ELAC - Adante... what’s the verdict?

While waiting for the Elacs to sell I decided to just let them play at low volume for the past 4 days. I ended up selling my reference speaker cables because I need a pair of biwired cables for the Vandersteens that I ordered so I threw in the old trusty Blue Jeans cables(slightly rolled off on top and a smidge grainy compared to reference cables) and decided to change power cords to Cerious(warmer than my Furutech’s) on my Aurender and Lyngdorf TDAI-2170...Wow. What I’m hearing now is incredible sense of space and tempo/timing. It still doesn’t have the tonal richness of paper drivers with SET but tonal saturation/warmth is vastly better. I spent about an hour absolutely glued to my seat tonight listening to music with absolutely zero fatigue. I pulled my listing for them. No doubt worth a little effort. I was thinking it would take both effort, time, and $$$ but like I said before I think Primaluna or Quicksilver el34 mid monos are potentially a great match (never know until you try).Cerainly my tweaks were all low cost and shockingly pleasing. The speakers were able to unravel densely layered music yet managed to have a very cohesive sound.

So far it seems there’s a consensus that these require careful gear matching. I wonder if the Audio Alchemy amps would work well. Wasn’t this the pairing at last year’s shows?

So far it sounds like they’re not the giant slayers that some might hope for...not a poor man’s TAD.

If memory serves, AJ swapped out the metal dome tweeter that was in the show prototype. 

The design lends a lot of interest as the approach is unique. Using a closed couple cavity with a band pass design to create an acoustic crossover of 12db per octave, which in turn lent to a simpler crossover design between the woofer and mid driver. A concentric driver to aid in creating better integration between the tweeter and mid driver. The passive radiator making speaker placement when dealing with boundary walls potentially easier. 

 A bit of effort went into the design to be a bit more clever than most, especially given the targeted price point, but the commentary thus far indicates further refinement will be required. Its measured characteristics also indicates careful paring. First, it has a rather low efficiency with a specified 85db and measuring a bit lower. The impedance plot isn't benign and the tweeter is crossed over somewhat low at 2khz, which can be a challenge for any tweeter to produce cleanly.  I know titanium and likely aluminium domes were tested, but fabric domes offer better damping properties and might have played a role in its selection. They are rather larger and heavy, which certainly isn't cheap to build and  are likely offering good value for the build.  Experimentation with power amps may be best. I also have some concerns about QC as pair matching wasn't very good.

A question remains if the engineering was complete? We know that Elac has been looking to be a benchmark products at their price points, do they achieve that here?

Time will tell, and feel I would be interested if they proved to be exceptional at their price, but initial impressions are not indicating as such. I do look forward in hearing what will be said about them as owners have more experience.

Does anyone have any experience with the AF61 model?