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Elac Cinema 5.2 Subwoofer

TheBatsEar

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This is a thread for the Elac Cinema 5.2 Subwoofer, a cheap subwoofer that is part of a small cinema speaker kit, but is sold alone by Hidden Audio. I have no idea what happened to the speakers in the kit. At least @arvidb and i have them, possibly others might look for infos about them eventually.


So what are these subwoofers then?
  • They are small 8 inch drivers in a very lightweight bass reflex enclosure. Amplification is done with a 100W class D class AB plate amp.
  • Overall they are as cheap as it gets, but above computer speaker subwoofers. One costs about 100 to 120€ and i, as well as @arvidb, have two.
  • They use a tiny amount of standby power, so it makes sense to set them to automatic.
  • Mine are supposed to go into a system with a pair of Elac DBR62, a MiniDSP 2x4HD, a Yamaha R-S700 and a RPi streamer, which later this year will be a present for a 15 year old that uses bluetooth speakers right now. Last time she drooled over my hifi stuff and played with it for hours.
  • It's my understanding that @arvidb will attempt to get a better bass response in his room, possibly fixing the existing bass nulls. He will pair them with some Kali LP6v2.
  • SPL will not be much for american homes, but for small European rooms it should suffice. :cool:

Some official specs:
  • 200mm woofer
  • Frequency response: 40 to 150Hz
  • Power: 100 watts
  • Phaseswitch: 0/180 degrees
  • Inputs: L/R, LFE RCA
  • Dimensions: H 336 x W 310 x D 310 mm

Pics:

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a61137-637868312355823714-620x405-cwhdevcenterhcenterbgffffff.jpeg

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Plots: to be done.
 
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3125b

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Seems about on par with the other cheap subs like the ever present mivoc Hype 10.
Have you recieved your DBR62 from Hidden yet? Kind of interested how it works out for you and the others who ordered there in terms of drop shipping from Elac.
 
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TheBatsEar

TheBatsEar

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Seems about on par with the other cheap subs like the ever present mivoc Hype 10.
Not familiar with that particular one, but it looks a lot like a Magnat i have in the basement to hold a box of bits and bobs.

Surely, the next step in cost cutting would mean it fails it's primary function: boomifying slightly larger speakers. :D

Have you recieved your DBR62 from Hidden yet?
I did not. These subwoofers came two days after ordering.
Seems Hidden Audio is purely dropshipping.
 

abdo123

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I would try to aim for 12 inch subwoofers if you’re aiming for Cinema experience at your home.

Very cool find though!
 

arvidb

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I'm hoping to use mine to fill out this huge trough between 50 and 100 Hz. And I live in an apartment so high bass SPL is not an option unfortunately. It's for nearfield music listening. So hopefully these subs will do.
Kalis-midroom-foam-2022-12-16.png

First trace is original room response without filtering, second is with resonance peaks filtered out (UMIK-1 MMM in REW). I just ordered the subs so it will probably be a week or so until I can try them out.
 

arvidb

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My subs were delivered today. I won't be able to try them out for a couple of days (no leisure time while the neighbours aren't sleeping) - so I say like Dave Jones (of EEVBlog): "Don't turn it on, take it apart!" :p

SAM_3566.jpg


The exterior is clearly made down to a price (as could be expected for €115): the surface looks to be melamine, i.e. the same as you would find on a basic IKEA kitchen cabinet. The amp plate is plastic (although a pretty good impression of metal). The volume and crossover dials feel very gritty (they won't move unintentionally which is a plus I guess).

But the box is made of what looks like MDF (15.5 mm) and makes a pretty solid impression. The driver is beefier than I expected! The bass reflex tube is flared on the inside as well as the outside and all internal cables are padded. The whole thing weighs in at 8.3 kg. All in all I'm positively surprised by the construction, given the price. I get the impression that Elac has compromised more on appearance than on function - something that I like!

The electronics seems to be a switch mode supply followed by a discrete class AB amp. The preamp is a separate board.

SAM_3573.jpg


Huge FAIL on the mains power connector on this particular sub - one of the leads is not properly soldered:

SAM_3577.jpg


If this becomes intermittent it will be a fire hazard. If it comes loose and touches the heat sink plate just next to it it could become a shock hazard. Or fry the signal source and anything connected to it.
 

arvidb

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Stripped from black gunk, resoldered, and heatshrunk. Much better!
SAM_3582_stripped_crop.jpg SAM_3586_resoldered_crop.jpg SAM_3587_heatshrunk_crop.jpg
 
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TheBatsEar

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Just checked my connections, both are fine.

Played with the subs a bit yesterday without proper DSP integration. I just hooked them up to the pre-out on my A-S 1200. They add some heft to my ATC SCM19v2 and i can't hear much difference to my DIY sub at regular volumes (double the volume, sealed, 10 inch woofer, higher powered).

Not bad for what i would consider pocket money.:cool:
 

arvidb

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Lol why don’t you fix the other one also? The black gunk looks uncomfortable
I don't see anything obviously wrong with the other one, and it was a bit of work stripping that black gunk, so why bother?
 
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Willem

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We are waiting for measurements .... I continue to be amazed by the quality of some modern dirt cheap gear. Add a pair of cheap Wharfedale Diamond 200 or 12.1 speakers (about 125 euros in the Netherlands) and you are all set for somehing quite enjoyable.
 

arvidb

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I'm not set up to do (quasi-)anechoic measurements. So don't wait for such measurements from me.

I finally got the opportunity yesterday to start integrating the things. (Well only one of them so far.) I hooked it up with a 6 meter long RCA cable to the left channel of my DAC, and with the - unusually long at apprx 2.5 m - supplied mains cable. I used a camera stand to position my Umik-1 where my head usually is while listening. And I used REW to play periodic pink noise and looked at the response via REW's RTA.

I first had the monitors turned off and used the RTA to set crossover frequency and level on the sub to get it to cover the frequency range I'm interested in (mostly 50-100 Hz where I have big dips from my room response). Then I turned the monitors on so all sources played simultaneously, since I know of no other way to "vector add" them continuously/live. (Ignore the higher frequencies if you do this - shorter wavelengths will look really weird since it's a single spot measurement of multiple sources.)

Then I started moving the sub around - and switched the sub's phase inversion on and off - to try to find a spot where it covered the missing frequencies. It was pretty fascinating to me to see how much the response varies while doing this! In the end I had to cut it short without finding a great spot. I did find a "somewhat better than before" spot and used that to create new filters to cut out the peaks. I'm not happy with this rather hurried result and will have to continue working on it.

BTW I've found that Martin Garrix - Home is a terrific song for testing this frequency range. Starting from 37 seconds in it has a sequence of bass notes - not 100 % sure about the order now but they are 102 Hz, 62 Hz, 69 Hz, 82 Hz according to Sonic Visualiser - and especially the 62 Hz simply disappears with only my mains. It's very revealing!
 
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TheBatsEar

TheBatsEar

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I'm not set up to do (quasi-)anechoic measurements. So don't wait for such measurements from me.
Same here, any measurements i could do include my room.
 
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