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Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 Review (bookshelf speaker)

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

I can't find it either. I tested 2 versions of the song (including Nightbird) through Amazon HD streaming, powered by an Anthem STR power amp, at varying levels, including uncomfortably loud, and I can't recreate the sound whatsoever with my UB52.
 

Thomas savage

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I respectfully disagree. I think his role is to review and assess what he is given and evaluate it's merits and limitations. He then goes a step further providing more value for the community by optimizing the system for the speaker by providing recommended EQ settings. That's a huge win for all of us.

It is explicitly not his role to root cause a defect and figure out a solution. That is the manufacturers role. Denon has shown what can happen when a manufacturer plays their role and engages to reproduce the defect and come up with a solution.
Thats correct however its somewhat inflammatory and if one has a interest in progressive discussion unwise to condemn a product like amirm did here . I actually think given the platform we have here its irresponsible to use the language he did in his conclusion to the ' review ' .

It creates noise , noise interested parties have to trawl through , it also makes the site look unprofessional. The review was a drive by , conclusions drawn where questions should of been ask instead .

The language in the review was not helpful and caused a huge mess when we could of all profited by a different approach.

I guess it makes a splash and brings traffic, ultimately Andrew popped by as a result. Still its a great example of why audio forums are often so inane and depressing and more importantly from ASRs pov and all of you , why industry types and the likes often only take part begrudgingly if at all.

Its not what I wanted to see ASR being , and I'm a bit sad if however resigned to this reality.
 
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Creeky

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On page 15 you can find my original comment.
I have now listened to the track that has the problem; and similar to Fredrick; I have no issues. I hear "Just a smooth breathy intake of air."
For those not wanting to go to page 15. I too noticed a ringing tin like sound when I first bought the speakers. With time and playing those sounds have disappeared and the speakers sound very good to my ear. They replaced BS22s.
 

Laserjock

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On page 15 you can find my original comment.
I have now listened to the track that has the problem; and similar to Fredrick; I have no issues. I hear "Just a smooth breathy intake of air."
For those not wanting to go to page 15. I too noticed a ringing tin like sound when I first bought the speakers. With time and playing those sounds have disappeared and the speakers sound very good to my ear. They replaced BS22s.
Did you tighten any fasteners or change anything ?
 
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amirm

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On page 15 you can find my original comment.
I have now listened to the track that has the problem; and similar to Fredrick; I have no issues. I hear "Just a smooth breathy intake of air."
For those not wanting to go to page 15. I too noticed a ringing tin like sound when I first bought the speakers. With time and playing those sounds have disappeared and the speakers sound very good to my ear. They replaced BS22s.
To be clear, I later on clarified that the problem is not on the breathing but a second later when says "he goes away." It is the "g" that causes the resonance and only at very high playback levels.
 

Beershaun

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I am interested to hear Andrew Jones findings when he investigates this particular speaker and recreates Amir's measurements. I hope the owner was able to send them off to ELAC for evaluation.
 
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amirm

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I hope the owner was able to send them off to ELAC for evaluation.
He was. I put Andrew in touch with him and he says he has already shipped the speakers to him.
 

Creeky

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LaserJock. I do have a loose rca connection on one channel, works just not super tight, from the M300 DAC to the amp.
But the change in volume from the speakers after playing them for awhile and the disappearing tin can sound I observed. I have no idea why this happened.

Update: I had forgotten. When I initially did the install I was using a really cheap rca patch cable. I "upgraded" to a heavier wire rgb cable. The Right channel then cut out mysteriously and refused to work around a week later? The "green" line (red, black, green plugs) is the one I'm using for the left channel and it is a bit loose. Could it all be a cable issue?
 
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Rock Rabbit

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To consider at testing time with Eva Cassidy track:
▪The high note is D5 (587.33 Hz, 23.1" wavelength), wavelength valid at 68°F only.
▪ This roughly match a box resonance H= 22.75" with frequency 13500/22.75=593 Hz, due to internal damping real sound velocity is lower.
With higher than 68°F (inside the box) the real resonance occurs at higher frequency, so better use a swept test tone (any smartphone or PC app 1 Hz resolution), a little coin in the top of the box could be useful to detect this.
 

mkende

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Hi all, as the thread seems to have cooled-down but I wouldn’t want to see it die completely, I wondered if someone with the proper software and experience would mind producing the horizontal and vertical directionality heat maps of this speaker based on Amir measurements, despite the issue with the speaker? Or does the resonance issue means that these would be meaningless?
 

MrPeabody

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He was. I put Andrew in touch with him and he says he has already shipped the speakers to him.

I'm keeping an eye out for Mr. Jones to report on his findings. One thing that would have been interesting, that didn't occur to me at the time, would have been for you to reverse the speaker polarity so that the strong DC component would push the coil assembly to the front instead of to the rear.
 
