Elac Uni-Fi Series Speaker Preview

Speaker designer extraordinaire Andrew Jones was at CES this week unveiling his new line of speakers from Elac.  Their new Uni-Fi speaker line was the talk of the show, and with a designer with 40 years of experience headlining the demo room to personally talk about his products, I definitely took time out of a busy show schedule to listen.

Andrew was kind enough to take a few minutes for an interview to help us get a better understanding of the behind the scenes design goals of their new Uni-Fi Speaker line.

Elac Uni-Fi Speaker Line Interview with Andrew Jones

“My goal with the Uni-Fi series was to create a line of speakers with technology and performance normally reserved for speakers costing significantly more,” Jones said. “By going with a 3-way design and employing a new in-house developed concentric driver I’ve achieved a sound that is more true to the music than similar priced products."

Elac 4" aluminum concentric driver - the heart of the Uni-Fi speaker line

The Uni-Fi series consists of a bookshelf (UB5), a Floorstanding (UF5) and a center channel speaker (UC5). Each model has incredible performance for speakers at their price points. The Uni-Fi Series is based on their Debut Line of speakers. The most significant changes being the addition of a newly designed 4” concentric driver consisting of a 4” aluminum midrange and 1” soft dome tweeter. Elac claims that by mounting the tweeter at the center of the midrange driver the audio reproduced is perceived as coming from the same point in space. This results in improved directivity throughout the crossover region and better off-axis frequency response. Bass is handled by a newly developed 5 ¼” aluminum woofer. 

Elac UB5 Bookshelf (left pic); UF5 Tower (right pic)

In the demo room, we found a single pair of Elac Uni-Fi UB5 bookshelf speakers in a 2.0 configuration. Many designers would have shown the bookshelf speakers with an accompanying subwoofer to fill out the bottom end, perhaps the Elac S10EQ ($500), or at the least, gone with a pair of the bigger UF5 towers.  It takes a lot of confidence to try to impress half-a-dozen critical listeners in a 500 square foot room with a $500 pair of bookshelf speakers. 

The demo began with a little introduction from Andrew Jones describing why he designed these speakers.  You can hear something similar to that, and much, much more in our extended video review with Andrew embedded above and available on our YouTube channel.  The first track was dominated by a female vocal and guitar played in a percussive style.  The track presented a clear midrange, detailed high frequencies, and broad image in the room which had a little absorption at the sidewall first reflection points.  That said, we couldn't get a sense of the low-frequency impact of the speakers because the thumped guitar, while it sound quite weighty, also utilized much of the UB5's sufficient midrange.

The second track came up, almost identically instrumented with the same percussive guitar, but with a male voice.  Again, clean, detailed, and spacious reproduction, but no way to accurately judge the low-end of these speakers.  We started getting suspicious; was Andrew avoiding demo tracks with any real low-end to hide a deficiency in the speaker design.  We shouldn't have worried.  The next track was by Canadian EDM star deadmau5, and featured copious amount of low bass.  As soon as the first low synth swelled out, and the low percussion kicked in, the room went giddy.  These modest bookshelves were filling the room with clean, musical, plentiful bass in a way that was expected in a set of full-sized towers, but very uncommon in $500 bookshelves.  People started giggling, taking turns offering up the single sweet-spot in the front of the room, and asking how they could get a pair.

 With a pricepoint of just $499/pr for the UB5 bookshelf, $499/ea for the UF5 floorstanding, and $349 for the UC5 center channel it won't be a issue of "IF" we do a full review on these, but "When". 

The Uni-Fi Series of speakers will be available in Q2 of 2016

ABOUT ELAC
For 90 years, ELAC has built innovative products that deliver superior performance and value, driven by a commitment to making the best sound in the world. Today, LAC offers a wide range of speaker and electronics products. ELAC has earned its reputation –from the beginning –with advanced technology, uncompromised build quality and modern European style.

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.