Полочная акустика — ELAC Navis ARB51

The Navis ARB51 is the powered stand-mount model of the ELAC Navis family, which also includes the ARF51 tower. It was designed under Andrew Jones as a complete active speaker with its own amplifiers and analogue crossover in each cabinet, and it launched in the United States at USD 2,000 per pair. Buyers could choose gloss black, gloss white or a gloss ebony veneer with a striped grain.

Key specs that matter

This is a three-way bass reflex box with three drivers. The 4 inch aluminium cone midrange carries a 1 inch silk dome tweeter at its hub, and a separate 5.25 inch aluminium woofer handles the low end. Crossover points are 260 Hz and 2.2 kHz. Every driver has a dedicated amplifier - 160 W of BASH amplification for the woofer, 100 W of BASH for the midrange and 40 W of Class AB for the tweeter, 300 W in total per cabinet. ELAC quotes a response of 44 Hz to 28 kHz. Each speaker measures 34.5 cm high, 18.9 cm wide and 24 cm deep and weighs 8.1 kg.

Engineering and use context

ELAC calls the electronics a tri-amp pure analogue design. The signal is split by an electronic crossover ahead of the amplifiers, and there is no onboard DSP or digital converter anywhere in the path, so a digital source needs its own DAC. Because each amplifier drives only one driver across a limited band, a passive crossover network between amplifier and driver is not needed. The coaxial tweeter and midrange share one axis, placing the upper two bands at a single point on the baffle. At the rear, three-position switches trim the tweeter and midrange by 1 dB up or down, while the woofer can be set to minus 4 dB, 0 or plus 1 dB. A high-pass switch offers 80 Hz, 60 Hz or flat operation, and a gain switch selects high or low input sensitivity. The speaker drops into standby when the signal stops and wakes automatically, and it takes mains power through an IEC socket.

Pairing

With balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA sockets on each cabinet, any preamplifier, streamer with volume control or DAC with a variable output can feed the pair directly without a power amplifier. The cabinets also contain a wireless receiver - when paired with the ELAC Discovery Connect transmitter they accept Spotify Connect, AirPlay, Bluetooth and Roon streams, and a switch assigns each cabinet to the left or right channel. The higher high-pass position lets a powered subwoofer take over the lowest octaves while the woofer amplifier is relieved of deep bass.

Alternatives

The ELAC Debut ConneX DCB41 is a smaller powered two-way bookshelf pair from the same brand for tighter budgets and desks.