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I'm keeping an eye out for Mr. Jones to report on his findings. One thing that would have been interesting, that didn't occur to me at the time, would have been for you to reverse the speaker polarity so that the strong DC component would push the coil assembly to the front instead of to the rear.

Don't hold your breath. Nobody has been able to recreate the sound except Amir. Its already pretty clear he got a single, faulty unit.
 

MrPeabody

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Don't hold your breath. Nobody has been able to recreate the sound except Amir. Its already pretty clear he got a single, faulty unit.

Uh oh, here we go. What you say is "pretty clear" is not clear in the least. If we knew that a number of other people had perfectly duplicated the conditions and hadn't heard it, there would still remain too much uncertainty. What will ideally happen is that Mr. Jones will determine the cause of the anomaly with that one unit and then make a determination as to whether it was due to some defect in that unit or not, and if not, then the indication would be that other units are likely to exhibit the same anomalous behavior.

Measurements are important. Amir detected a mild peak in the response, a discontinuity in the impedance curve, and a sharp distortion peak, all at about the same frequency. I do not recall whether anyone else made a strong effort to discover these same things in measurements of their own. If at least two other people had made determined efforts to find that distortion peak but had come up short, only then would there be justification to put forth the hypothesis that the anomalous behavior was specific to the unit that Amir measured.

If others had not been able to detect the same thing even through measurements, the explanation might as simple as not connecting the speaker in the same polarity. Was there any confirmation that other people who did not hear what Amir heard had connected the speaker using the same polarity he used? I don't recall there being any discussion of this, even though there was ample reason to consider the possibility that the anomalous behavior was related to the coil assembly having been pushed far to the rear and held there by a strong DC component.

If I had that speaker in my possession I would investigate the possibility that the motor force pushed the coil assembly to the rear far enough for the trailing end of the coil to exit the gap sufficiently for there to be a sharp drop in the electromotive force, thus allowing the suspension to pull the coil assembly back slightly to the front, which allowed the electromotive force to recover and push the coil assembly back to the rear again, etc. I would investigate this possibility because it is consistent with what has been reported and because it is perfectly reasonable from the standpoint of the physics of the thing. But I need to be clear that I'm not speculating that this is what happened. I'm merely saying that it is a possibility that deserves to be investigated.
 
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@MrPeabody, I have the speakers. I've made a very strong effort to recreate the sound any way I can. I know at least one other person in this thread has as well, because I responded to them, but I believe there were others. So I'm not talking out my ass. I believe Amir heard what he heard, but its not worth turning your back on the speakers because one guy got an anomaly. I am, however, in that camp of thought that Amir acted very unprofessionally in the way he reviewed these speakers.

For the record, in case it can be argued that I'm biased in some way because I own the speakers, I'll share that I'm likely going to return them, but not because of any weird peaks or anything; I'm testing them side by with some KEFs, so I can very clearly hear the different between good separation(ELAC) and good clarity (KEF) and I've decided I likely want to invest a little more money into something that balances those really well.
 

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I believe Amir heard what he heard, but its not worth turning your back on the speakers because one guy got an anomaly. I am, however, in that camp of thought that Amir acted very unprofessionally in the way he reviewed these speakers.
How do you think @amirm, "Acted very unprofessionally?"
 
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How do you think @amirm, "Acted very unprofessionally?"

Thomas Savage said it better than I could. I believe I saw a few others share a similar sentiment very eloquently as well, but Tom's post is just a few posts back, on this page, so it's easy to find. I'll let that speak for me.

Sorry if there's a way I should be linking the post I'm referencing. I'm new to posting on this forum (been lurking for a while).
 

Doodski

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Sorry if there's a way I should be linking the post I'm referencing. I'm new to posting on this forum (been lurking for a while).
To reference a comment you can use the comment number at the right side of the comment or you can click on the comment number and that will create another window that can be used a link to the comment number so you can link peeps if the comment was pages back. :D

Like this>
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...w-bookshelf-speaker.19216/page-21#post-642572
 

MrPeabody

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@MrPeabody, I have the speakers. I've made a very strong effort to recreate the sound any way I can. I know at least one other person in this thread has as well, because I responded to them, but I believe there were others. So I'm not talking out my ass. I believe Amir heard what he heard, but its not worth turning your back on the speakers because one guy got an anomaly. I am, however, in that camp of thought that Amir acted very unprofessionally in the way he reviewed these speakers.

For the record, in case it can be argued that I'm biased in some way because I own the speakers, I'll share that I'm likely going to return them, but not because of any weird peaks or anything; I'm testing them side by with some KEFs, so I can very clearly hear the different between good separation(ELAC) and good clarity (KEF) and I've decided I likely want to invest a little more money into something that balances those really well.


