Elemental Designs Introduces New EL Line of High End Speakers

Wow looks nice! I wonder how the monitors stack up against the Sierra-1.

http://www.edesignaudio.com/product_...roducts_id=767

link above, they already have had a direct competitor for the sierras out for about a year and a half now..maybe longer.. i believe the new small monitors are 1100/pr. so they are quite a bit more...i think they also have a couple bigger towers in the new line too, maybe just one pair im not sure. no pics on the website yet though, although some lucky guy in west fla has a complete 5.1 set of the new ones...

Yeah there is a tower pair that is in the current lineup that utilizes dual 8" woofers.

Wow those are ugly! That monitor just looks silly with the driver/port layout like it is.

What driver is that handling the mids on the bookshelf? It looks like a huge soft dome but I am not sure if anyone even makes a soft dome mid that big.

PMC, Proac, and Wharfedale all use the large soft dome tweeter as I'm sure many others do that I can't come up with at the moment.

Looks like a Vifa 3" dome mid, vifa tweeter, and peerless woofers maybe?
Ryan

That's the Vifa dome mid that has been rebranded as a ScanSpeak Discovery. It's the exact same dome mid that's been around for 25 years, and isn't such a hot performer. Kind of a strange choice, they're very expensive for what they deliver.

Can someone enlighten me on this point - what is the point of making such gigantic center channels such as the X-Voce and Bigfoot and this. I have a Selah MF7 center channel with a single 7" coax driver, and it gets louder than I can tolerate with only 50 watts. Although admittedly, I have a small room, 17x14x9. Do you guys simply enjoy the dialogue melting your face off??

Hey Craig.

Thanks for the mention. We are slowly adding the production items to the website. At this time, specs are incomplete, and the drop down pricing for wood veneers is not an option yet. But they are slowly but surely getting up.

http://www.edesignaudio.com/index.php?cPath=2_42

The tower speakers can be seen in the product page now.

As mentioned, they use dual 8" woofers covering the bottom end.

The midrange is a 3" dome. We choose to use a dome midrange due to the off axis response, and how well they image. We prototyped and employed the use a traditional midrange speaker originally, but found the dome midrange to offer better performance for our needs.

A lot of people like to use the same drivers across their front stage. This is known as timbre matching. It allows the sound reproduction to be as similar across all speakers as possible. It also allows for an absurd amount of midbass and impact from the center channel. Really critical in gun fire scenes.

Hey Craigsub and everyone else,

Alex just let me know about this thread. I was going to post one but hadn't yet. I recently got these speakers, and they are sitting next to an A7-900, as a matter of fact! (and two mfw's as well.)

I've been rambling about them for a little while on the eD forum Here


Here is a copy of the first post there and one later one:

Hi everyone,

I wanted to start a thread about the custom speakers eD did for me. You may have seen the recent blog post on them here: http://blog.edesignaudio.com/?p=965

When I started buying HT equipment I went with the sub first. I got two mfw-15's, but that was not doing it for me for a couple reasons, including me learning I was a bass-head, and horrible room acoustics. I ended up getting an A7-900. I was so impressed with the sub and with Brett that when the time came to buy the other five speakers I spoke to him about it. (I needed to replace my Advents from 1987, and my Cerwin Vega surrounds...)

After a whole bunch of conversations with Brett, and one with Ben, who stayed on the phone literally until every question I had was answered, (I was actually tired ), I decided to give this a try. The design you see is the design we decided upon.

I am now in the process of learning how to get very capable speakers to work well with the subs. As I learn my impressions of the speakers will become more accurate, but so far I am very impressed. I was expecting volume and clarity, but the staging that happens with these things is crazy. It sounds like I am right at the sweet spot in a concert, while at the same time being in a private box (since I am watching it on tv). For example, I've been using the Blue Man Group: How to be a Mega Star BD while setting things up. The audio on that BD is amazing, at 6.9Mbps of info. At times I can hear what individual members of the audience are yelling. The it sounds like each tube they are drumming on has its own spot on a stage in my living room. Its hard not to move my eyes around to look for things. The towers also supply a solid amount of bass themselves. I don't have a meter, so I hesitate to say too much, but 20 hz was audible, and 30 was fun.

Here are a few pictures of everything so far. (Sorry for the different sizes)



The cut components are on the left.


Matt and Brett holding the assembled cabinets


The cabinets and tower bases getting the banboo veneer


The final products


Cool pic of the center that eD took


The partially broken down skid in the Fedex truck. Brett did an incredible job packing these. The Fedex guy, who helped break it down, said in the 11 years he's been working for Fedex, he's never seen such a good job of packing. He said it was nice to see a company that took enough pride in their product to pack it so well.




The packaging from one tower. It took me over two hours from the time the truck arrived to get them all unpacked. This was one serious packing job.


The packing material, not including the pile of stuff outside that protected the skid.


Everything in the LR, waiting for me to put together. You can see the A7-900 there too. :beer:


The towers and the center. The center is HUGE. Its a little overwhelming. (I may need to get a new entertainment center, but that's another job for another time.)


Adding the cover to the center softens it quite a bit.


With covers


I put the surrounds on the Cerwin Vegas for now. I need to get a special stand for them due to their size and weight.

Brett's been bringing me up to speed on them with as much support as I can handle. Much of the reason I went with eD was because I knew that they would be there to educate me as much as I needed (actually, as much as I wanted), and that has indeed been the case. What I believe to be the incredible value of the speaker itself aside, I have gotten plenty in terms of knowledge/assistance. Yes, I am very pro eD, but I was neutral before I dealt with them - they've earned it.

