ELAC's Andrew Jones Talks Loudspeakers | Stereophile

[@brucegarethgeorge]

Audiophiles should know the importance of using good mics.

[@error079]

Thank you for making these interviews. Always nice hear from the designer of a product. Looking forward to listen to them

[@jumpercable20]

All the poster's below can debate Andrew Jones designs. The best way to make a decision is to go listen to a set of his low cost speakers. Quality does not have to be expensive. When you've worked for as many speaker companies as he has, you can't help but learn what you're doing. He knows what he's doing and he is worlds apart from most speaker engineers, (how many speaker engineers have you ever heard sit down and talk shop with anybody ?) While it seems like everybody thinks they know the best way to build a loudspeaker, he's doing it. If you want to put a company in the fortune 500 list, the best thing to do is to design and build a 100 or 200 dollar speaker that blows people away. I'm sure to a speaker savant like Mr. Andrews making expensive speakers is quite easy. It's very difficult to make a speaker that sounds like it cost 20k and it goes out the door for under 200.00.

[@keithbertschin1213]

I have the Adante Stand mounts, blown away, not sure why they’re discontinued, seems to be the elac way

[@talibe801]

hi Andrew,i´m waiting to hear and sell these speakers in our store!!You´re the Man!!!,when we talk speakers we talk Andrew Jones.

[@commentcommenter3529]

He made his name two years ago now? You can see andrew's reaction from that comment. The interviewer seems sore that andrew is where he is and where he is.

[@wa2368]

Lol, good observation...Andrew had that look look like i'm gonna smack that pufferfish face of yours boi!

[@NeWhoa]

Wow, yeah, I thought that was really rude. Surprised me right when it came out of his mouth. Maybe he misspoke? Maybe he meant made a name for himself at Elac with his debut entry. He was being playful with the "veteran" comment so I thought he was joking about the "2 years ago" but just continued on. Jones has been well known for a very long time and is well respected by listeners, reviewers, and peers in the industry. So that was an odd and insulting comment and Jones didn't look too pleased (rightfully so). Still he handled it well and continued with a friendly interview.

[@error079]

lapel microphone would have been nice when the neighbors are being noisy.

[@terrywho22]

Great series, but why is the audio so bad?? I mean, this is posted by Stereophile, isn't it? The purveyors of great sound, right?

[@Mrch33ky]

Because John Atkinson doesn't know anything about great sound. He's just an Ad man.

[@jjs71072]

Good point

[@roguemodel]

And yet, he is there and you are not, making hundreds of thousands as a reviewer. Opinions are like assholes, and you are one. The sound was recorded at an audio show. The music you hear is coming from all around their room.

[@Mrch33ky]

He makes money from ads, not reviews. Without ads, the magazine would fold in a month. And it makes his reviews suspect as well, roguemouse. Now back to 6Moons with you!

[@ThomasMLeahy]

It was recorded for spoken word, which is a limited frequency response. If you've been to these conventions, you will experience noise from adjacent rooms. Hotel rooms not constructed for isolation from loud music next door.

[@talibe801]

they arrived yesterday,whow! Big sound,great bass,midrange to die for...and all this out of the box!construction,attention to details, and quality for this price range is amazing,great work as always with Andrew!hope to see at the show in Lisbon.

[@CristhianSerrano]

do you still have them, whats your experience with them

[@talibe801]

@@CristhianSerrano hi,no, i dont do Elac anymore at the store,and sold many pairs,the clients that bought them are satisfied

[@CristhianSerrano]

@@talibe801 thanks for the reply! i always have been atracted to these speakers, but i noticed they were some kind of comercial failure, do you have any insight into what happened with this line?

[@talibe801]

@@CristhianSerrano the experience we had here at Ultimateaudio in Lisbon and Porto,was very good in terms of sound,boxes,the cloth that cover the speaker was very good with the logo etc...but i think they were to big to the most of the rooms here, and the midrange/tweeter was mounted very high in the cabinet,in my opinion,nevertheless they were amazing for the price asked,but somewhow BW 802 or 800 now 801,they are much more expensive but sell like crazy,the best sound i had with the adantes was with the JC parasound monoblocks,amazing sound for the money.

[@CeeStyleDj]

The Pioneers' that Andrew is referring to is the SP-FS52

[@BanBiofuels]

I have always hated passive radiator designs because they sound like someone beating a rug with a broom, not bass at all, just mush. If Andrew has a way around that, then that is something new. I do not understand how decoupling the voice coil from the speaker cone is a good thing, but I would like to hear it. I wish Jones would get together with Vienna Acoustics as well. I like their designs and use of self-damping driver materials and flat speakers.

