Andrew is a rare gent. excellent designer, and great communicator. from listening to his interviews, and reviews of his speakers ( including one from Steve) had to own the b6's, without ever hearing them to honor & support. not disappointed.
After watching a number of Andrew Jones videos on U Tube I decided to take the plunge & treat myself to a pair of his Elac debut 5 2.0 speakers Now I'm in my 60's & I've been around & listened to a lot of hifi in my time believe me I am totally blown away by these speakers ,for £250 you get absolute quality .I am actually hearing sounds on my albums that I simply didn't hear before Vocals especially take on a special clarity They do as I have found take a while to run in ,but I have to say if you are on the hunt for decent speakers without spending stoopid money then look no further and one more thing ---- take a bow Andrew Jones
Awesome video! One of the most interesting that I have seen. I was actually riveted to my seat listening to "Professor" Jones! Thank You both very much for this video! I own ELAC Debut series speakers, after listening to Mr. Jones, I know why they sound so incredible!
Recently found you're channel and its very interesting to listen to these explanations, trying to get a better understanding of how to get the best audio for my music taste and these videos are very educational!
I could listen to Steve and Andrew speak for hours. I have always thought i would love to meet them. Oct 2019 ,i woke up early , did a few things around the house , ..all the sudden i had a dizzy feeling and a b/tch of a headache ...i woke up in the ICU at Yale New Haven hospital..i had suffered a brain aneurism and had been unconcious and had surgery on my brain to repair the rupture. It was a rough time ..but i kept saying "Will...your here ..you are alive" I left Yale after 2 weeks and went to another hospital for rehab , learn to walk , talk an work on balance etc . One of the nurses came in one morning and said "So tell me about these guys Steve and Andrew" , i had no idea what she was talking about. Steve & Andrew ?.. i asked. Yes ! she replied , i asked you what sort of things you like to do and you said you loved music and home audio gear and experimenting with different pieces ,and you were talking about a guy Steve that you watched on RU-vid and a man Andrew that designed your speakers .. OH YEA , Steve and Andrew ..now i remember telling you how i would like to meet them and maybe have them sign my speakers. Steve has taught me so much and shared so much , that i was always waiting for his next video an Andrew designed my Elac speakers that i love so much. Well it has been 14 months now ..my follow up tests keep coming back positive..so , maybe i WILL get to meet them.. Just hope i have that Elac speaker with me for them to sign 😀 how cool would that be !? Long live Steve and Andrew !!
This is a very clear and straight forward interview, with no excess fluff, worthy of viewing more than once for its ability to inform. Very good, thank you.
This is an excellent tutorial for speaker buyers who want to understand better what their money can buy. In decades of reading up on audio, I can't recall this all being explained in one place, with this level of clarity.
Wassup Steve, much luv on your video. That guy Andrew Jones is truly an amazing speaker designer. About 3 months ago I demoed a pair of KEF LS50 then after that the Elac UB5 Slim. Those KEFs really can sing with authority however once I heard the Elacs I immediately fell in love. Its something about those UniB5's that connected me to them emotionally the way KEFs didn't. Please don't misunderstand those KEFS are one hellava sounding speaker, however I choose to wait and splurge on the KEF R3's instead if I decide to buy more speakers anytime soon. Currently I'm running a pair of Energy A2+2 tower speakers that I picked up in pristine condition from the Goodwill for $100 bucks. These towers are listened to on hours for hours without my sub being on due to the full range sound I'm getting. Excellent sounding speakers that literally disappear into the room. On that note my UB5's are arriving tomorrow, and I have a strong feeling about the cohesion of those speakers in my room to just fill the air with harmonic enjoyment
Thanks Steve and Andrew. I've recently been reading up on speaker design to get a better understanding of the physics. This video was so good, with clear explanations, put some of the stuff I've learned into perspective. I've come to realise just how complex speaker design and development actually is to get good results.