I've learned a lot already, and each thing I learn makes them sound that much better. I've turned the subs off and played the new speakers, and (when I turn it up) there is still enough bass to vibrate the couch!

More data on the speakers is due out soon, and that is when I will see the actual performance specifics for the first time as well. Other than that, please ask away if you have any questions.

Pat

I'm not sure exactly what brand mid went in those eD speakers, but I have 4 of the Vifa-badged 3" dome mids. I chose them because there are only two dome mids on the market that I know of that are >90dB/1w/1m and can handle >100W RMS. The Vifa (now Scan-Speak, I guess) and the Morel mids. I'm using them in a 4-way active setup. It took a little effort to tame the nasty ~1kHz buzz that I realized was the snap-on mounting plate rattling against the driver chassis. It only happened on 2 of the drivers I have. All the other mids I researched before settling on the Vifa 3" dome were compromises either on power handling or sensitivity or both. I ruled out any mid that couldn't reach down below 500Hz or above 3KHz. I wanted most of the human voice range coming from one driver.

Those mids will get to "tear your head off" loud without distortion, in my experience. Less capable drivers might sound incrementally better, but would be crispy paperweights at the SPL I was trying to achieve.

Mmmmm headroom....

Heh, I kind of like them. I think they would look sweet in some more wood colors.

I am looking for some nice bookshelves in my bedroom setup, unfortunately these are about twice my budget... Some reason I just hate the way those W6-6TC's look. I currently use their A3-5TC's and the full 7.1 (Towers, large center and 4 bookshelves) in my main room.

Just switched the receiver from 4 ohm to 6 ohm. I can't go crazy till the weekend, but I've already noticed I must set the receiver volume noticeably lower to maintain the same listening level...

It's nice to see this company filling in the AV123 vacuum.

500-3000hz isn't the range of human voice, 80-1100hz is ... and no dome mid is going to cover that range.

The problem with the Vifa is that you get no more usable bandwidth than you do with 2" domes on the market, in fact less than some. And the Vifa's response isn't as flat as most dome mids either ... and with a 3" dome of course the off-axis response becomes directive sooner than with a 2" dome. The only 3" dome that justifies the jump from a 2" dome is the Tang Band.

I have no doubt these eD speakers sound great, just that the relatively expensive Vifa/Scan Discovery dome mid is quite expensive for what it delivers. And if a dome mid is wanted, a 2" dome would be a better solution. The Peerless HDS 8" woofers are certainly capable drivers and have no nasty break-ups that require crossover points below 1000hz or so. Why not run them to 800-1000hz and let them cover the vocal range, then use a 2" dome as a bridge to the tweeter and to eliminate comb filtering due to the CTC spacing of 8" woofers? Since that Vifa mid starts to become directional around 1800hz, and the Morel tweet has trouble below 2500hz, there is a transitional area there that could bring attention to the crossover point. 2" domes don't become directional until closer to 3khz.

Just spitballing, and no disrespect meant to the eD design staff.

Ok, I've criticized eD before, along with probably every other company too, but I must applaud them for delivering a proper center channel! Thank you for making a center channel as near identical to your towers as possible. 3 sets of twin 8's will handle the midbass nicely and let the sub(s) do what they're supposed to do.

Ok, time for me to criticize...

That flush mounting of the mid is no good. That lip will cause diffraction issues. You could get away with it if it was a woofer, but a dome mid, which has a higher pass band than a normal mid, that will cause problems.

Looneybomber, thanks for the post. Although I own these, I'm here mostly to learn, so I am very interested in the opinions, both positive and negative. For perspective, I do not have enough knowledge to design speakers, so I trusted eD with the project. (They'd already been working on the idea, but just hadn't finished it when I came along.) For that reason I cannot answer some of the questions about why things were done the way they were, other than I really wanted to ensure the presence of a lot of mid bass.

Regarding the diffraction issue with the lip, the hard plastic surrounding the dome is recessed 1/8" from the lip. The hard plastic is between the base of the cone and the lip, such that there is not a direct line of sight between the two, though there is between the rest of the cone and the lip. I'm assuming the sound from the cone radiates out in all directions, but is strongest straight out, and gets weaker as the angle increases toward the lip, such that the sound that does make it to the lip is probably a smaller percentage of the sound produced. Is that correct, and if so, how noticeable would a diffraction issue be?

Bill,

Thanks for working to make sure we are aware of any agendas here. I'm a little confused though. I thought Craig (Craigsub of Tweak City Audio) is in Erie, and the only posts I see offering any suggestions is TurboFC3S, who appears to be out of MO, based on his contact info.

this is a reoccurring theme for some self-serving people for sure. but most on here just eat it up like good little butt kissers

Not to be a dingus, but I sure would like to see some extra features on towers that run over $2K. Magnetic grills, rounded enclosures and double biding posts are present on just about every tower speaker over $2K/pair I've looked at and yet the EL8.3t lacks all of these features. Still it is nice to see a dome mid-range and some wood veneer finish options.

Got it, thanks.

I could not agree more about the tv! I'd like to get rid of the stand and hang the tv, or something like that. I'd really like a projector and screen eventually.

Does anyone know what type of tweeter the EL 8.3t uses? Sound like mine is about to go and I’d like a replacement. I took it out but it has no markings on it. Looks identical to the Morel MDT 39 1-1/8" Compact Dome Tweeter from parts express , also same dimensions.
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=277-035
I just can’t seem to find any info on ED’s website about it.

You will probably need to contact eD and find out if the model PE sells would be a drop in replacement. Most companies won't list their OEM drivers/parts. I would find out about every driver and part the E series uses incase eD goes under that way you have a way to replace drivers if they go bad.

The woofers the E series uses looks like Peerless drivers http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=264-1098