[@brianbob7514]

thank you for these interviews

[@1mykalfury]

Andrew Jones is proof... "stay in school, it pays off!" His credentials in Physics allows him to envision a finished product before even cutting a print. I own the famous Pioneer CS-22 center speaker and it's sound is brilliant! It is $99 of ass-kickery in the center channel up front. As a musician I've been exposed to numerous speakers, monitors, towers etc.. the A. Jones line of speakers are unrivaled in their class. Watch 1 of those Hi-Fi road shows on KZbin where Andrew & rival pals talk Hi-Hi. You'll see how they look at him and how they address his approach to designing the award winning speakers. They're good enough guys, but, You'll see alittle envy and alittle disbelief, even though Andrew's work stands alone as unique and as winners. ~ peace

[@hitechespresso]

Atkinson cleaned up! haircut, shave, clothes!

[@Audfile]

John Atkinson is the Deepak Chopra of audio.

[@Mrch33ky]

Soooo true.

[@ccc369]

a charlatan ?

[@vote4ulvio]

Who's Deepak

[@edjackson4389]

I love hearing this stuff from a proven designer

[@yvindthorvaldsen6436]

Thank you, Mr Atkinson. I find this series of interviews fasinating. You mention you play bass guitar. Would you care to tell me what bass and other gear you use, please? Greetings from Øyvind in Norway

[@Stereoeditor]

When I was professional I played a 1964 Fender Precision with a Vox AC100 amplifier. These days I have a bunch of basses, including an acoustic Martin, a fretless semi-acoustic Carvin, a Rickenbacker 4001, and an Alembic Stanley Clarke Signature, with Phil Jones Bass amplification.

[@nznegativeions]

No

[@steevee1945]

It is ironic that a video about high-definition audio components has such poor sound quality. A high-pass filter would have cleaned up the audio of this video.

[@BKKLB]

Kinda funny that Stereophile of all creators has lousy audio.

[@ThomasMLeahy]

The not so good sound is probably your device, no?

[@PeterKKraus]

I wonder if they are as good as, or better than the Spendor D7... any opinion? P.S. After 20 years of sporadic Stereophile subcribing, I had no clue JA is a brit! lol. I miss ST

[@nicolajc]

well all great, but how I do I keep my cleaning staff out that spiders web ?

[@JacobFrey]

Wow, that is a complex speaker. Fascinating idea!

[@DirectX3]

Is Mr. Jones English?

[@ChristianRThomas]

More interesting work from Andrew. One day even I may get down on my knees and worship. I'm not sure about John and his bass guitar on the Isobariks. There's no reason the B139 shouldn't do anything a 10" Pro driver from that era can do, and probably rather better as it's naturally ruler flat to 700Hz. I suspect he plugged it into an Aux input with a 47k or 10k load when the guitar would need about 1Meg if the output isn't going to be compromised by the huge inductance of the pickup coil. That's probably why he was unimpressed with the results. Is that the case, John?

[@LawrencedeMartin]

JA was talking about running out of Vd, volume displacement. The B139 has a small XMax (linear displacement) and modest Sd (cone area) so it is not appropriate for bass at anywhere near realistic levels. It is further much lower efficiency than pro drivers. My first bass amp was a Fender Deluxe Reverb, with an open-backed 10" speaker. It would crush a B139.

[@scottlowell493]

A bit confusing because...wouldn't you have two different out of phase effects with bass? IE: the active driver front will push the passive radiator, then AFTERWARD, the pressure from the return of the driver pushes air through the port into the passive radiator. This seems like there would be a delay or phase/ doppler effect....

[@ChristianRThomas]

I'm not sure what you are getting at, Scott. The passive radiator will only do what the bass unit behind tells it to. You can think of the system with no passive radiator there and that just gives you a 6.5" driver in a ported cabinet. That's easy enough. When you put the cavity in front that rolls off the top end, starting at 200Hz (it would be interesting to know whether that's 3dB down or 6dB down, or it could be a Q of 1 so a single inductor would turn it into a 3rd Order Butterworth? Then you could do the same with the midrange loading - though you will need some impedance compensation - and a single capacitor will give you a lovely flat impedance curve. Personally I'd put another couple of orders in there, achieving the same thing, but bringing the distortion down and reducing midrange output from the internal bass unit. It also might help if your Q has got a bit high in loading the midrange to 200Hz. 1.618, perhaps, Andrew? ). Putting the passive radiator on the front, it is essentially a port but without the air noise and a few more losses, which could be useful. One other thing that strikes me is that the internal ports' output will also be subject to the 200Hz filter, so that gets rid of the problem of midrange sneaking out through the ports.