I worked for a power supply house that had it's transformer division in the same building so became very familliar with transformer winding. About the best wire you could use for winding a transformer was HPT and it was rated up to 175C (about 350F), now keep in mind a transformer has many layers of windings and there is no real air over the inner windings of a transformer, heat gets moved by the transformer core. In the 90's I was working with a speaker designer who wanted to market a high power compact speaker system. There were satellite speakers with tweeters and modest class D amps in them. The woofer was a 30" high 5" diameter tube with a long throw 5" woofer and the power electronics in it's base. The speaker designer kept asking for more power and as i recall we ended up with a 150w power supply driving a 100w+ class D woofer amp and that long suffering 5" woofer, the rest of the power went to the satellite speakers. I can remember having several of his speakers catching fire because of the extreme heat in the voice coils. This guy was a physicist who came over from Germany and worked with Wernher von Braun on the Apollo project.
I wanted to thank you for sharing and for separating into paragraphs. I’m long winded but I separate my dissertations on RU-vid😂😂into paragraphs. Nobody on RU-vid wants to attempt to read something that should have been separated into ten paragraphs.😂 My late grandfather was a genius that worked on the Apollo project/s as well. When he was @ both Nasa & Hughes Aircraft he had people below him with half the brains whom made more $$$$ than him simply because they had a degree & he didn’t!😰. I’m blown away by the voice coil temps Andrew Jones mentioned. Daaammnnn. God speed
@@ryanjofre It's important t hat what you write is easily understood and separating your thoughts into paragraphs is a good way to start. I worked for that company for 24 years and worked my way up from technician to engineer and eventually into lower management.and in both those jobs I had to submit reports for review by those over me and it was important they be concise and easy to read. It was also important i get my point across especially if my results were not what they expected, I often had to defend my conclusions but nobody ever faulted me for the style of my writing. BTW i never went further than high school (technical high school)), and went to work for a small power supply company after getting out of the army. I advanced as I did because I read everything I could about power supply design and carefully watched how our engineers went through a design. Once i mastered the methods they advanced me to positions with more responsibilities. I was lucky the owner recognized ability and didn't demand credentials as long as you could do the work. I found small companies were more flexible than large ones, everyone had multiple duties and you were recognized for what you did and how you did it, that doesn't happen much in large corporations..
Steve - I think you missed one group break away in your audiophile tribes video - Us DIYer's - I like this video interview of Andrew, because it seems to have good value for us in the DIY tribe. Thanks for this posting
The man is a freakin genius. Simply put, he's a master of his craft. I love the speakers that he designs. I currently own the UB5 bookshelf speakers. They sound far superior to their price tag, in my opinion,
Thanks for sharing! I really like the old 3way Jbl’s that we’re around in the 70 or so , each of my brothers had them , lol I trying to start up a new sound system for listening to and watching tv ! Thanks for your show
I had no idea things could get that hot inside a speak. I guess that's why some speakers companies use silver wiring, I thought that was a gimmick. Guess not. Great info.
Yes, they told the truth, that never tell audio dealers and producers. The first about speakers "low sensitivity" = "compression" The second, they have to do low sensitivity speakers, because: A - people like to listen junk modern electronic music. B - people like small speakers. So, there are some smart audio engineers today, but they have to adjusting to modern market reality.
I’m going crazy waiting for the new Debut 2.0 line to come out -___- . They announced last week that they were coming out, I wish they didn’t tell the public this because they leave us hyped waiting for a month basically just waiting for it. I sent my speakers back waiting without one waiting for these.
I got to demo the Elac B6 2.0 Speakers In the High end audio room at my local best buy. They are pretty darn good speakers. I tried purchasing a pair to take home with me and do some more testing but unfortunately they didn't have any in stock yet. Just a pair for demoing purposes.
Michael Ping That’s awesome, I heard they sound almost the same as the B6 and a cross between the Uni Fi B5? Did you get a chance to hear those? I’m so excited because I got a chance to try both and loved both!
I have heard the B6 but have not had a chance to listen to the Uni Fi B5 yet. I will note the 2.0 B6 sounds alot better than the First gen B6 to my ears doing A/B testing in the high end audio room. They didn't have Uni Fi series there for me to compare it to sadly ( which is what I wanted to do ). Also, I did have them quote me there pricing for the new Elac B6 2.0 at $279.99 instead of Elacs website price of $299.99. I found this interesting as well.
In the past, designers like Arnie Nudell were making cost is no object. This is actually much easier than designing excellence into affordable formats.
There is an option that gives you more flexibility...powered subwoofers. Now you can get the bass extension, and buy smaller more efficient speakers right?
