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ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2 Speaker Review

tvrgeek

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Waiting on a pair for my desk. I have too many projects in the fire to do another build and I would get carried away and spend more anyway. If I don't care for them, I need some for the woodshop, so nothing lost. Should be interesting what my little Tripath sounds like on a bit bigger speaker. I have been using tiny FE85/generic tweeter minis. that were really an experiment if modifications would make it a suitable midrange. Could not solve the frame reflection problem.
 

tvrgeek

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So far, the R200 is well ahead of the ELAC to my ears. There's just something funny about those little ELACs. They're not bad, but they miss the mark relative to my taste.
I HOPE an $750 /pair might edge out a $250 pair. Sure a Revel M16 or Kef LS50 might do even better.
One person was complaining about plastic wrap. It is a $250/pair speaker! If you want a nice wood finish, you have to pay for it.
You don't always get what you pay for, but if you don't pay for it, you won't get it.

The question is how it compares to a Wharfdale 12.1?
 

mhardy6647

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I HOPE an $750 /pair might edge out a $250 pair. Sure a Revel M16 or Kef LS50 might do even better.
One person was complaining about plastic wrap. It is a $250/pair speaker! If you want a nice wood finish, you have to pay for it.
You don't always get what you pay for, but if you don't pay for it, you won't get it.

The question is how it compares to a Wharfdale 12.1?
The finish of the ELAC doesn't bother me at all -- the quality of the sound does.
Yes, the Polks certainly should sound better -- if price and sound quality strictly correlate. Historically they don't. Pretty safe bet there are myriad more expensive loudspeakers than the ELACs or the Polks that won't sound "better" than either.
The Polk R200 were $445 the pair on sale from Polk when I bought them.
No idea about the Wharfies. Some folks seem to like them.
 

nick779

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I HOPE an $750 /pair might edge out a $250 pair. Sure a Revel M16 or Kef LS50 might do even better.
One person was complaining about plastic wrap. It is a $250/pair speaker! If you want a nice wood finish, you have to pay for it.
You don't always get what you pay for, but if you don't pay for it, you won't get it.

The question is how it compares to a Wharfdale 12.1?
IMO the Wharfedale 12.1 is much better rounded and cleaner than the Elacs, but it suffers substantially with bass. It can do bass, just don't get your expectations too high from a 5" driver.

The Kef Q150 is also worth a look. I'm currently testing them vs the 12.1s and they're both very good speakers.
 

tvrgeek

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Received the baby brother, the 5.2 Prices have gone up substantially today as they are $330 a pair. I paid $237 two days ago.
First blush, nothing glaring wrong. I'll pull out the mic and get then tuned in in the morning. A little bigger than I thought, but fitting them in. A 5 seems big. I am moving up from a 2 1/2. 6.2's are up to $400 now.

I imagine this is a rather competitive market. Bottom end where you can start to expect reasonable performance.

Quite true, there are a lot of not very good speakers for a LOT of money. I hear several recently in the 3 to 5K range.
 

tvrgeek

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Oh, for my use, I needed the front port. They have to be up against a wall. In corners too, so I expect a lot more bass than if sitting out in an optimal position.
 

nick779

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Received the baby brother, the 5.2 Prices have gone up substantially today as they are $330 a pair. I paid $237 two days ago.
First blush, nothing glaring wrong. I'll pull out the mic and get then tuned in in the morning. A little bigger than I thought, but fitting them in. A 5 seems big. I am moving up from a 2 1/2. 6.2's are up to $400 now.

I imagine this is a rather competitive market. Bottom end where you can start to expect reasonable performance.

Quite true, there are a lot of not very good speakers for a LOT of money. I hear several recently in the 3 to 5K range.
What are you using to equalize them? I've been meaning to get into some sort of eq and room correction.
 

Teeter

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Reading all kinds of internet reviews on the 6.2's, I ordered a pair yesterday. They will replace the current JBL Stage A130. I can return the 6.2's. I am within budget. It is sad that some speaker mfg's have increased their prices astronomically! We will see if any price reductions coming in the next few months or NOT.

Question: Is there a preference if the 6.2's should be toed in vs straight out in the room? Just asking as could not find if wide dispersion or not.
My HT room is 10 X 8, carpeted w 8 foot ceiling. I am a movie listener with 5.1 sound set-up. Sometimes a little mp3 internet or Directv Satellite music.
 
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Reading all kinds of internet reviews on the 6.2's, I ordered a pair yesterday. They will replace the current JBL Stage A130. I can return the 6.2's. I am within budget. It is sad that some speaker mfg's have increased their prices astronomically! We will see if any price reductions coming in the next few months or NOT.

