Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 Review (bookshelf speaker)

[BYRTT]

And to see the problems with temperature, ...and with some people too
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...eumann-kh80-dsp-monitor-measurements-3.14637/

Ha ha but as far as i know no one can or willing to spend a tons of time to publish resolution as Amir can do, so we should be happy even if in winter time 200-300Hz and down we miss a dB half or up to two down there, after the temperature problem was dicovered Amir started to report actual temperature per acoustic review and for UniFi 2.0 it was 15º C / 59º F, now look up below Klippel curves and notice light green is 0º C and much worse than Amir will ever use for his analyzes verse the normal 20º black curve there..

 

[mhardy6647]

hmm... 80 degrees C -- not even summer (Sommer) in Dubai.

 

[BYRTT]

Disclaimer: I am hoping to learn and not trying to stir the pot:

Those both look relatively good to me, with maybe similar voicing. More perplexing still is the fact that the DBR62 seems to have a worse resonance near 600hz than the uni-fi, at least in the on-axis/listening window/PIR curves.

Do I have that right? What am I missing and/or is their something that can be pointed to on those graphs to explain the subjective performance discrepancy?

Tip into spinorama graph notice DI (directivity index) curve takes a much worse hit around 600Hz for Uni-Fi 2.0 than DBR62 do, that is even that as you noticed amplitude change there for DBR is much worse, charts below spinorama show patterns per 10º steps and illuminate the problem especially for the vertical positive chart.

 

[jmillar]

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.

Crowns are powerful, and very handy to have around. Impressive in power but not in refinement. Noise, distortion tend to be rather "meh". But they are incredibly cheap per watt and they get the job done when your modern integrated just doesn't cut it.

 

[jmillar]

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.

Peculiar stuttering in "he g g g g oes away"
Listening with headphones.

 

[amirm]

Peculiar stuttering in "he g g g g oes away"

That would be one way to describe it.

 

[jmillar]

The inexpensive little ELAC "Debut 2.0 b6.2", also designed by Mr. Jones, manifests the same (well... at least similarly) reticent treble -- although its immediate predecessor (an example of which I have not heard) was reputed to be sort of bright.

The original Debut 6 had punchy bass and mitigated highs. In the 6.2 they toned down the bass and raised the treble. It is not a 'boring' speaker at all, but it is NOT V shaped (the "disco smile" curve) They have a very linear response. Not agressively bright, not for bass heads. Very well balanced.
(Even more so taking into account the Fletcher - Munson curves)

This led to Uni-fi 52. And I realized that they needed amplifiers with plenty of headroom to give their best. Emergency solution: big watt Crowns for the time being.
(No extraneous sounds from my Unis, thank goodness!)

 

[jmillar]

No, this amp is DC coupled. I had an upstream device short out and produce DC at its input. It happily blew the speaker to pieces that was connected to it! Most power amplifiers these days are DC coupled.

What a horrible thought! :-/ Safeguards should be implemented. At the amp level and at the speaker level.
This equipment is often worth a considerable sum. Would an insurer cover such a contingency?

 

[amirm]

What a horrible thought! :-/ Safeguards should be implemented. At the amp level and at the speaker level.
This equipment is often worth a considerable sum. Would an insurer cover such a contingency?

I don't think standard insurance covers such losses. Audio equipment is going to fail at some point and damage is caused. No different than fridge developing a fault and all the food going bad in it.

Amplifiers do have DC protection but nothing is foolproof.

 

[jmillar]

I lost faith in CR decades ago. They cannot possibly expertly review and recommend everything. They often leave out brands completely in reviews without rhyme or reason. They became Japanese car fanboys decades ago. Their reviews of paint are a joke. I would never buy an appliance based on CR recommendation. And on and on.

The fact remains that even if CR praised AR speakers and turntable ALL the magazines gave glowing reviews: Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Popular Electronics, Electronics Illustrated... and on and on.

It became axiomatic: A system based on Dual 1019 turntable, Shure V15 cartridge, and AR3a's was GOOD.
CR did strongly endorse Dynakit in the early sixties (before solid state) and I concur. Also a phono cartridge that nobody in North America knew anything about back then: Ortofon. But nobody bought them.

Nobody really paid much attention to the sometimes quirky CR. It was the astonishing consensus in the audiophile crowd, all things considered. I remember little ads, with little traction of Heresy, by an old fashioned company of huge horns, ;-)(Heresy because it was a bookshelf) ...very few takers. The poor Brits also tried and struggled. Amazing...

