Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 Review (bookshelf speaker)

[hardisj]

In general, when speakers come as pairs in a box, they are sent to me as a pair even though I only test one. In this rare case, the owner managed to find a perfect box to fit the single speaker in, including its oversized Styrofoam. I see zero signs of any kind of damage or scuff marks. If there is a problem, it is not due to packing.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[joentell]

Be sure you have good amount of amplification. This is an inefficient speaker and the problem becomes obvious at elevated volumes. So you need a lot of power. Once you hear the artifact, then you will hear it at lower volumes as well.

Be sure you have good amount of amplification. This is an inefficient speaker and the problem becomes obvious at elevated volumes. So you need a lot of power. Once you hear the artifact, then you will hear it at lower volumes as well.

Parasound A52+

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

Why spend lots of money for amp to drive inexpensive speakers with poor measurements. Thank God for this website.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

That the cone makes a significant movement in concert with the onset of the distortion/resonance is probably very important. Something is moving the system into a metastable state, and it is probably being in that state that the problem exists.
One thought that had occurred to me is that the tinsel leads are not striking the back of the cone. This can lead to all manner of nasty sounds if it happens. If the cone is both offset - and thus significantly changing the geometry of the leads - and playing a tone that resonates with the leads as they touch the cone, that could create nasty resonant noises.
Still doesn't explain the offset and why it persists. It is possible that there is a fault in the spider and it is oil-canning, or their is some other non-baked in non-linearity that allows the driver to reach a metastable state.
It is still quite possible it is a design flaw, but a manufacturing flaw remains on the cards. I would say 50/50 on what we see so far.

 

[amirm]

Still doesn't explain the offset and why it persists.

To be clear, it is the woofer that went in and stayed there for a bit. We don't know if that is the driver that is causing this problem or the coaxial one above it. The frequency range is that of the coaxial driver. I should note that it (coaxial driver) was playing hard during this test.

 

[amirm]

Parasound A52+

Should be good enough. Please test one channel so there is plenty of power and you better replicate my test (although I don't know which channel causes this problem if not both).

 

[joentell]

There's probably enough power in here to blow the speaker with all channels driven. The mic will likely clip before the speaker does at a close distance.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

We don't know if that is the driver that is causing this problem or the coaxial one above it. The frequency range is that of the coaxial driver.

Yeah. I was going on the smoking gun principle. Lots of emission from the port would suggest the bass driver is the culprit. But there are reasons why this still might not be true. If stuffing the port did nothing to help that points elsewhere. The offset in the driver remains most odd. A DC offet would have had the amp shut down real quick, so unless there really is a problem in the amp (unlikely), the head scratching continues.

The recording you did does sound nasty, but not in the way I expected. I wonder if the apparent Q of the peak isn't an artefact of the sweep speed, and the peak is actually wider (maybe). Eyeballing a spectrograph as it played I could see a wide peak from about 500 to nearly 1000Hz whilst things sounded nasty. OTOH, there are mechanisms whereby once a resonance is initiated it becomes established and will continue even when the frequency is outside the range needed to set it up in the first place. Again, non-linearity in the system is needed.

My intuition based on the recorded sound is that this is a baked in problem, not a manufacturing fault. That opinion is worth what you paid for it.

 

[Steve Dallas]

Why spend lots of money for amp to drive inexpensive speakers with poor measurements. Thank God for this website.

This was one of my criticisms of the original UB5. You know, other than that I thought they were weird sounding shout boxes. I had to power them with a 250 Wpc Crown to get them to respond sorta like expected. Normal people do not have that kind of clean power laying around the house.

 

[RayDunzl]

The one thing I dispute with the single speaker testing, is the overall tonality. In my experience a single speaker should sound a bit light in the bass, since two speakers will tend to reinforce bass more than other frequencies.

When I measure my speakers, I see (approximately) a 6dB increase across the board for increase in SPL. (room anomalies around 48Hz excepted)

Left, Right, and Both speakers, at the listening position:

 

[wwenze]

This was one of my criticisms of the original UB5. You know, other than that I thought they were weird sounding shout boxes. I had to power them with a 250 Wpc Crown to get them to respond sorta like expected. Normal people do not have that kind of clean power laying around the house.

When you say that, do you mean driving them at 250W or using a 250W amplifier to drive them at, say, 5W?

I'm not sure if my ears' power rating can handle 250W

 

[Steve Dallas]

When you say that, do you mean driving them at 250W or using a 250W amplifier to drive them at, say, 5W?

