Review Elac Debut 3.0 B6.3 monitor loudspeaker – Beyond the debut

Display qualities of the Elac Debut 3.0 B6.3 monitor

We quickly forget that we are listening to a budget speaker and don’t have the need to replace them with something else, read more expensive. This is very good. Everything sounds balanced. Serene. Quiet. But at the same time engaging and glowing. Soundstage is excellent. Wide and open. Bass sounds tight with impact. The midrange is open and mostly very natural. The highs are a bit rounded but that works out great with a lot of music. You can listen for hours but it doesn’t get boring. It is pure and correct. With lots of detail but never analytical or cold. The seemingly modest tweeter and mid-driver are perfectly implemented and provide unprecedented coherence in this price range.

Listening to the Elac Debut 3.0 B6.3

We still have the Atoll CD100 Evolution that we tested recently and start off with a couple of CDs. The first disc is from France’s Air and their “10000 Hz Legend” album. The track “How does it make you feel” has a lovely bassline and comes in full ‘slam’. On ‘The Vagabond’, Beck’s voice is perfectly placed on the left with the second voice clearly on the right. Voices sound a fraction rounder but don’t lose their authenticity. Here the Elac does reach its limit when the subsonic bass coming through but the harmonica sounds clean and floats between the speakers. The guitar strings on ‘Sex born poison’ have weight and sound powerful. Excellent.

We would describe German Burnt Friedman’s album “Con Ritmos” as SpaceJazz. Timing is right on the money with the Elac Debut 3.0 B6.3. All the bleeps and blops come through crystal clear and the often busy tracks do not clog up. On the contrary, the playback is organised and uncluttered. You don’t feel like the speaker has to work hard to do this.

We stream Jessica Pratt’s beautiful “Here in the Pitch” and are more involved through the Elacs than through our neutral Revels. The Elac is certainly not coloured but sounds a bit rounder and fuller, giving female vocals in particular a bit more body. Mesmerised and full of emotion, we listen to the song ‘Empires never know’. You can’t ask for more from a speaker. You really get drawn into the music. The Elac Debut 3.0 B6.3 really brings the music to the listener.

Rock and Hard rock is a difficult genre for a little speaker but the Elac Debut 3.0 B6.3 performs its task honourably. Those listening mainly to rougher music might be better served by one of the two floorstanders in the range but the monitor certainly doesn’t do poorly. On “Thinking of a Place” from “War on drugs”, you miss some dynamics but Adam Granduciel’s voice sounds flawless and the flow of the song is unmistakable. This speaker is very good at letting you hear little nuances in the music.

Joseph Haydn’s ‘Adagio e Cantabile’, performed by the eccentric Jos van Immerseel, sounds compelling and playful at the same time. Small, delicate and precise. And again that timing, essential to render classical music correctly. We are very fond of chamber music and the Elac lets the performance speak for itself and gets completely out of the way. Music sounds relaxed and mature at the same time.

Even on “Porous Structures” by Ruben Machtelinckx and Joachim Badenhorst, an excellent recording, you notice the quality of this speaker. The silence between notes on “Structure 4” creates tension while listening. The glow on Badenhorst’s clarinet, which proceeds with sparse dashes of sound meticulously so as not to overpower Machtelinckx’s compositions, says enough about the way this speaker reproduces the timbre of an instrument.

Compare

We have a Q Acoustics 3030i and Bowers 606 S2 in the cupboard, both budget speakers with solid reputations. But both five years old and it is starting to show. The Q Acoustics is more closed in the middel and the low end is less tight. You also hear less detail and rhythmically it is a bit on the slow side. The Bowers is a lot faster but it sounds cooler and less engaging. The Bowers seems more detailed but gets tiresome after a while. The Elac is much more balanced and that is always sign of a good speaker. It simply produces music without bells and whistles. Without distractions but full of conviction.