Question: Is there a preference if the 6.2's should be toed in vs straight out in the room? Just asking as could not find if wide dispersion or not.
My HT room is 10 X 8, carpeted w 8 foot ceiling. I am a movie listener with 5.1 sound set-up. Sometimes a little mp3 internet or Directv Satellite music.
Price increases are crazy, the elac debut references have gone from 600 to 900 Canadian up north!
 

gags

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Reading all kinds of internet reviews on the 6.2's, I ordered a pair yesterday. They will replace the current JBL Stage A130. I can return the 6.2's. I am within budget. It is sad that some speaker mfg's have increased their prices astronomically! We will see if any price reductions coming in the next few months or NOT.

Question: Is there a preference if the 6.2's should be toed in vs straight out in the room? Just asking as could not find if wide dispersion or not.
My HT room is 10 X 8, carpeted w 8 foot ceiling. I am a movie listener with 5.1 sound set-up. Sometimes a little mp3 internet or Directv Satellite music.

I’ve tried all sorts of things.

Now that I’ve got rid of a ground loop type issue I’ve ended up with mine toed in directly facing the prime listening position.

Strangely while I had the issue I had one toed in and one straight. Can’t explain it but that sounded best.

I enjoy a decent amount of movies with these, on top of much music, and they suit me just fine. Great value for money.
 

Teeter

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Reading all kinds of internet reviews on the 6.2's, I ordered a pair yesterday. They will replace the current JBL Stage A130. I can return the 6.2's. I am within budget. It is sad that some speaker mfg's have increased their prices astronomically! We will see if any price reductions coming in the next few months or NOT.

Question: Is there a preference if the 6.2's should be toed in vs straight out in the room? Just asking as could not find if wide dispersion or not.
My HT room is 10 X 8, carpeted w 8 foot ceiling. I am a movie listener with 5.1 sound set-up. Sometimes a little mp3 internet or Directv Satellite music.
I installed the new B6.2's yesterday. Here is my detail set-up: [2020] Denon AVR-S960H 7.1, Main: ELAC B6.2, Center-psb Imagine XC, Surr-Klipsch R 15M, Woofer: Klipsch R 100SW. Previous Mains: JBL Stage A130 and b/4, Klipsch R-51M. Klipsch were to Trebly. JBL A130 were to Neutral and low on detail. Mp3 music is Piano, Symphony, 60's, Folk, and current hits,

For internet mp3 Music: AVR is set to STEREO or 2 Channel
For Movies: AVR is set to Dolby Digital + Surround.

The ELAC B6.2's have expressed the best all around music performance to my ears over its predecessors. The speaker apart distance is 6 feet with listening distance at 6.5 feet distance. The B6.2's have perfect balance to my ears with detail/distinct instrument hearing. These ELAC speakers are definite upgrade over previous mains, to MY ears.

The previous speakers will go on neighborhood.com along with a couple Klipsch center channel.
 
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SiR

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FM's do anyone use ELAC B6.2 placing it on a AV TV Console ?

Thinking to use by placing on it [ made of high quality Plywood ] , for HT as LR, since it is front ported [ may use Acoustic Foam or small Speaker stands ]

TIA
 

teched58

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Received the baby brother, the 5.2 Prices have gone up substantially today as they are $330 a pair. I paid $237 two days ago.
First blush, nothing glaring wrong. I'll pull out the mic and get then tuned in in the morning. A little bigger than I thought, but fitting them in. A 5 seems big. I am moving up from a 2 1/2. 6.2's are up to $400 now.

I imagine this is a rather competitive market. Bottom end where you can start to expect reasonable performance.

Quite true, there are a lot of not very good speakers for a LOT of money. I hear several recently in the 3 to 5K range.

I bought the ELAC B6.2's on Black Friday, 2018, for $150 for the pair. Shortly thereafter, the price rose to $250. Then over the past few months, like you say @tvrgreek, the price went up to $400. (Actually, checking Amazon now, they seem to be on sale for $320. But as of last week, they were $400. So for purposes of this post they're 400 bucks!

Anyway, so the point I wanna make is that THE ELAC DEBUT 2.0 B6.2s STARTED SOUNDING A LOT BETTER TO ME ONCE I REALIZED I OWNED A PAIR OF $400 SPEAKERS, rather than a set of $150 cheapies.

So, I was thinking to myself, Oh, now I know why those folks at Stereophile get more excited as the price of equipment rises into the high bling region. Cause it was happening to me!

Of course, $400 to me must be what ̶$̶1̶0̶,̶0̶0̶0̶ $25,000 is like to the average Stereophile reader who actually puts stock in their recommendations as to how to ̶p̶i̶s̶s̶ ̶a̶w̶a̶y̶ spend their RSU payouts or Wall St. bonuses. E.g., a reader with mucho money and poco tech background, as opposed to us drive-by readers who go to the site to complain about their lack of rigor and rigor-mortis-inducing As We Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz It essays).

