Best Budget Bookshelf Speakers 2024 - What Hi-Fi? Magazine
Editors' Choice Award 2019 – The Absolute Sound Magazine
Unparalleled Performance for the Price
Improving on its award-winning predecessor was no easy task, but the Debut B5.2 sets a yet higher standard, delivering performance in inverse proportion to its diminutive size. And it may just be the best value in the world of bookshelf speakers, with sound that surpasses speakers that cost much, much more.
The Debut B5.2 has a high-performance woofer with a 5-1/4" aramid fiber cone and a new 1" cloth dome tweeter. Aramid fiber offers a superior strength-to-weight ratio and improved damping characteristics over conventional paper or plastic drivers. This added strength means arriving at designs that achieve a broader bandwidth with smoother response.
"Talented, Unfussy and Deeply Engaging"
"If you're in the market for talented, unfussy and deeply engaging standmounters, the Elac Debut B5.2 remain some of our favourites," reports What Hi-Fi? magazine, March 18, 2024, which honored these as Best Budget Bookshelf Speakers 2024. "The affordable standmounters are brilliant performers for the money, and even though they're not costly, they're versatile and unfussy about where you place them. Add to that some really rather remarkable level of detail, dynamics and tonal sophistication, and you're looking at a seriously attractive budget proposition."
The Debut B5.2 won an Editors' Choice Award 2019 from The Absolute Sound Magazine. "It's little; it's clad in vinyl; it's cheap; and it sounds terrific… What [Andrew] Jones and the Elac team have managed to wring from this most humble design is nothing short of exceptional."
All-New Design for an All-New Debut
Few speakers have garnered such critical acclaim as the original Debut Series by ELAC. They established a new value proposition, with build quality and performance never before attainable at such an affordable price. Debut "changed the game," and has now changed it again with the Debut 2.0 Series—proof that ELAC can't leave well enough alone. Redesigned from the ground up, these speakers sound even more remarkable than the ones that sparked the revolution in affordable high-end sound.
Everything about Debut 2.0 has been improved, including completely redesigned custom drivers that deliver greater accuracy, and robust cabinets for even higher resolution and freedom from resonances.
New Tweeter with a Wide-Dispersion Waveguide
ELAC's new silk-dome tweeter features a wide-roll surround and takes response up to 35,000 Hz for even more lifelike high frequencies. The waveguide improves directivity control and eliminates the diffraction modes inherent in traditional box enclosures.
New Woven Aramid-Fiber Woofer
The revised shape of the aramid cone offers even greater stiffness and damping, far superior to polypropylene or paper. The added strength allows more flexibility in design to achieve a smoother, extended low-frequency response.
New, Larger Cabinets
Thick MDF cabinets with a luxurious black ash Vinyl finish are larger, and incorporate specially designed internal bracing to add sti ness and strength. This bracing greatly reduces cabinet vibrations that cause unwanted coloration to the sound. Because the only parts of a speaker that should be moving are the speaker drivers themselves.
