Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 Review (bookshelf speaker)

[djigibao]

Is the speaker new or is it done - "burn in"?

 

[DuncanTodd]

Be interesting to hear from owner if he could replicate it in the other speaker. I assume this will also trickle down to the Elac owners thread on avsforum and maybe someone will be brave enough to try theirs.
Any chance for a recording of that split second to hear what it sounds like?

 

[boselover61]

Is the speaker new or is it done - "burn in"?

It's after 9999 hours of burn in using highest quality diamond conducted cables. But no for real... no burn in since that doens't do anything anyway.

 

[Music1969]

90% of the problem vanished!

With EQ fixing even resonance issues this much, it seems the good digital room correction solutions potentially also do some important serious speaker corrections too !

Like Dirac Live, Audiolense, Acourate

@mitchco

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Interesting how the distortion from the port clearly shows the problem:
View attachment 104762

Seems like the cabinet is amplifying it and then comes out of the port? It does not show up as a port resonance.

That is interesting. This is a different measurement than you originally published, which showed much lower system distortion at 86 dB and higher distortion (over 4%) at 96 dB. How was this conducted? Is it a nearfield of the port? I'm just interested in how you isolated the distortion product to the port. In any event, this seems to be another strike against front-mounted ports.

 

[DuncanTodd]

It's after 9999 hours of burn in using highest quality diamond conducted cables. But no for real... no burn in since that doens't do anything anyway.

Everyone knows you need to also professionally bake the cables.

 

[pavuol]

Usually resonances color the sound. They don't become instruments on their own. But that is what happened here.

So from now on we have to differentiate between "standard" and "instrument grade" resonances?

Interesting results, will wait if this get resolved..

 

[Francis Vaughan]

This looks just plain weird.
A peak this high and narrow implies a very high Q. That it doesn't show up in the ordinary sweep suggests it is level sensitive. There are certainly mechanisms that can create such bizarre behaviour, and a metal driver is always up for some high-Q fun.
So is it just from the port, or rather that the port is also emitting along with the driver? Very hard to imagine that the box/port could manage such a high Q by itself.
There is a non-zero chance that the driver has a manufacturing fault. There is also a good chance that the fault is intrinsic to the design.
It really does suggest a second example be checked.

 

[wwenze]

With EQ fixing even resonance issues this much, it seems the good digital room correction solutions potentially also do some important serious speaker corrections too !

Like Dirac Live, Audiolense, Acourate

@mitchco

Or it may also do something in the opposite direction if it wasn't caught in the measurements.

 

[q3cpma]

Would be nice for the owner to do some simple REW tests on the other sample to confirm that it's not a lemon. Anyway, hurray for the speaker review breaking through the headphone wave!

 

[Music1969]

Or it may also do something in the opposite direction if it wasn't caught in the measurements.

True.

 

[w1000i]

I think it is crossover issue. I hope gr-research looks into it soon.

 

[thewas]

Maybe they used a Focal Clear driver for the mids?

 

[andreasmaaan]

Interesting how the distortion from the port clearly shows the problem:
View attachment 104762

Seems like the cabinet is amplifying it and then comes out of the port? It does not show up as a port resonance.

Is this measurement taken near field of the port?

That would seem particularly odd given that the issue is an octave+ above the XO from woofer to midrange.

 

[TheWalkman]

A flawed design from His Holiness, Andrew Jones? What else can go wrong this week? Say it ain’t so.

 

[jackocleebrown]

Amir, it seems likely to me that this issue is caused by something having come loose in the speaker. Possibly a trim, one of the driver bolts, a cable internally rattling. I'm doubtful this is a design flaw.

 

[MZKM]

Is the speaker new or is it done - "burn in"?

Amir listens after the measurements are done, and the measurement process takes hours.

 

[celroid]

It is disheartening to me that one can buy a model that measured good in the tests here, but that the speakers can have problems due to some production issue. How likely can it be that something like this happens? @amirm

 

[tuga]

In the scope of nasty resonances, loudness-contour curves and audibility, how do these compare, what does the science say?

 

[AndreaT]

A loud squeak when a vocalist takes a breath is a serious and fatal error in the transduction of analog electric into acoustic signal. A breath before a musical phrase is a common occurrence in many, many recordings and it is extremely annoying when it gets so distorted (and somehow amplifiedto sound like a squeak.

I agree it is a flaw in itself big enough to deserve a decapitated panther and to cut short a review.

Kudos to you for alerting us readers of a product that does not deserve in the least our saved Dollars.

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.

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