Elac is one speaker company that clearly deserves a big round of applause for the design direction it has undertaken. Just pop over to their website to check out their latest product range and you will understand what we mean. The Carina BS243.4 is a very chic looking compact monitor speakers (12.5″ tall, 8″ wide and 8.5″ deep) that not only looks “high fashion” but also sounds really good. It is not shaped not a conventional rectangular bookshelf speaker but had curved edges, tapered rear end and an angled elevated bottom rear end where a downward firing port is based. This last design feature allows the speaker to be placed near walls which is really useful when you have a small room to house these speakers. Drivers used on the speakers are JET folded-ribbon tweeter and 5.25″ aluminum mid/bass driver. Frequency response is 46 Hz to 30 kHz with a nominal impedance of 6 ohm and a sensitivity of 85 dB. Mounted on the matching 24″ LS80 stands (included at our asking price of $799) where they can be screwed on to the stands top plate, the speakers and stands become one solid integral piece. This tighten up the bass energy where the stands isolated and dissipated the bass energy downwards on to the floor. The improvement is much better than placing them cabinet shelves. Bass was impressively quick and punchy and the mids forward sounding but not too overly warm. The highs is where we gave the speakers five stars. It was very detailed, clean and well extended without sounding harsh or dry. Elac recommends a minimum of 30W to drive them but we think 100W is the sweet spot for them.
Cosmetically, the speakers look really good with very minor scuff marks here and there and one of the woofers have two tiny dimples on the diaphragm. We have the original box for the speakers but will pack the stands in a generic box for shipping. As this is a two box shipment, factor x2 for total shipping cost.