In order for your take on the matter to be reasonable, you would need to have very good reason to be confident that your setup recreates all the conditions that are necessary in order for the anomaly that Amir experienced to occur. You could not possibly be certain of this. You most likely do not even know whether you wired the speaker using the same polarity that Amir used. This is inarguably part of the necessary conditions, given that Amir reported that the anomalous behavior occurred in conjunction with the woofer's coil+diaphragm assembly having been driven far to the rear and held there. I discussed this, but you ignored it and responded by effectively asserting that if it were possible under any circumstances for what Amir experienced to occur similarly with your speaker, it would have happened and you would have heard it. This is what you are asserting, in essence, and you have no justification for this. There is no possible way that you could be certain that you have duplicated all the circumstances that are required for the anomalous behavior to occur. As such, there is no possible way for you to know whether your speaker would behave the same as the one Amir measured, if he were to measure your speaker the same as he did the other one. This is simply the truth, and all you are doing is ignoring the truth, the reasons for which are of little relevance.

I did not suggest that anyone should turn their back on the speakers. In fact, my sense is presently that it is likely a very good speaker so long as it isn't expected to play very loudly.

The plausible explanation that I discussed is sufficiently plausible such that no one should dismiss it out of hand, without having a very good reason to do so. Your having not heard what Amir heard is NOT a good reason to dismiss that plausible explanation out of hand. You would need at least to offer evidence that you and the few others had all made certain to wire your speakers with the same polarity that Amir had used. And even if you did that, this would not be a good enough reason to dismiss that plausible explanation out of hand.

Have you ever closely observed the way that a simple electromechanical buzzer works? There is a circuit that when closed energizes an electromagnet that when energized moves the moveable arm on which the switch contact is mounted, thus opening the circuit, which permits the arm to move back the other direction under the force of a spring, thereby closing the circuit and energizing the magnet ... This occurs at some specific, stable periodicity. Anyone who has studied this thing and who also has good understanding of the design of conventional loudspeaker drivers will surely be compelled to wonder not why this would occur with a loudspeaker driver, but rather why it wouldn't. When the trailing end of the coil begins to leave the gap, the electromotive force rapidly declines, while at about that same amount of excursion, the restoring force provided by the suspension sharply increases. When you think about this, the question you find yourself asking isn't why this kind of buzzing would occur, but is rather why it wouldn't occur. If the coil is too short in relation to the mechanical excursion limit, the trailing end of the coil will leave the gap partly at least, and when this happens, the electrical contribution of damping will diminish, because it depends on the integral of magnetic flux in the gap and on the total length of wire in the gap. All of the ingredients for buzzer-like behavior are in place. As such, why would it be surprising for any speaker driver to behave this way if the coil/diaphragm assembly is driven to extreme excursion by a strong DC component and stimulated by frequency modulating the strong DC, with this stimulating periodicity a very close match to the natural periodicity of the buzzing? Why would it be the least bit surprising for this to occur?
 

MrPeabody

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Thomas Savage said it better than I could. I believe I saw a few others share a similar sentiment very eloquently as well, but Tom's post is just a few posts back, on this page, so it's easy to find. I'll let that speak for me.

In passing I will note that Thomas Savage has a long relationship with Amir and had acquired the dispensation for sharing that opinion. It is unattractive for you to show such haste in associating yourself with that.

This thread was taking a nap. Mkende awakened it to ask for some more information. That was reasonable. I added a comment, to mention something that recently occurred to me, because it was technically relevant and was something that I or someone else should have thought of previously. I think that it was reasonable for me to have done that. If there were to be any responses to what I wrote there, the comments should have been concerned particularly with the technical matter that I raised. Your reply was not of that reasonable nature.

There can be no question that you had been waiting for an opportunity like this since the day you registered to be a participant in the ASR forum. And from a technical perspective, what you wrote was nonsense. You wrote this:

Don't hold your breath. Nobody has been able to recreate the sound except Amir. Its already pretty clear he got a single, faulty unit.

From a technical perspective this statement is nonsense, for the reasons that I have attempted to make apparent to you. Contrary to your statement, it is not the least bit clear that the anomalous behavior that Amir discovered was something that wouldn't likely occur with other speakers of the same model, under the same identical circumstances. As I have explained, this question has yet to be answered, and strongly stated opinions to either outcome are foolish.
 
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@MrPeabody, I appreciate anyone who is so passionate about the scientific method, so thank you for your responses. I appologize that I don't have time to address every point you bring up; I will likely rethink jumping into a discussion again until I'm willing to start writing essays on the subject. But I do have a clarifying questions for you, if you don't mind.

I do understand that reversing the polarity and testing the speakers are a good way to isolate certain variables, but are you implying the Amir may have reversed the polarity, accidentally or otherwise, and not noted it in his review before prematurely ending it and panning the speakers?

Also, my relationship with @Thomas savage, or his relationship with Amir is immaterial in my feelings that he made a good point that I agree with. I'm not sure what point you were trying to make about that, but I assure you it was the height of irrelevance.
 
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