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Elac Debut Reference DBR-62 Speaker Review

SloPoke

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I was feeling good until I noticed the size. For my application (hang on a wall) they are too tall and too deep. Looking for something more in the 11" tall/8" deep range. Will be using subs so can give up a little bottom end. The search continues. Any (passive) suggestions?
The Revel Concerta2 S16?
 

SloPoke

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14.85" tall and 13.3" deep - too big to hang on a wall. :(
5.5" deep and flat on the wall..., I have some as surround speakers, white on white walls and they are very room friendly. Before mounting them for surround, trialed them in a bedroom driven by a Naim UnitiQute2 and thought they were excellent, with and without a sub.
 

Dennis Murphy

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I never hear this name before. Is this the same as a notch filter?

Notch filter, trap circuit, lcr, rlc, clr, etc--the order of the resistor, capacitor, and inductor doesn't matter. They're all the same thing.
 

Juhazi

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About this surround resonance issue, Purifi has at least tried to overcome that (but with a price to pay)
https://hificompass.com/en/reviews/purifi-audio-ptt65w04-01a-midwoofer
and https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/purifi-ptt6-5w04-01a-6-5-midwoofer.9684/

ptt6.5w04-01a_side_angle.jpg
 
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ezra_s

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The S400 finally arrived so I can do that.

Not to hurry you, but.. are we there yet? Or anything you can tell us about this? I am quite interested.

Thanks for your awesome work.
 

Jmudrick

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My wife has just reported back from her first day at the ward. All she got for protection was a mask, gloves and a plastic apron which she's wearing over her own clothes... 5th largest economy or 3rd world country?

People routinely fly to Thailand and Malaysia for medical care. When you get past obscure surgeries for the rich we do not have a medical system to be proud of.
 

ezra_s

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don't want to be a "dicky" but can you please move offtopic chitchat to a more appropiate forum? :p

Sorry to bug!
 

Haint

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14.85" tall and 13.3" deep - too big to hang on a wall. :(

I think you're referring to the M16? The S16 is a slim profile, sealed, wall mount version of the M16. It's the same design as the options Tuga suggested. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any spins for the S16 (or any of Tuga's suggestions), but I did an A/B/C measurement in my room comparing the F35, M16, and S16 if it's of any interest.
 
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amirm

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Not to hurry you, but.. are we there yet? Or anything you can tell us about this? I am quite interested.

Thanks for your awesome work.
Not yet. I keep running into speakers with deadline to test as the owner may have to return the unit to seller.
 

MediumRare

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I think you're referring to the M16? The S16 is a slim profile, sealed, wall mount version of the M16. It's the same design as the options Tuga suggested. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any spins for the S16 (or any of Tuga's suggestions), but I did an A/B/C measurement in my room comparing the F35, M16, and S16 if it's of any interest.
Sorry, I mixed up the depth and width measurements. I suppose I'll have to see them in person. 14+ x 13+ seems pretty big, even if they are rather thin. Thanks for sharing the FRs.
 

ezra_s

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Not yet. I keep running into speakers with deadline to test as the owner may have to return the unit to seller.

Thanks for your answer. Keep up that great work!
 

StevenEleven

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Congrats. Glad you were able to score a pair when you did. Our favorite listening chairs can have different types. I happened to own a pair of 28" stands that I bought to get the Paradigm 200B speakers up to the right level - their cabinets were not as tall, so the tweeter sat a little lower. I have a new home theater recliner, and the seating height is a few inches taller than the old recliner. I initially started using the 28" stands for the Elacs. My ear was in alignment with the speaker, right between the woofer and tweeter - or more along the lines of the very top of the woofer. I then pulled out the 24" stands that I have. Now, with my current higher chair, the Elac tweeters are right at ear level for me. While I'm working on repainting the 28" stands to match the decor a bit better, I still think I'll stay with the 24" stands as that seems to be a good height, for my setup/situation.

