I’d appreciate opinions from RMAF 2017 Show attendees on the Elac Adante AF61

They sounded good, maybe just a touch of metallic coloration in the upper highs.  It most certainly was not the best sounding room at the show, at least not to my ears.  It was probably very close to the best room for the money.  I agree with shoff, Gryphon room sounded sublime.  I really liked Legacy, even though it was setup more in the open space.  And Raidho room also sounded awesome.

I heard them on both Saturday and Sunday.
On Saturday, Mr. Jones was giving a presentation.  The room was jam packed and hard to get into but I managed to work my way forward over time.  He's a very entertaining speaker (no pun intended) and made the listening that much better. His choice of songs was impeccable which certainly helped the quality of the demo.  There was a Q&A session and one of the questions that came up was 'how did you make the highs sound so open and engaging' (or something like that) and his answer focused on the work he had done on the concentric driver.   I left saying 'wow - I want to hear more and will return'.

On Sunday, I returned and the crowd was much smaller. At the time they were playing some chamber music - and the presenter was not nearly as engaging.  To be fair, this is not a genre of music I can judge, and I didn't want to hang out too long waiting for it to change, so I can't add a second listening opinion.

I would definitely take a listen and see what you think.  There's a lot of competition in the price range (Revel, Focal, Golden Ear to name a few) but these are definitely worth consideration.  Hopefully you can find a dealer who can demo them well. 

There were a couple of reports that gave the Adante's a best value remark at the show. There were also credible reports in regards to the Tekton Design speakers as being extraordinary as well. Something I will note about these two is novel an unique approaches applied in their respective products.

The Adante's closed coupled cavity for the bass arrangement and Tekton's tweeter array. With the Elac, that bass driver arrangement may aid in room integration of bass without as much concern of boundary walls. It also simplifies the crossover to mid driver due to what becomes a 2nd order acoustic filter with the band pass design. We also know Andrew Jones is well versed in coaxial driver design, but the crossover difference here will make it unique. The diaphragm material choices are curios only due to prior displays had shown some experimentation in this area. Any comments about it being the best at its price point is pure conjecture. First, its only been heard by few in show conditions. Second being a very wide range of capable speakers at the same point. I would certainly welcome a chance to audition it as I don't have any qualms to increases in buyer choice.

The Tekton has that tweeter array that is intended to allow more natural reproduction in its range. The claim from its designer being that the small radiating area of your typical tweeter is unable to reproduce the dynamic of the sound that is much larger in radiation area. His solution to that belief is very evident upon first look. I'm sure some issues needed to be worked out and some easier than others to make it work. The tweeter array is actually a two way portion of the speaker that has all those small drivers utilized in the upper mid to lower treble and then to a single unit when in the high treble. He had something similar in prior designs, but this looks expanded upon. It appears he used a dedicated mid driver in this edition to likely aid in integration. Prior model did have somewhat chatty cabinet construction, so hopefully some evolution in that area. I'm sure there are still some off measurements with a design idiosyncrasies such as this, but if well managed, it might work out fairly well.