[@jogmas12]

Scott Lowell not If each passive is internally housed in each own enclosure in The cabinet. Leave speaker building To The experts.

[@LawrencedeMartin]

You are talking frequency domain, where this is a bandpass design with the port replaced by a diaphragm. In the TIME domain, you have three spring-mass systems - the active driver, the two box volumes coupled with a port and the passive cone. Every resonance adds GROUP DELAY, and I can hear that because I listen to live, acoustic music daily. People who only listen to speakers go deaf to temporal distortion because it ubiquitous. Harry F. Olson measured speakers with rectangular gated sine waves, which are the closest electronic approximation of tonal rhythm instrument waveforms.

[@twochaudiomg2578]

Jones must know the old Snell designer K. V. That passive rad.

[@LawrencedeMartin]

Andrew Jones is the generation BEFORE Kevin Voelck (sp?), has a very respectable background in Math and Physics, and obviously better ears. Jones knew "Acoustic Bass Radiators" when KV was in primary school. I liked Snells before and after KV, but not during. His Revel speakers are a joke. I never figured out how D.B. Keele and KV ended up under the same corporation.

[@twochaudiomg2578]

Mr. Jones. Do you build a speaker & when its finnished. Put it up against another speakers. If your build sounds better. It then tells you. I can get $2000 lets go against a 3k speaker. On And On. Seems like to me thats what happens.

[@CreamyBone]

How ironic is it that typical 14 year old gamers streaming on twitch have better audio clarity than Stereophile? 😉

[@SpearWieldingOctopus]

So you couldn't get better mics and audio isolation being a stereophile-dedicated channel? I've lost all respect for you, my dude.

[@keitholdbean3173]

This is about the speakers YOU JERK !

[@terminatorx2545]

Quit it already

[@MaximeTrepreau]

Smart stuff

[@pacosoundaruba]

Don't speak about speakers..listen to it

[@abr8850]

Hi, im looking the internet to find a good streo pair of speakers and i noticed that the sound of this video is crap and on top we didn't hear these speakers at all. So i will stay with my edifier s350db and don't buy an elac pair.

[@LawrencedeMartin]

Resonances are bad in speakers because they store energy and increase group delay, which is TEMPORAL DISTORTION. How can it improve the "Pace. Rhythm and Timing" to make a sixth order system? Are there any group delay or rectangular sine burst measurements of this supposed upgrade? Also, how can such a diminutive midrange go down to 200Hz without audible Doppler distortion? I am a fan of the big TADs coaxial system, but they had Doppler inter-modulation at full orchestral levels (>120dB peaks).

[@vmvlev]

hey my speaker´s on youtube :-)

[@ZERO-CAPACITANCE]

Lavilier Microphones!!!

[@nznegativeions]

*RUBBISH SOUND QUALITY*

[@khoi83]

Please explain.

[@DirectX3]

Jesus doesn't talk like that...

[@rotaks1]

Andrew Jones said "audiophiles asked: when are you going to design something more expensive that is in the in the price category that I as an audiophile want to spend". This is the crux of the problem. Does audiophile mean more money? I hope it means quality. I will never buy anything to do with these guys. SCAM.

[@jogmas12]

Rohit Rao comes down To value.

[@AndrePrudhomme]

1. He starts the video by talking about how few compromises he had to make in a budget speaker. 2. Audiophiles regularly pay up for items because they WANT to spend money. You’ll find that’s the case with numerous audio products - in many cases they’re not really paying for performance but the emotional feeling that comes with splurging on that product.

[@cybergod77]

just watched half the video and all it talks about is on the marketing strategy to get people excited about Elac's budget speakers and how to progressively milk more money from audiophiles...quite a turn off

[@TheRockerxx69]

I wish that manufacturers would brace and add mass inside the cabinets. Dampening. And silicone gaskets. De coupling. And decent x overs....not seen. A simple 50 euros add on. But no!!!!

[@timgraysontv]

Sounds like he can't hold a job...

[@tms372]

What a large pile of rubbish, whenever I see Atkinson I know there's going to be a sales pitch.