ELAC - Adante... what’s the verdict?

A couple of points just because a loudspeaker uses a particular material doesn't mean it is going to sound a particular way.

We had the Vivid line all aluminum drivers and they never sounded hollow at all. Same with the Kef Blades and the Kef Reference and R series. 

There is a difference to what we would term hollow and being a bit forward. The Paradigm Prestige are a bit forward they are also incredibly exciting and visceral loudspeakers when driven correctly. 

The hollowness that we hear with the Elacs is probably more due to cabinet construction then anything else, yes the cabinets are well braced but I don't think there is any stuffing inside the speakers,  and that may be the culprit.

The Elac Adante will require an amplifier which is the inverse of the speaker, meaning slightly fat in the upper midrange and a tad rolled off in the upper treble. 

The Kef R 300 sound fantastic and are less bright then the LS 50 because they have  a lot more bass and are a true three way speaker. 

We have never noticed any lack of coherency with the R 300 perhaps the stands were too tall. 

We sell a lot more Kef R 500 which are just terrific due to the fact that the R 300 plus stands is approaching the more full range R 500.

In terms of Adante vs Legacy Calibres, no contest, the Legacy's are extraordinary, with unbelievable build quality, and every part is extremely expensive including the crossover components. Driver quality is off the charts. The Legacy is smoother, with better defined bass, and a glowing rich midrange. They are more like a $10k plus monitor in the league with the TAD ME 1 for half the price. They are that good!

The Adante is going to be a good speaker once people find out exactly the right components to use with it. The issue is going to be too many people are going to think sure it is an Andrew Jones design and therefore is will be killer and use the speaker with any old gear, this is not the case with Adante. 

The Adante is a lot of speaker for the money, it will require a lot of time and investment in generally way better equipment then what is traditionally used in a $2,500.00 monitor. 

Most likely a tube amplifier is what is going to work with Adante, or a very warm solid state amplifier and a laid back source. 

We are still working with our demo pair and it has been busy lately so once we have had a bit more time with them we will report what combo is making magic with them.  

An Arcam amp with the Class G amps are going to work well, Naim should also work,  as well as Prima Luna and Rogue. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Dave and Troy - just out of curiosity, do you guys consider the average speaker to sound great (80-90% if it’s full performance) with almost any amp/preamp/etc, or do you truly believe every speaker is like this Adante, where you (supposedly) have to seek out the perfect synergy to get them to sound good?

Obviously, I think any good well designed speaker should and will sound 80-90 to its potential with virtually any setup behind it, even cheap gear.  

We don't believe that any speaker will automatically sound good no matter what is matched with.

That is like saying any high performance car engine will work in any car, take a Ferrari F40 engine and put in a Pinto did you accheive the Ferrari's performance?

The reason a Ferrari perfoms like a Ferrari is that it is designed as a system. If you take any part away from it and it you will not get the performance the system as intended to deliver. 

There are really two types of speakers, high resolution designs and low resolution designs.

The two camps can be summed up as Ribbon, Beryillium, Diamond drivers = High Resolution.

Soft domes tweeters, paper cones, bextrine and certain polypropolyne lower resoloution. 

This is where system matching comes in: Higher resolution speakers require complete elimantion of hash, and must be mated with smoother sounding electronics.

VS

Lower Resolution speakers which require brighter sounding electronics, cables etc. 

Hope that  helps.

It is interesting to see how opinions vary, many people who heard the Adante at CES were blown away by them with Audio Alchemy electronics, and the Hifi News review I don't remember what they used with the speakers but they were blown away by the Adantes vs other people's opinions which are widly differing.

We have not yet passed judgement on just how good the Adante's actually are. So far they are intriguing speakers that do certain things well, with our ultimate buy judgement not yet given.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Another thing Contuzzi, when we went shopping for reference electronics for the Kef Blades, and Personas, we listened to many different combinations of electronics before finding electronics which made the speakers come alive.


On the Kef Blades we tried Parasound JC 1 which were medeocre at best, the Electrcompaniet AW 400 which were better, then the Chord mono blocks which were far better than the other amps, we tried Hegel, Thrax, Conrad Johnson.

The system which sounded the best was the T+A gear which combined the speed of the Chord and detail with a slightly warmer richer more tube like midrange. 

What is evident is that all of our reference speaker systems the Polymer Research a $68k speaker, the Kef Blades a $32k speaker, the Paradigm 9H a $35k set of speakers didn't sound magical on far less expensive electronics, it was only when matched with really good gear, cables and source components did we hear a sound that was really compelling.

So back to the car analogy purchase a Ferrari or Porsche and say it comes time for new tires and you don't want to spend the money on really good tires you won't get the performance the car can offer with cheaper tires. 

The higher the performance evelope the better everything else must be in order to deliver it.

Your 9H on the Anthem separates is a far cry from the 9H on the T+A gear. 

Now if your thinking just because something is expensive doesn't mean you are guaranteed performance either, it is a matching game and we have heard expensive gear that wasn't worth the price.

Dave and Troy 
Audio Doctor NJ

I'd rather listen to a 10K amp driving 1k speakers than vice-versa any day .