The original Debut series set a new bar for affordable high-end performance. This new generation, designed by Andrew Jones and built to his exacting specifications, is the next step forward.
The B6.2 sits at the top of this range and is a floorstanding loudspeaker that plays in an entirely different league to its predecessor. It is a speaker without compromise, guaranteed to change your idea of what you can expect from a budget-priced speaker.
It's not a flashy speaker by any means, with a rather understated aesthetic that places the emphasis on sound quality and performance. And it doesn't disappoint in either respect.
For starters, this is the first time that ELAC has fitted its own, brand-new drive units, made to its own specification by a factory in China. The 6.5in bass/mid driver is loaded with a woven aramid-fibre cone with impressive stiffness and self-damping characteristics. The partnering 1in cloth dome tweeter is loaded with a 'deep-spheroid' waveguide.
The resulting combination is an audiophile-class transducer that delivers a neutral tonal balance and remarkable amounts of detail, particularly in the lower frequencies. There is also very little distortion, making the speakers very easy to pair with amplifiers.
They are not without their faults, though. They are a little dry in the treble and slightly opaque in the midrange, and their rhythmic drive is distinctly lacking when compared to more dynamically exciting alternatives at this price point. But these flaws don't really matter in practice. We played the Jesus and Mary Chain's Stoned & Dethroned on tall metal floor stands in our CNET listening room, and the B6s sounded just right.
