Debut 2.0â„¢ Series by Andrew Jones

Natural Sound

Natural Sound

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Does anyone have any experience with the Elac Debut  2.0â„¢ Series by Andrew Jones? I know that the Pioneer SP-BS22-LR by Mr. Jones has been discussed favorably before. A good friend of mine wants to put together a system for his young son who is fascinated with vacuum tubes. I'm in the process of building him a S.E.X. 2.1 that I bought from Jim Rebmond prior to his untimely passing a few years ago. A "smaller" bookshelf type speaker is preferable due to limited room size. A small Raspberry Pi computer with a HifiBerry DAC and an external SSD drive will be the source that he can control with his tablet. 
 
Naturalsound.

      I do not own any Elac products, but I have heard many and I have always considered them to be a great value, price to performance. If you are interested in an all DIY effort, consider the Zaph Audio SR-71, a fantastic speaker for the $, it will out perform most  products in this price range. Also, it is 87 dB efficient, so it would be a little more tube amp friendly. John K also included an impedance leveling network in the design, so it might be worth checking out.

Jamie
 
It seems the listed sensitivity of the elac's is 87db. that's kinda borderline in a medium to large room.
I have a pair of Paradigm bookshelfs that are about 86db hooked up to a Sex3.0 in my shop, but they are in a near field arrangement.
I guess it depends on how loud he wants to rock.
 
Great recommendations guys, thanks. Keep them coming. The DIY idea might be a great opportunity for a father-son bonding experience. The only problem is that they live in a condo with no wood working tools or workspace. I see that the overnight sensations that PB recommend are available as a knock-down cabinet kit from parts express. That might be something they could put together on the kitchen table.

By the way. The bedroom that this is going into is very small. Maybe 10 x 12 or something like that. So speaker efficiency isn't terribly important.
 
For speakers, your friend could also consider a full-range "kit" from Madisound.  Some of them come with the cabinets already assembled and wires run, so very little time (and no soldering) needed to complete the speakers.  There's a back-loaded horn kit that's only a little more (about $20 I think) than the smaller Elac 2.0 speakers.  Several other choices at under $200 for the pair as well.

If they're already got the Hifiberry DAC, great.  If not, also consider the Allo Boss DAC.  It's a very nice-sounding DAC for about $65, and it can be improved very cheaply by moving a jumper and running the DAC on separate power (think battery pack) from the RPi.

Lou
 
Hi Paul..

I am intrigued by the Overnight Sensations speakers. I have started building my SEX 3.0 amp and I plan to use it primarily for headphones. So it is at the 4 ohm setting. The Overnight Sensations speakers however have a impedance of 8 ohm. So is it safe to assume that with the current (4 ohm) setting, these speakers wont be a good fit?

Any recommendations for a 4 ohm desktop speaker setup.. DIY preferred as much as possible. :)

Rgds,
Atul
 
I would give them a try with the amp set at 4 ohms.  For nearfield listening, you don't need a whole ton of power.
 
Or build two switches, one for each output transformer, for switching between 4 and 8 ohms.  There's one or two threads from the past couple of years that discuss doing this. In one, Paul Joppa posted his schematic for switching between 4 different impedances.  You don'y need anything nearly as elaborate - but it still provides useful guidance on how to wire up the switches.

cheers, Derek
 
You may wish to consider a pair of Vandersteen 1s.  You should be able to find a used pair very inexpensively.  In fact, I just looked on ebay and found a pair for $299.  They sound terrific and are very easy to drive.  They're 90dB efficient and 7-10 ohms impedance.  I've got a pair of 1Cs that won't be going anywhere soon.  I now use them in a 2.1 system, but purchased them to pair with a Cary CAD300-sei (output 8 watts).  In my opinion, these are one of the great bargains in audio.

Best,

Joe.
 
Hi Paul -

I chanced upon the Overnight Sensations MTM. This is what Paul Carmody says about it: "The impedance of the speaker is now cut in half.  This means that you may need a more robust amplifier to drive it.  Will your amp run these?  I can't guarantee.  If it's rated for 6 Ohms or lower, you're fine."

I am guessing these should be a good fit for the 4 ohm configuration of the S.E.X 3.0. I am just about to pull the trigger on these. But thought it might be a good idea to check here first :) Hope I am not missing anything. Does anyone have experience with these?

Paul Birkeland said:
Buy two pairs Overnight Sensations and wire one pair in parallel for each channel.
Click to expand...
 
The MTM version of that has the woofers wired in parallel which reduces the impedance to half of the TM version but it also, theoretically, doubles the sensitivity. This would be a good choice for the SEX, wired for 4 ohms. The slight reduction in SEX amps output ( wiring it for 4 vs 8 ohm) is more than made up for by having the doubled sensitivity. In the MTM configuration the Tweeter “droop” will be elevated, so you will have a different image compared to the TM version, but all things considered, the MTM version should be a better choice than the TM version.

Jamie
 
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