The sound of...
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A super tweeter has a bizarre effect. At first, your author thinks, “Mwah…. the difference is not that big… a little more air, but no drastic differences”. However once you get used to the effect, it’s a huge difference when the tweeters don’t participate. A fair amount of air falls away in the first place. This is true for all genres. Whether electronic music, rock, pop or classical, these super tweeters add air and acoustics in all cases. Whether this is artificial or not, we leave up to you: we simply observe it. And to be honest: it sure is tasty!
Sound balance?
But then… what about the sound balance? That doesn’t seem to change very much. However, it does do subtle things. And this is where it does get a little treacherous and hard to explain. You see, it depends on the genre whether the Elacs turn out well or not. With music like Massive Attack, Zero7, Astrix…. fine. That gets more air and certain things seem to get a little more definition. That’s not surprising: when more high energy is added, we recalibrate and something shifts in our perception.
It’s the same with subwoofers: a subwoofer can also help the mids and treble area. That’s the power of our brain. However, it gets a little crazy when we start playing classical music. For a certain Opera piece Martijn had brought along, the singer’s timbre changes. And also the cellos change their characteristics. It all becomes a lot more lighthearted and lighter in color. And whether that is desirable is really the question, because in this case the dear madamme is praised for her full sound with ‘chest’. That belongs in the piece and partly it disappears now. Because of the Elac, she has become 15 years younger, shall we say. (And yes: that is indeed desirable sometimes…!)
Now we must say that the acoustics are presented better with the Elac 4Pi Plus.2. So when we disconnect the tweeters we immediately think… “Damn! That’s a big difference!”. However, the piece sounds more authentic than with the tweeters. Again: we understand that some people are looking for this… it has something. It is fun. But it is not purist in this case.
Matching and fun
Now we have been able to test these Elacs on one system. And we hear from colleagues that they are mainly used with Tannoys. We can imagine that. In this case the match is very important. However, we estimate that the effect will remain largely the same. More high energy = more air. And it also causes us to recalibrate with certain effects as a result. We must admit that it is a cool effect. The air that increases and the acoustics that can be felt better is nice. Also, the lightness is impressive.
