Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 speakers pair better with AV receivers, start at $600 – CNET [CNET]

When speaker designer Andrew Jones left Pioneer for Elac America five years ago, he came up with some great designs straight out of the gate. The Elac Debut and Uni-Fi are two of my favorite speakers for the money over the past 10 years.

Yesterday I spoke to Jones about his latest efforts. He said that when he released the Debut 2.0 in 2018, he also started fielding questions about when the successor to the higher-end Uni-Fi model would be available. Now it’s finally here, in three new models: the UB5.2 bookshelf, the UF5.2 floorstander and the UC5.2 center channel.

Like the Debut 2.0 before it, the Uni-Fi 2.0 has been fully redesigned, Jones says, and it uses the slim version of the Uni-Fi speaker as its starting point. The three-way configuration is the same — a concentric tweeter-midrange and a bass woofer — but that’s where the similarities end. Gone are the metallic green drivers, replaced with a more subtle gun-metal. The port is now front-facing, which may help with positioning the speakers near walls. 

The main improvements, according to Jones, have been in reducing distortion with the help of redesigned components. The speaker now features a new 4-inch midrange with a larger voice coil and a 1-inch wide-surround tweeter at its center. The bass woofer at the bottom features a “dished” design for “a smoother response and greater transparency,” he said.

The three-way Crossover is also brand-new and Jones told me the 1.5-pound component is so large it needs to be glued in by the cabinet maker. It’s designed to improve driver integration and deliver a true 6-ohm nominal impedance for “compatibility with virtually all AV receivers“. Jones gently admonished me for testing the original, harder-to-drive Uni-Fi with a Sony STR-DN1080 (a Rotel was also used), but the new speaker should be an easier load for price-compatible equipment.

Pricing is equivalent to the previous Uni-Fis as well as Elac’s new Debut Reference, though I’m anticipating the Uni-Fis will offer more midrange insight and “air” than the Debuts. I look forward to testing them at the earliest opportunity.

The Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 range is available now:

• UB5.2: Three-way concentric bookshelf speakers: $600 for a pair. (International prices aren’t available but this converts to about £450 or AU$820.)
• UC5.2: Three-way concentric center speaker: $400 each.
• UF5.2: Three-way concentric floor-standing speakers: $1,200 for a pair.