The 24" stands that I have, are the Trans Deco stands from Amazon. I initially bought them for the Focal 1008BE speakers. The stands are truly solid and capably held the heavier 1008BE speakers very well. I've realized Amazon dropped the price of the stands and they're down to $91, now. I had paid $119 at the time, but don't have any regrets, because they are solid and well made. Plus they include plastic caps to cover the carpet floor spikes if you place them on hardwood floors. They have a bigger top plate than some of the stands, which tend to typically be about 6" x 6". The Elacs fit very well - very solid and secure on the stands.

View attachment 57225

Thanks. Just got the speakers in the mail today. I have them on an old pair 20” wooden speaker stands with two large hard bound books on each stand to make for 24” in height. In the near future I’ll probably end up getting the exact speaker stands you referred to so thank you. :)

The way the magnetic grills come on and off the front of the speaker is so cool!

Our living room is a big mess. I have plenty of headphones and do not know exactly where to place them...

Relative to the Elac, there is a good chance you keep them. It seems you have to deal with WAF and this pair of speakers is highly WAF compliant (I am discussing with my wife about horn speakers). And I am pretty sure you will like them. They sound right.

My wife actually wanted to do the unboxing! Naturally she noticed the seam in the vinyl wrapping on the underside. :oops: I asked her if she would put the unboxing on Youtube and my teenage sons snickered and she said no. :( A little while after we got them set up, she asked me if I liked the sound. I said yes! :)

The first thing I noticed is that these ELACs have really satisfying bass, sounds both forceful and very natural (it’s really quite surprising when you first hear it, I was like oh! Now wait a minute here! Now this is something!) and then the next thing I noticed after the bass perked me up is that these ELACs have great highs (the sound of a well-recorded high hat or cymbal or chimes is uncanny in its timbre and proportion to the rest of the music), and then the next thing I noticed was that the ELACs have really nice mids—there is some ambiance or atmosphere that is somehow being conveyed quite believably.

Another thing I noticed is that the ELACs are voiced, I would guess intentionally, to be extremely enjoyable as just stand alone speakers. It’s not like a normal person would feel compelled to go out and get a couple of subwoofers if they liked bass-heavy music. It’s not like this is just a fairly neutral transducer that goes from x hz to y khz, plus or minus z dB. It’s like I could live with these easily all by themselves, because they sound very pleasing on their own.

Day two comments: Have put in several hours of listening on these now. In my room sound best with grills off, maybe 16-18 inches from front wall. A lot of times I don’t know if I have center channel engaged on my HT or not, because even when not it sure sounds to me like one is there. A lot of times I listen to these w/o subwoofers or surround because, well, I like it! Lots of positive comments from family on looks of speaker. May have to keep eye out for center channel that will match quality of these that does not cost arm and leg. I’m not really competent enough to report good or bad on these, at this level, just that I really like them. I’m more of a music guy than an audio guy, or at least how I think of it. 58 days in the trial period to go. :)
 
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Gatordaddy

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I decided to pick up an open box pair that was sitting at Crutchfield. I just received these this evening. Impressions are positive but mixed. The previous speakers I have been running were Debut 6.0s. The TEAC AI-301DA I've been using for an amplifier didn't seem to drive these very well so I brought out my Adcom 535. Seems like that does a better job of driving the woofers.

My previous speakers were the Debut B6.0. And previously JBL 305s. I found that by stuffing a sock in the port of the Debut 6.0 and crossing over to a subwoofer I could control the nastier room nodes those speakers would produce, and with some light EQ in the treble/presence region I was very pleased with the voicing/timbre.

My primary complaint with the Debut 6.0s were a strong shift in tone as moving throughout the room, and poor imaging outside of a limited sweet spot. The build quality of those speakers was also pretty crappy. My Vinyl had not deteriorated but I could see it becoming an issue in a couple of years.

Positive impressions
The Debut Reference solve all of those problems. The waveguide appears to be very well executed. The image is stable throughout my entire (small) sofa. The image is stable if I stand up and walk a few feet in either direction. Imaging of quartets and other ensembles is staggeringly realistic. If I'm in a connected room I still have a decent impression of channel separation. Build quality of the cabinets is pretty solid. Much improved over the original debut line. And the vinyl seems to be better, though as StevenEleven noted there is a noticeable seam in the bottom of the cabinet. They're sharp looking too! I wish i could have picked up one of the white finished ones at a discount, but I plan to finish the cabinets with spray lacquer. These speakers will also get dumb loud from an Adcom 535.