There seem to be only two folks there who don't overmuch exhibit this behavior. The first, JA1, has the unenviable and delicate task of synthesizing the FR and distortion et al data into pithy conclusions which can be decoded by the knowledgeable while neither alerting nor dissuading readers and advertisers. The second is our own estimable Dr. @Kal Rubinson, who as a bona fide neuroscientist and professor of medicine (emeritus) understands better than the rest of us combined how our brains work and what it means when we think we think something.
 

marcello252

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Anyway, so the point I wanna make is that THE ELAC DEBUT 2.0 B6.2s STARTED SOUNDING A LOT BETTER TO ME ONCE I REALIZED I OWNED A PAIR OF $400 SPEAKERS, rather than a set of $150 cheapies.
that said the Elacs sounded better than more expensive speaker I tried with MY setup (better than PolkAudio for example) so psychoacoustics is important but a solid base is still mandatory
 

Teeter

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@marcello252, what Polk MODEL are you comparing to your current Elac's? I don't know what a $700 or $1000 pair of any others would sound like. Had you tested more expensive speakers b/4 arriving at ELAC?

My current ELACS B6.2 were at my budget range and they have outperformed my previous sets, as previously mentioned in a above previous post. I wonder if I went one more step above, if there would be a difference, in my 10 X 8 HT room. I am engulfed all ready. lol
 

mhardy6647

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cxh
@marcello252, what Polk MODEL are you comparing to your current Elac's? I don't know what a $700 or $1000 pair of any others would sound like. Had you tested more expensive speakers b/4 arriving at ELAC?

My current ELACS B6.2 were at my budget range and they have outperformed my previous sets, as previously mentioned in a above previous post. I wonder if I went one more step above, if there would be a difference, in my 10 X 8 HT room. I am engulfed all ready. lol
I wondered that as well. The R200 (purchased on sale from Polk for $445 the pair... chance favors the prepared mind ;)) sonically strikes my fancy considerably more than the... ahem... "6.2". It is actually a notch less cheap-looking, too -- as it should be, since it costs more! ;)

 

MLaranjeiras

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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

This increase in response brings out more air and detail in lower frequencies which I always find welcome. With this in place, the pull down at 5 kHz (purple) was then more helpful than not.

The teal one is for the room so ignore that.

Once there, the speaker was pleasant. And importantly, it can play loud, very loud! It is most impressive speaker in that regard. Even playing one speaker I could get it to nearly ear bleeding levels with almost no distortion!

Performance when the needed volume was required was very good. Above average to be sure. But when not, it was ordinary. Not in a bad way but not exciting.

Conclusions
From what I read, the designer Andrew Jones tried to add some more highs to this second iteration of B6 speaker. I find that change unwelcome as it made the speaker a bit bright. I can see why that may sell speakers but I did not like this change. The main issue with the speaker is the dip in response in important 1 to 2 kHz range. Once corrected with EQ, and combined with its great ability to play loud due to its larger than typical woofer, this becomes a competent offering.

I was torn how to rate this speaker. I could say "I like it" or "I don't know." I could be pushed to go with either. In interest of time and many important problems in life to ponder, I just gave it the latter panther rating and went about my business. If you choose to buy the ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2, I am not going to tell you it is a bad decision.

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

The weather is gorgeous outside. Sunny, beautiful with so much greenery with perfect temperatures. Yet, I am sitting indoor testing speakers. Needless to say that makes me depressed. The only thing that fixes that is a few more dollars in my pocket. So please donate what you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I
 

MLaranjeiras

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I listened today the ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2 and the Dali Spektor 2 speakers that I purchased two weeks ago. Made some comparison. Of course, they did not break in, but my first impressions are: Dali Spektor 2, despite its smaller size, sounds better. More vivid, with better resolution and pleasant clear highs. Listened some John Coltrane tracks on both pairs of speakers. The Elac is very heavy (7,5kg each) and well build. Bass is tight, like a tower. Very neutral. Not bright as the Dali. The sound of the Elac looks like the sound of my old 45 years tower speakers (that I like a lot), in a small pack. Very preliminar conclusions, of course.
 

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maty

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I listened today the ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2 and the Dali Spektor 2 speakers that I purchased two weeks ago. Made some comparison. Of course, they did not break in, but my first impressions are: Dali Spektor 2, despite its smaller size, sounds better. More vivid, with better resolution and pleasant clear highs. Listened some John Coltrane tracks on both pairs of speakers. The Elac is very heavy (7,5kg each) and well build. Bass is tight, like a tower. Very neutral. Not bright as the Dali. The sound of the Elac looks like the sound of my old 45 years tower speakers (that I like a lot), in a small pack. Very preliminar conclusions, of course.

 

MLaranjeiras

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you had the same impressions as I about sound of the Dali Spektor 2. They are really great speakers. Once I do not listen them at high volume, resonance may not be an issue for me. They are really amazing speakers to my ears.
 
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