This is a review and detailed measurements of the ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2 bookshelf speaker. It was kindly purchased by a member new and sent to me for testing. It costs US $245 from Amazon including free shipping.
The Debut 2.0 has a decent look:
View attachment 70202
It comes with an external grill that I did not use. But I did leave the tweeter screen in place for testing. It is likely a nod to retailers putting these in showrooms trying to keep fingers away from the delicate tweeter.
The finish is fine except I saw a fine white line above the speaker:
View attachment 70203
Back panel is as you expect:
View attachment 70204
The binding posts as is typical are too close to each other and recessed in this case, making them pretty difficult to turn.
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 (so where I measure it doesn't matter). 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 an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I used over 800 measurement point which was sufficient to compute the sound field of the speaker.
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 70205
Overall, this is a rather flat response so response is not going to be too far from neutral.
A sharp resonance sticks out prominently at 700 Hz which you will see later in a number of other measurements.
The woofer is getting directional before the tweeter takes over with its much wider beam width.
Going back to the resonance, I made near field measurements (almost at driver/port location) to see what they each are doing:
View attachment 70206
We see our 700 Hz resonance there as a peak in the woofer response so we know it is coming from that. We can also detect the crossover frequency at near 2 kHz.
There is a bump in tweeter response which seems intentional to give the speaker a bit more "zing."
The port (red) helps fill in the low-bass response.
Back to our "spinorama" here is how the important reflections look in a room:
View attachment 70208
We see a dip in energy around 2 kHz due to directivity error mentioned before. Worst offenders are floor and ceiling reflections so at least a carpet is advised.
Putting everything together, we can plot a hypothetical frequency response in a simulated room:
View attachment 70209
We see our dip in energy around 1 to 2 kHz again and then some increased amount after that.
Distortion response at two different output levels is shown here:
View attachment 70210
Response at 86 dB is very good. At 96 dB we have the woofer getting unhappy around 400 Hz and tweeter screaming as well but that distortion is at pretty high frequencies. In absolute levels we get this:
View attachment 70211
As noted, in this plot I like to see nothing but blank space above 500 Hz. We have some distortion here so not matching our ideals.
Directivity plots are are as follows:
View attachment 70212
I like the overall well behaved response although it is not super wide. We see the same with fancy color graded chart:
View attachment 70213
Vertical directivity is typical of 2-way speakers but while some speakers really fall apart off tweeter axis, here you have about +-20 degrees before response gets worse:
View attachment 70214
Here is our waterfall telling us what we already know with respect to 700 Hz resonance:
View attachment 70215
Finally, we have our impedance chart:
View attachment 70216
Impedance at 5 ohm is above average (a good thing). Once again we see a sign of our 700 Hz resonance in the form of a "kink" in the phase response (red).
Speaker Listening Tests
"5-second" reaction to speaker first playing was neutral. Nothing stood out as broken. Nothing stood out as exceptional. Usually it is one or the other.
Listening some more, the sound could be better as it was a bit bright and unexciting for lack of a better term. So I went after it with some Equalization. I first corrected the 700 Hz peak. It seemed to only reduce bass a bit and not much else. I then pulled down the highs a bit, that seemed to make some things worse, some better. So I then went after the mid-range dip and that was helpful:
View attachment 70217
Esse aumento na resposta traz mais ar e detalhes em frequências mais baixas, o que sempre acho bem-vindo. Com isso no lugar, o pull down em 5 kHz (roxo) foi mais útil do que não.
O azul-petróleo é para o quarto, então ignore isso.
Uma vez lá, o orador foi agradável. E o mais importante, ele pode tocar alto, muito alto! É orador mais impressionante a esse respeito. Mesmo tocando um alto-falante, eu poderia fazê-lo quase com níveis de sangramento de ouvido com quase nenhuma distorção!
O desempenho quando o volume necessário era necessário foi muito bom. Acima da média para ter certeza. Mas quando não, era comum. Não de uma maneira ruim, mas não empolgante.
Conclusões
Pelo que li, o designer Andrew Jones tentou adicionar mais alguns agudos a esta segunda iteração do alto-falante B6. Acho essa mudança indesejável, pois deixou o alto-falante um pouco brilhante. Eu posso ver por que isso pode vender alto-falantes, mas não gostei dessa mudança. O principal problema com o alto-falante é a queda na resposta na importante faixa de 1 a 2 kHz. Uma vez corrigido com EQ, e combinado com sua grande capacidade de tocar alto devido ao seu woofer maior que o típico, isso se torna uma oferta competente.
Eu estava dividido como avaliar este alto-falante. Eu poderia dizer "gostei" ou "não sei". Eu poderia ser empurrado para ir com qualquer um. No interesse do tempo e de muitos problemas importantes da vida para ponderar, apenas dei a última classificação de pantera e continuei meu negócio. Se você optar por comprar o ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2, não vou dizer que é uma má decisão.
-----------
Como sempre, perguntas, comentários, recomendações, etc. são bem-vindos.
O tempo está lindo lá fora. Ensolarado, lindo com tanto verde com temperaturas perfeitas. No entanto, estou sentado em alto-falantes de teste interno. Escusado será dizer que isso me deixa deprimido. A única coisa que resolve isso são alguns dólares a mais no meu bolso. Então, por favor,
doe o que você pode usando:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
gr-research.com
