ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2 Speaker Review

[marcello252]

Ok, found this guy, he made some measure between a new 12" speaker and a 3 years old equal speaker:

 

[mhardy6647]

If I remember correctly even Klipsch reports the need of a burn in time, I know it sounds like snake oil but when it's driven by manufacturers too it's difficult not to be brain morphed.

Burn in definitely would add value for most many Klipsch products. A little charcoal lighter fluid should help expedite the process.

 

[Kachda]

If I remember correctly even Klipsch reports the need of a burn in time, I know it sounds like snake oil but when it's driven by manufacturers too it's difficult not to be brain morphed.

That's because manufacturers know our ears get used to the sound after a few hours, and are therefore less likely to return it. Exactly what happened with you and the ELACs.

Edit: for subwoofers, the break in period may be a few minutes as the sorround flexes for the first few times.

 

[Brab]

"Exactly what happened with you and the ELACs."

Marvelous to be so confident.

 

[Kachda]

"Exactly what happened with you and the ELACs."

Marvelous to be so confident.

Even more marvelous to be oblivious.

 

[marcello252]

Havo you check the video? The mechanical differences seems not negligible in that case

 

[marcello252]

BTW is there a system to measure not the frequency response but the 'velocity' to follow a signal?

 

[Robbo99999]

Havo you check the video? The mechanical differences seems not negligible in that case

It doesn't matter, you can't assume all speakers burn-in, neither can you assume all speakers burn-in in the same way....and neither can you assume that burn-in would be a positive change. In fact, it's all a moot point discussion, you'd have to measure your speakers to quantify if there was any burn-in, and also if it was a positive change. Moot point, because if you care that much about your speakers then you should be measuring them & EQ'ing them, so it's all moot.....even if they burn-in, you'd still EQ them after they'd been burnt-in.

 

[marcello252]

Maybe it's just that English is not my mother language but why are you so upset with me? I'm open to discussion, I'm not saying I'm right, heck, I did even say it's my brain, but I just posted a video with an evidence of a 65% difference between 2 speakers and I just want to understand, it seems you treating me like a conspiracy theorist

 

[Sancus]

Ok, found this guy, he made some measure between a new 12" speaker and a 3 years old equal speaker:

There are no speaker measurements in this video, only driver measurements, and no they are not the same thing nor can they necessarily be used to prove anything about a hypothetical speaker.

There is little to no evidence of significant change measured in a real speaker unless it's actually broken or something.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/do-audio-speakers-break-in.11898/

 

[Robbo99999]

Maybe it's just that English is not my mother language but why are you so upset with me? I'm open to discussion, I'm not saying I'm right, heck, I did even say it's my brain, but I just posted a video with an evidence of a 65% difference between 2 speakers and I just want to understand, it seems you treating me like a conspiracy theorist

I'm just saying, who cares if speaker burn-in does even exist, because you'd be EQ'ing your speaker anyway based on measurements. And there's no guarantee if burn-in did exist that it would produce positive effects. I'm just saying it's probably not worth obsessing about. If you care that much about it, you probably should be measuring your speaker to get the best out of it, to combat room modes, etc. (But, you could just do an Anechoic EQ based on Amir's measurement, or you could just use Amir's EQ settings which is a rough way of tuning out the larger deficiencies of the frequency response.) Burn-in is just not an issue.

 

[Brab]

my experience with these Elacs:

Initially they sounded intolerable. I corrected them to listenable.
Over time, the corrected sound became intolerable.
I removed the correction. They now sound adequate.

 

[Robbo99999]

I think we should stop talking about burn-in experiences unless we have measurements to prove the difference. My understanding is that burn-in is a myth as proven by Amir at the link in @Sancus post above along with the myth being busted for headphone burn-in that I've seen in other places. Even if burn-in does exist, it's not worth talking about until you know exactly what effect it's having on the frequency response of that particular model of speaker that you're talking about, because you have no idea of if it's a positive change or not....the brain is not that good at remembering how something sounds & how that sound changes over time......in terms of detailed sound recollection for comparison purposes we can count the length of our accurate auditory memory in tens of seconds, so you can't talk about burn-in without measurements.

 

[marcello252]

btw I think I've found the crossover schem:

View attachment 142976

back on the crossover, could anybody help me to understand the functioning? I wonder if there was room to improve the speaker resp (using @Amir data as a reference) just modifying some values.

The tweeter cell is farily simple, the woofer part seems more complicated: what is the purpose of the big capacitor + inductor? removing a particular freq?

thx

 

[LTig]

back on the crossover, could anybody help me to understand the functioning? I wonder if there was room to improve the speaker resp (using @Amir data as a reference) just modifying some values.

The tweeter cell is farily simple, the woofer part seems more complicated: what is the purpose of the big capacitor + inductor? removing a particular freq?

Basically if L2, C2 and R1 were non existent L1 and C1 would form a 2nd order lowpass with an F3 of about 640 Hz. L2, C2 and R1 create a damped resonance circuit which has its impedance peak at 735 Hz The combination of both however changes the behaviour of each and the resulting FR is not so easy to calculate, especially when the impedance of frequency of the driver is not known. I would expect that F3 of the L1/c1 is moved higher.