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

The fact remains that even if CR praised AR speakers and turntable ALL the magazines gave glowing reviews: Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Popular Electronics, Electronics Illustrated... and on and on.

It became axiomatic: A system based on Dual 1019 turntable, Shure V15 cartridge, and AR3a's was GOOD.
CR did strongly endorse Dynakit in the early sixties (before solid state) and I concur. Also a phono cartridge that nobody in North America knew anything about back then: Ortofon. But nobody bought them.

Nobody really paid much attention to the sometimes quirky CR. It was the astonishing consensus in the audiophile crowd, all things considered. I remember little ads, with little traction of Heresy, by an old fashioned company of huge horns, ;-)(Heresy because it was a bookshelf) ...very few takers. The poor Brits also tried and struggled. Amazing...

I purchased dynakit preamp and power amp in 1970. Took a while to assemble with the soldering iron. Sounded beautiful with the A50's and lasted through 7 years of college. Audiophile experiment was in unbriefly "stayed" for years due to creation of 5 beautiful children. Unfortunately, a lot of people paid attention to CR. The press would trumpet their auto reviews. And I agree to certain extent. In the 70's and 80's, Japanese cars were more reliable. My Datsun B210 and Toyota pickup were bullet proof. Later, the GM 3.6 V6 was a gem in my Bonneville.

 

[jmillar]

The UniFi are rated for amplification from 40 to 140 wpc, with the 140 being the peak number. A couple of observations

If it needs more that 40 wpc to produce good sound, it deserves a broken head panther.
If it is being tested at more than 140 wpc (peak!), the test is invalid.

Modern 'tiddlers' are woefully inefficient and typically demand power that seems surprising for a "little speaker, not very expensive".
"Compact size, sound quality, efficiency" : pick any two" Obviously size and quality is the choice here, and it needs the current.

And that the new iterations of class D designs provide in spades at reasonable cost and at high efficiency and low heat dissipation. 150 wpc at 8 Oms (nominal) is not excessive headroom. Some go for more.
I've seen people in such a quandary, refusing to accept that their trusty 50+50 is simply not enough to make their speakers "sing", trying everything under the sun to solve problems and finally blaming the speakers.
A problem that goes away when you put a husky 'basic' Crown into the system is not a problem, it's bad equipment matching.

 

[Fredrickj]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 bookshelf speaker. It was kindly sent to me by a member and costs US US $600 a pair on Amazon including Prime shipping.

This review will be abbreviated for reasons that will become apparent later.

Here is a shot of the speaker:

View attachment 104686

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 performed over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% through majority of audible band.

Temperature was 59 degrees F. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.

Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.

Reference axis was the tweeter center.

Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. 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 104689

Hmmm, seems like we keep hitting on speakers that shelf the mid to highs for some reason, this type lowering it. I checked other reviews and this matched another measurement posted so it is not instrumentation error.

Early window aggravates this some:
View attachment 104690

Resulting in this predicted in-room response:

View attachment 104691

Strange to see a mass market product opt for this type of high frequency output as it is opposite of conventional retail wisdom of "what sells in a showroom."

Distortion-test shows some issue around 600 Hz:
View attachment 104692

It is a resonance that also appears in impedance graph:

View attachment 104693

Speaker Listening Tests
I always start my testing with select few female tracks as they quickly tell me if the speaker is too bright, lispy, etc. The first couple of tracks sounded fine but then I played the third standard track, the Eva Cassidy Ain't no Sunshine. Right at the marker something bad happened:
View attachment 104694

She takes a breath and starts singing. On Elac Uni-Fi I heared a rather loud squeak instead of that breath! I can't it to words but the artifact actually sounded louder than her voice which came on an instant after that.

I remember during the measurement prep, I could hear a high pitched sound in the middle of the sweep. Thought maybe this was the same thing. To narrow down the frequency, I cut off everything above 1 kHz and problem remained. I inverted and cut off the lows and problem went away. I got it close to around 600 Hz but couldn't get the exact frequency. So went back to the distortion graph and found that frequency and notched it out:
View attachment 104695

90% of the problem vanished! This speaker uses a new woofer and seems like it has a nasty resonances in this area that Eva's breath energizes. The artifact can be heard on the youtube version but not as strongly:

I stopped testing at this point. As a confirmation, I played the same track on Revel M105 and it sounded wonderful with zero issue (I have used the same track to test at least 100 speakers).