One thing I've always wondered about... If impedance is frequency dependent, and amplifier output is impedance dependent wouldn't frequency response directly relate to the impedance curve and kind of be more chaotic than it normally is? Let's say an amp is playing an average of 10 watts at 200hz at 8 ohms... When the speaker's impedance drops to 4 ohms at 100hz and the amp produced 20 watts, wouldn't the 100hz frequency be produced at +3db over the 200hz frequency? And speakers usually have a much wider range of impedance than my simple example.
amp output decreases as impedance goes up. At the same time the speaker is becoming more efficient/easier to drive as impedance increases towards the speakers resonant frequency. One cancels the other and you get a relatively flat response.
AJ said that you can theoretically, but not practically, engineer a very small speaker that is flat to 20 by making it very inefficient. Actually, this is what headphones and earbuds do.
What about using transformer oil inside a fin cooled enclosure for the coils? that would reduce temperature of the coil like most electrical engineers discovered like 100 years ago
There is some effort being done, it's the reason most high performance woofers have vented pole pieces and some manufacturers even design the back of the speaker like a heatsink. Google WF138WA01 and look at the pictures for an example. Why it's not more widely used I can only speculate about, but probably because most listening is done at lower levels where it's not a problem and it's an added expense for the manufacturer with no apparent benefit for the end consumer (that they know about and are willing to pay extra for that is).
Power handling, voice coil heat etc., IS A SIGNIFICANT concern for both driver manufacturers and loudspeaker designers. There's a great deal of attention paid to the issue. Sure, the extreme is voice coil failure, and mfrs don't want that. However, way before failure the audible effects of VC heat build up (power compression) are just as undesirable for the listener. Some design approaches toward mitigating power compression are obvious, and sometimes not so obvious. Pro audio subs can utilize a "magnet/basket out" configuration. Home audio approaches include open baffle woofers and/or infinite baffle subwoofers. In the case of open baffle the VC thermal benefits are typically a positive side effect. But with the infinite baffle subwoofer approach the low power requirements (very low VC temp) is typically the primary reason for such a design. Example; Today's most demanding playback material dictate that the highest powered, high performance sealed subwoofers in home audio today often utilize 2000 watts or more, per driver (there are many higher powered than this), to reach full excursion. That creates a performance compromising heat scenario within the VC. However on the other hand an infinite baffle subwoofer requires very little power in comparison to reach full stroke. Without the need of fighting the small box volume, an IB (infinite baffle) sub benefits from needing about 10% of the power the same driver would need in the enclosure. VC heat compression effects generate audible and measurable distortions.
He says something interesting here, but; if higher sensitivity speakers are know to work with lower power amps then why does he say the lower sensitivity speaker draws more power? 3:57
Andrew Jones reminds me of Matt Polk, Arnie Nudell and the designer of Braun/ADS circa 1979. Polk, Infinity and ADS made some of the best/best value speakers of the era. ELAC and modern Pioneer are clearly better engineered than modern Polk, entry paradigm, axiom, entry B&W and others. Why? The others sound like cheap parts in a box. Thump and sizzle. No real attempt at fidelity. ELAC sets an entry level standard not seen since those guys back in 1979.
Great content but audio for an audiophile page is ... well has room for improvement. Join the loudness wars and bump up those levels we don't have to put our amps to 11 :)
For more than a year I have abused my two pair of Andrew Jones Pioneer speakers (one pair FS-52 towers, one pair BS-22 bookshelf, wired in parallel) using a Crown XLS 1002 class D power amp rated ~450 wpc max. at 3 ohms, (two pair of 6 ohm speakers = 3 ohm load each channel). In a 14' x 14' room with 11' ceiling, these speakers play loud EDM music without noticeable distortion and seem to be happy doing it. The amplifier will soon get a third pair of AJ speakers to make use of its full potential, making a 2 ohm load.
A piss on Hi fidelity, The lower the efficiency and sensitivity the higher the non-linear distortion, People like his boxes, because they make bass, with added harmonics that where not part of the original signal, (when you create non-linear distortion, you get harmonics, not hi fidelity. GET BIG SPEAKERS
You are sick of Andrew jones and Steve is lazy. Really? I would like to see even more videos with Andrew Jones! Steve uploads videos every day and none of us are paying him to do that and calling him lazy is really out of order.