 

[kryptonite]

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.

Hi Amir,

Thank you very much for all the hard work you put in. Your reviews are phenomenal, and this is nothing short of a game changer.

I've been trying to freeze on a set of bookshelf speakers with 6.5-inch drivers under $300 USD (for the pair).
I will get a subwoofer few months down the line.

Narrowed my choices down to the Elac Debut B6.2 and the Infinity R162 reviewed here:

ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2 Speaker Review

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: It comes with an external grill that I did not...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Infinity R162 Bookshelf Speaker Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Infinity R162 bookshelf speaker. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $270 from Amazon including Prime shipping. Despite its budget price, the R162 looks good and weighs a good bit: The back side shows the typical, too close...

www.audiosciencereview.com

From my understanding of the measurements (and I'm still wrapping my head around most of this):
-Spinorama shows they both have a reasonably flat response
-Both exhibit resonance around 700 Hz, which could be dialled down with EQ
-The estimated in-room response curve shows that both have similar bass response
-The B6.2 has a mid freq dip which could be corrected by EQ, the Infinity is more balanced out of the box in the mid-range
-Both have higher energy in the treble region (in different areas), and they will both be bright, could be dialled down with EQ
-B6.2 has much lesser distortion around the 86 dB level, while the R162 exhibits more distortion. The B6.2 can generally play much louder
-The B6.2 is easier to drive as it never dips under 5 ohm, which the R162 dips into the 4-ohm region
-They're both equally sensitive around 87dB

So, in general, they're overall similar, with some plus/minus points for each, and both should sound very decent with EQ, and they both need EQ.

Preference ratings:
The B6.2 scored 5.0 overall vs. 4.9 for the Infinity
The B6.2 scored 7.2 with a sub, vs. 7.0 for the Infinity

However, the Infinity R162 made it to the recommended list, and not the Elac B6.2.
Could you or other knowledgeable folks from the forum help me understand why the B6.2 didn’t get a ‘Recommended with EQ’ rating?

Thanks!

 

[Joe Smith]

I'm very pleased with my B6.2 speakers in nearfield listening in my office setup, very pleasant for low and mid-level listening. Using without correction. I have older Infinity bookshelves (RS225) only, so can't comment on those. I personally think the Elac's are a great value. Hoping others will chime in.

 

[mhardy6647]

DSC_0027 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

 

[Haint]

Hi Amir,

Thank you very much for all the hard work you put in. Your reviews are phenomenal, and this is nothing short of a game changer.

I've been trying to freeze on a set of bookshelf speakers with 6.5-inch drivers under $300 USD (for the pair).
I will get a subwoofer few months down the line.

Narrowed my choices down to the Elac Debut B6.2 and the Infinity R162 reviewed here:

ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2 Speaker Review

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: It comes with an external grill that I did not...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Infinity R162 Bookshelf Speaker Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Infinity R162 bookshelf speaker. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $270 from Amazon including Prime shipping. Despite its budget price, the R162 looks good and weighs a good bit: The back side shows the typical, too close...

www.audiosciencereview.com

From my understanding of the measurements (and I'm still wrapping my head around most of this):
-Spinorama shows they both have a reasonably flat response
-Both exhibit resonance around 700 Hz, which could be dialled down with EQ
-The estimated in-room response curve shows that both have similar bass response
-The B6.2 has a mid freq dip which could be corrected by EQ, the Infinity is more balanced out of the box in the mid-range
-Both have higher energy in the treble region (in different areas), and they will both be bright, could be dialled down with EQ
-B6.2 has much lesser distortion around the 86 dB level, while the R162 exhibits more distortion. The B6.2 can generally play much louder
-The B6.2 is easier to drive as it never dips under 5 ohm, which the R162 dips into the 4-ohm region
-They're both equally sensitive around 87dB

So, in general, they're overall similar, with some plus/minus points for each, and both should sound very decent with EQ, and they both need EQ.

Preference ratings:
The B6.2 scored 5.0 overall vs. 4.9 for the Infinity
The B6.2 scored 7.2 with a sub, vs. 7.0 for the Infinity

However, the Infinity R162 made it to the recommended list, and not the Elac B6.2.
Could you or other knowledgeable folks from the forum help me understand why the B6.2 didn’t get a ‘Recommended with EQ’ rating?

Thanks!

The R162 has better directivity and should be noted that Harman sells them directly for $150 - $180/pair on their (quarterly? bi-quarterly?) sales at harmanaudio.com (should be one coming up soon, around Black Friday). Can't say which is the better overall speaker though, but I would guess it's more or less a coin toss which you'd prefer. I don't think I'd pay almost double the price for a B6.2 if I saw the R162's for ~$150. All that said, Harman also routinely sells the JBL Stage A130 for ~$180, which is perhaps better than both.

 

[sool]

DSC_0027 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Which one do you prefer?