Conclusions
What a shock to discover what I did with this speaker. Usually resonances color the sound. They don't become instruments on their own. But that is what happened here. And in a design from the talented Andrew Jones. Given how easy it was to detect the issue in multiple measurements, it should have been caught and fixed.

As far as I am concerned, this is a show-stopper, broken design. Don't know how else to put it. FYI Eva Cassidy album is standard issue at all audio shows in multiple suites so it is not like it is some oddball track one never sees. I guess it is possible this one speaker sample has an issue in which case I encourage Elac to try to replicate this problem and let us know what is going on.

For now, I can not recommend the Elac Uni-Fi 2.0.

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

Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

 

[Fredrickj]

Wow, was surprised seeing the headless panther based off the Spinorama and score, can’t believe it has such an audible resonance. Though, even if that doesn’t exist, the equally priced brother (DBR62) still has a better score and higher sensitivity, though this UB52 does have better vertical directivity due to the 3-way coaxial design, so it should be better in the near-field, where one listens at lower levels and likely won’t excite that resonance as much.

Also, and I know they actually had a worse issue in earlier years, but the green tint to the woofers is so ugly. Here is the photo right off the Amazon listing for the white UB5:

I have both the DBR62 Refrence n the new Unifi reviewed here. I have been over the section mentioned above by Eva Cassidy numerous, numerous times and the the two speakers “breath” sounds virtually identical, absolutely no buzz or squawkin. All I can hear, even at uncomfortable volume levels is the intake of a breath. I’ll send one of my Unifi 2.0’s if you’re in in doubt. (Elac, you should! Your speakers not perfect but mine doesn’t have the idiosyncrasy mentioned here.)

 

[escape2]

I have both the DBR62 Refrence n the new Unifi reviewed here. I have been over the section mentioned above by Eva Cassidy

Just to be sure, are you using the specific version of this track from the "Nightbird" (2015) album?

 

[Fredrickj]

I have both the DBR62 Refrence n the new Unifi reviewed here. I have been over the section mentioned above by Eva Cassidy numerous, numerous times and the the two speakers “breath” sounds virtually identical, absolutely no buzz or squawkin. All I can hear, even at uncomfortable volume levels is the intake of a breath. I’ll send one of my Unifi 2.0’s if you’re in in doubt. (Elac, you should! Your speakers not perfect but mine doesn’t have the idiosyncrasy mentioned here.

As a side note that may be relevant, I bought the Unifi 2.0 after my DBR62’s would buzz or sqhawk at a critical point on my favorite cut from my favorite album. (Nils Frahm All Melody) at loud volume levels. I bought the Unifi hoping the concentric drivers would fix that. It did, but after the two weeks of not being able to eliminate the buzz, and after I got the Unifi 2.0’s, I couldn’t get the DBR62’s to buzz anymore. It just disappeared! Even when pumping 150 watts into it, now nothin:WTF!

 

[Fredrickj]

Just to be sure, are you using the specific version of this track from the "Nightbird" (2015) album?

Yep, I use the releas from the Time After Dark Album. there’s still another?

 

[Fredrickj]

Yep, I use the releas from the Time After Dark Album. there’s still another?

Ok. Found it. Again, volume all the way up, no issues. Just a smooth breathy intake of air.

 

[More Dynamics Please]

It should not be overlooked from Andrew Jones' long first post in this thread that he has already acknowledged this speaker design produces a vibration in the 600 Hz frequency range, that his own sample speaker had produced a buzz from loose binding posts and that he believes the issue heard in the ASR review unit is likely a similar mechanical issue related to something loose that's resonating/vibrating.

I took a sample from my lab and did a slow sweep with a good old fashioned analog oscillator, so I could sweep slowly back and forth around 600Hz. Yes, the cabinet is lively in that range, and what I first heard was rattling of the binding posts on the terminal panel (I was using banana plugs to connect to the speaker). Once I tightened them the problem went away.

 

[Fredrickj]

It should not be overlooked from Andrew Jones' long first post in this thread that he has already acknowledged this speaker design produces a vibration in the 600 Hz frequency range, that his own sample speaker had produced a buzz from loose binding posts and that he believes the issue heard in the ASR review unit is likely a similar mechanical issue related to something loose that's resonating/vibrating.

Thanks. I read a number of posts but not all 20 pages, looking to see if anyone else w the speakers could verify or not Amir’s finding. My apologies