This content analyzes two budget-level speakers, the ELAC Debut 3.0 and the Polk Signature Elite ES20, to determine which offers better potential for upgrade and improved sound quality through component enhancement.
Mind Map
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คลิกเพื่อสำรวจ Mind Map แบบอินเตอร์แอคทีฟฉบับเต็ม
Hey everybody, welcome back. Today we're
looking at a couple of budget level
speakers and I'm going to kind of
look at these things side by side. We're
going to dig into the guts on these
things, look at the crossovers. We're
going to look at how they measure and
I'm going to give them a little evaluation,
evaluation,
which is what I do first and foremost
every time a speaker is sent in. And
what we're looking for is something that
what I call has good bone. something
that has something to work with,
something that you can build on and not
have to put a ton of parts on, something
that can be made to sound a whole lot
better with minimal amount of
investment. And you know, I get sent a
lot of these budget speakers from every
brand out there. You name it, we've had
these things sent in. And you never know
sometimes, you know, you just never know
which ones are going to really be a gem
and which ones are going to be a bust
until you start really looking at them.
And sometimes price is not at all a
determining factor. We've had speakers
like that little Sony or the little
Warfdale Diamond model that had really
good drivers. It's just built to a price
point. had little, you know, tiny little
crossover parts on a little board,
lightly constructed cabinet, but the
drivers were really good and they didn't
require a ton of parts. They didn't have
like massive breakups to have to
compensate for. I didn't have to put a
bunch of notch filters on it to correct
for anything. And sometimes you find
those little gems
and it may be a speaker that's only a
couple hundred bucks or something and
you throw two or 30 hundred on top of it
and suddenly you've got a really nice
sounding little speaker. And that's
almost always almost almost always a
better solution than spending a whole
lot more money and buying a a more
expensive speaker. And I get that
criticism sometimes when people watch me
do these upgrades and you think, "Well,
the cost of the upgrade cost as much as
the speaker." Yeah, but the speaker
didn't cost anything anyway, so the
whole thing doesn't cost anything. Um,
let's take one of these speakers.
They're 3.99 and $4.99. If we spent 300
bucks on the upgrade, you're still way
ahead versus what you could have spent
that same money on. You can go out there
and spend money on a on a new speaker
that's a,000 or 1,200 bucks and think,
"Well, I'll just do that instead of
trying to fix this." You're in the same
boat. You've still got a budget level
speaker with budget level parts, with
the same problems, with the same
bottlenecks, the same drawbacks. You
just spent more money on it. You know,
you might have got a prettier box, nicer
drivers, a bigger size speaker and stuff
like that, but you have to get up into
the range of $2 to $3,000 to start
seeing some really good quality parts.
And really high-end parts like what we
put in a lot of this stuff, you rarely
even see in any speaker. I just had a $13,000
$13,000
Dine Audio speaker in here the other
day, and the parts used in it were fair.
Uh, I'd say good to fair. Not really
high-end, nothing crazy. No high-end
wire, no, you know, specialty caps, just
poly caps and air core inductors. That
was it. You know, that's that's typical
of what we see. Um, sometimes in some
brands, we see some pretty good parts
quality being used, but pretty rarely.
And those don't get sent in for upgrades
very often because they've done a lot
with them. But these budget level
speakers, they get sent in all the time.
And so, here's a couple of them that I
kind of have in here at the same time.
And I want to I want to do a little bit
of a side byside and let you guys get a
little comparison on these things. One
is the Pulk Signature Elite ES20.
ES20.
And I kind of chuckle when I see
Signature Elite. I mean, come on. It's a
budget level speaker. It's very budget
level as far as parts and everything in
this thing. So, definitely built to
price point. Uh, and then this ELAC
Debut 3.0, which is the model DB63,
and it's $4.99 a pair. So, $3.99 a pair,
$4.99 a pair.
Kind of in that same range. Let's take a
look first of all at this little Elac
model here. And it looks like what it
has is a carbon fiber u cone on this
woofer. I don't know that it's real
carbon fiber or not, but it has that
look. And it's got this big magnet on
here. So, it must be great. Let me tell
you something right away here. Bigger
magnet does not equal mole bettera. Just
because the magnets's bigger doesn't
mean anything. Take these two woofers
for instance. They could very well have
the same amount of magnetic field
strength on the voice coil, but this one
may have a gap that's tighter. It may be
that the top plate is closer to the
voice coil, making a making a a a more
focused field strength with less magnet.
Whereas, this one could have a bigger
gap around the voice coil, which drops
field strength, and then you have to go
to a bigger magnet to make up for it.
So, as far as the amount of control
that's on this, the amount of strength,
the field strength, you can't judge that
just by the size of the magnet. And then
this one's got a bucking magnet on it,
which is kind of unusual these days that
is designed to eliminate stray fields.
It's it's a way of kind of shielding
this magnet by putting one that's
opposed onto it to cancel out some of
the stray field. Don't see that anymore.
Um, very well, I don't see it very
often. Back when TV screens had old
tubetop TVs that this affected quite a
bit, you saw shielded drivers, but you
rarely see them anymore.
Now, nice looking little woofer on the
on the ELAC stamp steel frame, though.
Yes, that thing's going to ring. These
are really, really cheaply made. Uh the
crossover, it's in the floor of it. I I
took a picture of it. It's got 18 parts
on it, dude. 18 parts on a two-way
speaker. That's a lot of parts to me.
That tells me they're having to correct
for a lot of amplitude issues with the drivers.
drivers.
So, it makes me think, oh boy, they they
those drivers may not have been very
well behaved. So, they had to put a lot
of parts on there. And the little caps
look like little polyester film, maybe
some polyropylene caps, tiny little
caps, low voltage rated caps, a couple
of air core inductors, some iron core
inductors, an electrolytic cap, and all
sandcast resistors. So definitely what
we consider budget level stuff. Cabinet
looks okay. It's got square edges on the
front of it, which is something I hate.
the cheesy binding post with the steel
nuts and steel terminals on the back of
it. It's like
just the cheapest thing they can put on
Uh in fact, let's just set this one down
for a moment here and get it out of the way
way
so we can look at the pulk bottle which
is similar in the way it's made. Lightly constructed.
