Your New Reference Monitor

*OPTIONAL Elac ABST-101 Stands pictured
Designed with the identical drivers as its floorstanding sibling, the AS-61 Stand Mount delivers reference-standard Adante sound with just a fraction less bass extension and output. The ideal solution for a two-channel music system or the basis for a surround-sound installation, don’t call it a bookshelf: this is a no-compromise monitor designed for serious listeners. Dedicated stands are available and recommended.

 Power. Gracefully Defined.

After turning the audiophile world on its collective ear with the remarkable Debut and Uni-Fi Series loudspeakers, ELAC undertook the mission of creating one of their most ambitious speakers to date. About it, ELAC’s chief engineer Andrew Jones says, “With Adante, what we’re trying to do is bring excellent value to a new price point.”

Adante will surely redefine your concept of what it is possible for an affordable loudspeaker to achieve. Adante’s advanced design starts with a precision-built cabinet that features Interport-Coupled Cavity bass loading to exploit the highest performance from new active and passive bass drivers. The inherent superiority of this design solution delivers some of the most authoritative, realistic bass around. Complementing Adante’s custom low-frequency drivers is the all-new concentric midrange/tweeter, a natural-sound wonder engineered expressly for the Adante series. To make sure they look as good as they sound, each Adante cabinet features a furniture-grade finish in a choice of gloss white, gloss black or genuine satin walnut veneer. The face of each cabinet is an elegant, bonded-aluminum front baffle for maximum rigidity, contoured to incorporate waveguides that ensure optimum dispersion from each driver.

The Adante AF-61 Floorstanding Tower, AS-61 Stand Mount Monitor and AC-61 Center Channel each represent a “clean sheet” design unique to ELAC, where technical solutions, precision engineering and superior craftsmanship all come together to create a breathtaking trio of loudspeakers that sound—and look—like nothing else in the world. Go ahead and challenge Adante with everything you’ve got. We did. Further proof that ELAC is the life of sound.

It’s all about the enclosure

Hugely complex but with benefits that are immediately audible, an Interport-Coupled Cavity cabinet renders clearly superior performance in the reproduction of low frequencies. The engineering challenges and complicated manufacturing requirements of such a design makes it rare in the world of affordable speakers, but Jones’ pursuit of a new value-to-performance benchmark demanded this no-compromise solution.

Each Adante cabinet is actually multiple enclosures in one. The concentric midrange/tweeter is isolated in its own space within the cabinet, and the woofer complement, comprising an active and passive driver, occupies a divided chamber vented internally with dual ports. In the case of the Center and Floorstanding models, two and three double chambers respectively isolate each woofer pair from the other. Instrumental to the design benefits of an Interport-Coupled Cavity is that the entire enclosure is not externally ported at all, because such external ports will produce noise and other distortion artifacts if the speaker is overdriven.

On the other hand, a coupled-cavity design means that the active driver remains invisible, mounted internally in its own rear box that vents bass energy through dual bass ports to a front box which encloses a larger passive radiator. The piston action of this front-firing passive driver delivers low-frequency information that is tight, tuneful, extended and with greater output capability than a traditional externally-ported enclosure. This Interport-Coupled Cavity cabinet enhances the linearity of the active bass transducer by reducing driver excursions.

Optimized cabinet volumes allow for a crossover network tuned to take advantage of such a design. An internally vented box, with another box in front housing a passive radiator—means that acoustically, the front box becomes a second-order acoustic low pass filter, eliminating the requirement for two orders of electrical network, further reducing driver distortion.

With so much buried inside, what does all this complicated engineering mean for your music? It means clean, distortion-free, natural, accurate, authoritative bass that defies the norm and challenges far more costly competitors.

Two amazing woofers that work together

Fundamental to Adante’s superior performance are two new woofers that deliver extraordinary low frequency performance far superior to less complex driver and cabinet solutions. Engineered specifically to work in concert with the elaborate Interport-Coupled Cavity cabinet design, the first woofer is a 6.5-inch active driver with wideband frequency response. It features an aluminum cone and cast basket assembly with a substantial magnet and voice coil. The aluminum cone is fast, stiff and low in distortion artifacts that otherwise compromise bass realism. Mounted inside the complex cabinet structure, it remains invisible to the eye but its presence is readily apparent to the ear.

Partnering with the active driver is a lightweight 8-inch passive radiator. Front-firing, it is mounted to the bonded-aluminum front baffle of the speaker cabinet and features a stiff aluminum diaphragm and cast basket assembly. Its light weight makes this passive radiator faster and less prone to distortion artifacts than active drivers of similar diameter, so it moves air more quickly, with minimal coloration.

Together, this active/passive combination can handle all the power it takes to deliver crushing low-frequency crescendos with the dynamic realism of a live performance. Each Adante model uses identical concentric midrange/tweeter and low-frequency drivers. The Stand Mount, Center Channel and Floorstanding models employ one, two and three active/passive woofer pairs respectively.

All-new concentric midrange/tweeter

ELAC’s proprietary concentric driver technology has been taken to new levels of performance with a brand-new design that delivers astounding point-source accuracy, linearity, power handling, speed and articulation on virtually all types of music. The large, 5.25-inch diameter midrange cone, made of pure aluminum for maximum rigidity with lowest coloration, features a revised profile and generous 2-inch voice coil that results in greater output level and higher sensitivity than smaller concentric designs. The larger 2-inch voice coil also provides more room for a newly-engineered tweeter to be situated in the center. This soft-dome design uses new fabric material and employs a wide surround that results in improved lower-treble output, lower resonant and crossover frequencies. Additionally, the whole concentric driver chassis is mechanically isolated from the other drivers and the Adante cabinet itself with anti-vibration mountings that eliminate the transmission of vibration throughout the loudspeaker.

Four binding posts for added options

Each Adante model is equipped with a dual set of binding posts. A supplied link allows use of a single pair of speaker cables and only two posts, while dual posts allow the option of bi-wiring with a single amplifier, or choosing bi-amplification with the use of two amplifiers, one for the concentric midrange/tweeter and the other for low-frequency drivers.