ELAC Uni-Fi Reference – Affordable Sonic Stunner

 

A member of my favorites club in the category of affordable loudspeakers, ELAC is releasing their Uni-Fi Reference line of home speakers. Essentially a reboot of the Uni-Fi 2.0 series, the Reference line utilizes new speaker assemblies for the concentric driver and woofers, a rethought 3-way crossover, and improved cabinet construction and finishes to present a speaker lineup with “significant performance improvements”, per James Krodel from ELAC.

Details from the ELAC press release are as follows:

“Newly Developed 4” Concentric Driver with Cast Chassis: A wide-surround tweeter enhances its low and high frequency extension allowing for improved blending with the midrange. An entirely new midrange driver with large diameter voice coil, vented rear spider and new neodymium magnet allows for better excursion and control of midrange frequencies. A new cast chassis was designed to minimize reflections back to the cone resulting in better clarity.

Newly developed 5.25” and 6.5” Aluminum Woofers with Cast Chassis: Drastically improving low-end reproduction, this newly developed bass driver features a single piece compound curvature aluminum cone with a large rear vented magnet delivering improved linearity and better low frequency response of any previous Uni-Fi bookshelf speaker.

Sophisticated 3-way Crossover: An entirely new design improves response linearity, improves driver integration, and delivers a true 6-ohm nominal impedance for compatibility with virtually all AV receivers.

Full Perimeter Bracing: Reducing the speaker cabinets influence on audio quality the Uni-Fi Reference line implements full perimeter bracing significantly reducing cabinet vibration and cabinet coloration.

Front Firing Ports – Placing the vents on the front of the bookshelf and center speakers allows for greater freedom of placement, even in restricted places like a cabinet or up close to a wall.

All three new models will be available in late-June at ELAC retailers nationwide.”

Pricing starts at $999.98 /pr for the UBR62 bookshelf model, $599.98 /ea for the UCR52 center channel, and $1,999.96 /pr for the UFR52 floorstander. If this is your speaker budget, these ELACs will be worth an audition.

Cheers!