carina-cc241-4/

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

It seems they erroneously copied the specs from the center https://www.elac.com/center-channel-speakers/carina-cc241-4/

Shame on me, thank you for the correction

 

[thewas]

Shame on me, thank you for the correction

No worries or shames, such simple errors happen daily to anyone.

 

[amirm]

"It attempted to produce sub-bass but what came out was clearly distorted."

??

Some small speakers simply filter out sub-bass. Others faintly reproduce it. Then there is the more rare situation of this speaker where it puts out the sound at reasonable volume but it is distorted.