I'm not sure if my ears' power rating can handle 250W

Good point. I started out with a 90W RMS amp at 4 Ohms, then a Sony AVR, in a room that was roughly 14 x 22'. The speakers sounded wrong with both. I brought in some of my live sound equipment, and they more or less came alive, although I still thought they were weird. I would have to calculate the power that was actually needed in that room at reference SPL at that listening distance. Probably 40-60W. I'm too lazy to do that. I chalked it up to high current and/or reserve power at the time and wondered why anyone would pair expensive amplification with cheap speakers. How could that be a thing? I returned them and moved on.

 

[MrPeabody]

I put a blanket over the coaxial driver and I still could hear the problem. I then pulled it further down on top of the woofer and still could hear the problem.

Almost at the same time I hear the problem, the woofer goes way in and stays there for a second. The coaxial driver is also moving fair bit. Not sure if these are helpful hints but this is all I have.

Damn, there goes my hypothesis. It didn't last long, and that was all I had. I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't thought about the fact that it wouldn't be possible to muffle the tweeter without also muffling the midrange. The suggestion I made wasn't a good suggestion because of that difficulty, however you determined that the problem remained even with the midrange muffled. Experimentation of this sort can be aggravating.

It is peculiar that the woofer goes in and stays there for any amount of time that you'd be able to notice. Off the top of my head this suggests to me that there is a strong DC component in the signal to the woofer. Excluding the exceedingly remote possibility of an amplifier problem, I just can't think of how this might occur. Maybe if there were a very large electrolytic capacitor shunting the woofer and periodically deforming ... similar to capacitive discharge as found in a camera strobe or automotive ignition. This is the only thing I can think of that might yield a strong DC component to the driver. Or it could be simply a voice coil former that is sticking when excursion is very great. Whatever it is, I do not think there there are any normal circumstances where a woofer would move to one extreme and remain there for any amount of time that would be noticeable. I previously did not see a reason to suspect that the speaker you have is defective, but now I'm wondering if this is the case. Too bad you don't have the other speaker to make comparisons.

 

[joentell]

I made a video of my ELAC Uni-Fi 2.0 playing the same track.
I'm not sure what I'm looking for here. Maybe @amirm can let us know if he hears the same thing on my Uni-Fi 2.0 UB2's and UC52. I also included his recording, the source audio, and other speakers (PSB Alpha P5, Wharfedale Diamond 12.1, Larsen 4.)
I hope this is useful to someone.

 

[amirm]

I made a video of my ELAC Uni-Fi 2.0 playing the same track.
I'm not sure what I'm looking for here. Maybe @amirm can let us know if he hears the same thing on my Uni-Fi 2.0 UB2's and UC52. I also included his recording, the source audio, and other speakers (PSB Alpha P5, Wharfedale Diamond 12.1, Larsen 4.)
I hope this is useful to someone.

I can't hear the artifacts in any of your recordings but it is quite audible to me in my own sample, in your youtube video! Do you all not hear it? It may be closer to "g" sound than "he" (he goes away....). I am listening with headphones by the way.

 

[amirm]

BTW, my recording was in my seating location some 10 feet away if not 12. You need to turn up the volume and record from distance, not close as you did. Before recording, I would just keep cranking it up to see if you hear it.

And again, do try to listen to my sample and see if you detect the distortion.

 

[joentell]

I can't hear the artifacts in any of your recordings but it is quite audible to me in my own sample, in your youtube video! Do you all not hear it? It may be closer to "g" sound than "he" (he goes away....). I am listening with headphones by the way.

It's tough to tell listening to your recording since the phone mics typically aren't great. I have a hard time distinguishing the speaker from the room. Since you know your room, and you've listened to the speakers, it's probably easier for you to tell.

My guess is really the midrange is rubbing on the tweeter since there's very little tolerance and a bump in shipping could dislodge it just enough. Try playing a test tone at the resonant frequency and then put your hand on the tweeter and gently push it in different directions to see if that's really what it is.

Also, I'm listening on headphones tuned to the Harman curve. I also have some Fiio FA9 IEM's that I switch to.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

When you say that, do you mean driving them at 250W or using a 250W amplifier to drive them at, say, 5W?

I'm not sure if my ears' power rating can handle 250W

You have no idea. We are not teenage baseheads here trying to melt cones. Transients at low volumes can suck the life out of an amp.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

This was one of my criticisms of the original UB5. You know, other than that I thought they were weird sounding shout boxes. I had to power them with a 250 Wpc Crown to get them to respond sorta like expected. Normal people do not have that kind of clean power laying around the house.

Correct. I made the Maggie mistake. Put in 30 amp line to power with Emotiva XPR. What a waste of weight. Crown XLS would have worked, I guess. At least the Crown would not go into protection mode if I left the front door open or forgot to close the refrigerator.

 

[DuncanTodd]

Has the owner of the other speaker tested it yet?