FINALLY! ELAC Uni-Fi Ref UBR62 Speaker Review

To your point re records I wish were recorded better, my immediate choices would be the stones from ‘72 about ‘80 (Exile, Goats Head to Emotional Rescue). And, Derek & The Dominos.

i currently have the ubr62. do you think it would pair well with the willsenton r8?

I own a pair of the UBR62 speakers. The good - the sound stage and imaging are superb, and the fit and finish is very good for speakers in this price class. The cabinets are very sturdy and seem to be braced well. The vinyl wrap (mine are oak) is the best vinyl wrap I have seen on speakers. Although not real veneer, one would only be able to tell if inspecting the speakers from a close distance, and the wrap closely matches our oak wood floors. The bad - they are a little lacking in dynamics and detail, and without a subwoofer the bass extension is not great. To be candid, I purchased the UBR62s because they matched our decor better than any other speakers I could find, and thus received the aesthetics approval from my wife, which was hard to achieve. To optimize the UBR62s for my room, I use them with a subwoofer, and have plugged the ports on the the UBR62s to improve the crossover to the subwoofer. I used Room EQ Wizard (REW) to determine the appropriate time delay between the UBR62s and the subwoofer, and used Dirac Live for room correction. These steps have significantly improved the sound characteristics. Still, if I could find speakers with equivalent sound stage and imaging, but with better dynamics and detail, and that matched our decor as well as the UBR62s, I would consider purchasing them even if more expensive.

How does these books shelfs sound compared to q acoustics 3050i?

Hello, as for the IOTA SA3 (been using mine for 2 years) to get rid of its "Smile Presentation" I backed off the Treble 2 clicks & Bass 3 clicks, which seemed to benefit my lower-priced ELAC Debut References (of course YMMV)

Good honest review as usual. Well done Tarun.
I was always under the impression that Elac speakers are hard to drive. I am looking for speakers to pair with Audiolab6000a and I was about to go for the Triangle BR03, but if these Elacs are ok with Iota vx they should be ok with the 6000a. I often listen at low to moderate volume in a 35m2 room.

thanks for your great review. These speakers are a consideration for me. Some tracks I really enjoy: 1) Codeine by Ray Bonneville 2) Birds by Dominique Fils-Aime 3) Resurrection Blues - Otis Taylor 4) Rain by David Rodigan 5) Alien Gibberish - Heyoka and last but not least ...anything from Tipper. I would start with Gulch

I have the Debut 5,2 with Denon 600ne , ate these UBR62 a Good choice for step up ?

Thanks for this very useful review. I am an ELAC UBR62 owner and super happy pairing it with my Audiolab 6000A amp.

Excellent/informative review!!

I don’t believe anything from somebody who keeps making condescending head gestures

Love your channel! I hope you can review the LS50 Meta. In my opinion it is still the benchmark in this category.

Always enjoy watching your content Tarun, thanks, keep up the good work.
Any chance of getting in the new Heaven 11 Billie amp? Quite an interesting design, would be very interested in your opinions.

Great review of these AJ designed speakers Tarun - thanks!. I bought this model because of their links to AJ who is a well respected speaker designer. At first I thought the UBR62's are very dull sounding speakers, but I kept on experimenting with different amplifiers and wires. I found a good match using my Arcam A80 amp and silver speaker wire worked best to tame the bass and open up the midrange and treble frequencies. These speakers are definitely a keeper for the long term as they are easy on the ear without any fatigue from the upper freq. They aren't the last word in transparency or details, but produce a powerful sound and punchy bass and work well across different genres of music. They can certainly match some floorstanding speakers for their bass punch and depth!

Hi Tarun,
These speakers are designed to be close to the wall i.e. a minimum of 1. 5 ft from wall to the tweeter. Also to enjoy the best out of it, you really need a Subwoofer.
I have paired it with Leema Integrated Class-D Amp(neutral) which is only a, but solid 56Watts per channel and an SVS Pro 1000 Sub and I couldn't be happier. An Awesome speaker for my liking of warm sounding speakers.
But Thanks for the review 😊

Tarun, have you listened to any Blumenhofer speakers? A showroom I bought my Atoll Amps from supplies the range although I've not heard them yet.

Will you be doing anything from dynaudio eventually ? Like the Heritage specials maybe ? :P
Love your reviews !

Kleiber's Brahms fourth was an early digital recording from DGG, and though they really did get their digital thing together pretty quickly and very well, there's glass in those strings. They seem to have had some success with remastering it, and its probably my favorite Brahms fourth, but still...

I have enjoyed these speakers since their launch. Your take on them is similar to my experience. Thank you for this video :)

Even though I'm not in the market for audio gear, I tune in regularly to view your detailed, smooth and unbiased presentations. Thoroughly enjoyable! As far as your question of the day, Traffic's Low Spark. To be fair, I primarily spin records and my only source is an LP from my high school days. It's not a bad listen, but there's room for improvement, especially with the vocal mixing imo. Keep on.