Negative impressions
Something about the timbre in the extreme high frequencies seems off to me. Extra sparkle around 8-12KHz that adds a little color to violins that souldn't be there? This shows up on a few poor recordings I have with artifacts in that region. Seems a few db higher than on headphones I own and like, as well as compared to the 305s. The voicing in the midrange to midbass is maybe too lean out of box for me. They *will* need a subwoofer to do kick drums and bass justice if not using lots of power and DSP. Since I can't easily stuff the front port with a sock it is harder to get good ~80 hz rolloff out-of-box with a simple plug when implementing broke-ass subwoofer integration. I might prefer the timbre of the Debut 6.0 + Socks + Subwoofer. I didn't consider the timbre neutral until I subtracted 3db from the treble centered at 8k and extending to 1k.

I've been planning to buy a MiniDSP + Dirac to deal with my odd-shaped room. I'm looking forward to seeing how these shape up with an adjusted target curve and a better integrated sub. Thanks Amir and ASR community for the review and spins. I'm curious how the other models in the debut line will perform.

Edited for clarity and additional impressions.
 
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McFly

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I've been planning to buy a MiniDSP + Dirac to deal with my odd shaped room. Looking forward to seeing how these shape up with an adjusted target curve. Thanks Amir and ASR community for the review and spins. I'm curious how the other models in the debut line will perform.

Have a browse of the official miniDSP forum before you do.
 

hardisj

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I got mine back from Amir today and did an impromptu set up in my HT. I DIY'd some stands out of spare lumber (hey, spare lumber is free; stands are not) which put the height of the tweeter at about 1 inch above my actual ear level, but at my seating distance of about 9.5 feet that's a perfectly acceptable 'window'. Speakers were mostly aimed on-axis.

I listened for about an hour total (took a break to get something to eat). Overall impression:
These are nice! Curious to see how listening comparisons go as I get more speakers in because it’s been a while since I’ve listened to bookshelf speakers (I use JBL Pro in my HT). But I will say this: I was legitimately impressed with these. I took notes but would rather do a couple more rounds of listening before I start down the path of attaching many subjectives to a rather impromptu listening session. But a couple of things that I noticed as I was spinning through all sorts of music was:
  • 600-800hz seemed a bit resonant compared to the lower portion of the midrange (200-500hz). Amir's data shows this and I definitely didn't remember it so my subjective eval would agree with that for sure.
  • The upper midrange sounded like it was 'behind' the rest of the sound (if that makes sense to you; that's the best I got right now). I thought maybe 1-2khz but Amir's data shows a recess from 1-4khz compared to the sides of that frequency band so maybe that's what I was hearing?
  • These bookshelves get down with surprising authority and no breakup that I noticed at pretty solid volume (I'm a car audio guy; former bass-head, I listen loud).
  • I did, however, notice some distortion from my left speaker which turned out to be the grille rattling! So keep that in mind, fellow recovering bass heads. :D So I took the grilles off about 2 minutes in to my demo. Just a heads up to you guys there. ;)
  • The soundstage was actually good from any of my front 3 HT seats. Moving to either side of the center seat resulted in minimal imaging shift which was surprising but a good nod toward their directivity control.
  • I was really impressed by the low-to-mid level bass as well. Lots of times it seems I have to turn the overall volume up to get the bass to a level I want but that wasn't the case here. Which means I could listen to these speakers at moderate volume and still 'feel' the music without having to crank it to max and bother my family downstairs.

I plan to make divulge more notes in the review as well as objective data. Then see where I line up, where I don’t, and see if the data can help me get better correlation (for example, if I noticed something seemed lacking, maybe the data will show a peak nearby that skewed my perception as opposed to a trough in the response in that area).

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