One of my favorite songs of all time, Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," sounds like it was recorded with a heavyblanket over the microphones. I've always longed for a better recording.

I share many of the sentiments I've read regarding remastered recordings. Plainly, they're awful. Give me my original albums... yes, with all the pops and clicks.

Have you ever worked for What Hi-Fi? I can close my eyes and imagine someone is reading me a review from their magazine😅

Well at least you can be guaranteed there is absolutely little phase discrepancy between woofer and tweeter on and near off axis as it's a concentric designed and the woofer and tweeter are built very close together eliminating basic time arrival issues. That's always good.

Thinking about your comparison to the Amphions and the universal praise of the UBR62s as extremely non-fatiguing -- is there inherently something at least slightly fatiguing about a highly detailed speaker? Are these things connected, or is that crazy-talk?

How do you like these compared to the JBL L52's?

Nice Job Tarun - I almost heard the speaker without hearing the speaker 😊 Thanks for the video

A track I love that I wish was recorded properly? “You’re Just Never Satisfied,” by Fountains of Wayne.

All Bowie! They are pretty pedestrian recordings.

Not a track but an album I really like but terribly recorded…
Soft machine THIRD

Next:Elac Carina!!!

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Genesis should have recorded this album in a proper studio, not in manors, bathrooms or stables.

I wish old Journey albums were better recorded

Nice review. I think it would be great if there was an industrial standard for music recordings in these modern times. So much music effectively trashed in the past. I hate sound enginners.😂

One of the Mahavishnu Orchestra albums Birds of Fire, or Inner Mounting Flame I tried listening to the other day and it wasn’t good. Those were albums I played a lot years ago, but on my more resolving gear it was not pleasant.

This persistent problem from the off, reviewing HiFi in an echo chamber especially speakers is confusing at best, throw in Audiophile snake oil,oil,oil,oil,oil......

Hello Tarun my friend! I was very interested to hear what you think of these. Andrew, Arthur Khoubessarian (Pink Triangle, Funk Firm) and I were in the same physics set at Surrey University in the 1970's. Both Arthur and Andrew went on to be key figures and influential in the Hi-Fi world & I went into defence & aerospace.... Oh well! I am contemplating recommending these to a friend... All the best, Rob in Switzerland

Sir, I enjoy your reviews a lot, mostly because of all the technical details you give. But one thing bugs me. There’s so much reverb in your recording when you speak and you seem to be recording in the same room you listen to music. How can you hear anything really with such acoustics?

For 'Not A Lot' more money, I'd suggest folk check out ( Buy ) the excellent DynAudio Emit 20's instead. IMO, these are Waaaay Better than the Uni-Fi;s .... Nice review as always.

As for poorly Recorded Albums .... My fave John Lennon Album is 'Mind Games' ( ie 'Quality of the Songs' ) .... Maybe just a Smidge ahead of 'Walls and Bridges'. However, the Production on the Mind Games album is .... Bloody Horrible ! ! !

Great question, here's a few of my faves that I've returned to recently (w an increased awareness of recording quality) that I wish had more clarity/separation: Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints; DJ Kicks Kruder & Dorfmeister (lovely dub-infused journey through downtempo, drum n bass); the first 3 Chic albums (quite surprising, given Nile Rodgers' producer pedigree); "KC Doppler" by Slide Five (dubby acid jazz). Great review, cheers.

Half as good as they sound!

Another well thought out and well presented review

Hey, I currently have a Yamaha A-S301 that I am running my Unifi-ref with. Do you think that swapping for a Cambridge CXA81 would be a descent step-up for these speakers? Thanks for the content.

Andrew Jones is like you, great presentation skills! 😉😇 The fact he also knows what he's talking about is a plus. 🤔😬

Hi Tarun, I hope you and yours are all well, great examination of the A.J. approach. Thank you. Your question about which tracks would I like better recordings of made me stop and think for quite a while, as it is quite a common gripe with us lot A great question, that opens out into many debates. I often feel that the voices of Nick Drake and Sandy Denny do not sound as clear as I would like to imagine them. Perhaps that was just the take on the day and that's what we got. Perhaps no matter how legendary or good the equipment and engineers were or are, some beauty and perfection just defies capture? It's like the journey for ultimate transparency, it's never going to be transparent enough perhaps? I went on that journey and really enjoyed the effect of climbing into a Steinway Concert D grand piano and hearing and feeling everything in there and out there. I just missed the joy and emotion that was often absent on that road, and eventually was taken back to a place with more 'Boogie Factor' satisfaction, an easier enviroment for me to be happy in. 'Horses for Courses'. May you and all your readers enjoy where they are now, the journey itself, or eventually find their happy place if they still hanker for perfection. It's all a load of fun of course! That's why we do it. Cheers all the very best, looking forward to more👍 🙂

A track I really like, but wish was better recorded: Maneskin: Zitte E Buoni (best Eurovision Tune for a long time!) Love a bit of Eurovision madness - Roll on May 13th in Liverpool, whoop!