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See the complete review for the ELAC Navis ARB-51 Active Bookshelf Speaker

The ELAC Navis active speaker line has been around for at least a year now and both the floor-standers and the bookshelf models have received uniform accolades from many reviewers out there in the hither and yon.

ELAC Navis ARB-51 Active Bookshelf Speaker

Truth be told. I’ve had these speakers for a little while, longer than I probably should have in fact. But the problem was, I kept finding all sorts of different uses for them. In my regular studio space, upstairs in the living room, as main channels in my home theater, etc. And, subjectively, they sounded good enough that I kept comparing them to other speakers that I had coming in and out of my house. And ELAC’s choice to eschew having an integrated A/D and D/A section, or any sort of DSP, in an active speaker, was an interesting (read old-school) sort of approach compared to competitors such as KEF’s LS50. Does this approach make sense in this day and age? I ultimately kept asking myself if all the hoopla about these speakers was well deserved.

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Stay tuned for a full review of the ELAC Navis ARB-51, with measurements, to appear on the Secrets website soon.

See the complete review for the ELAC Navis ARB-51 Active Bookshelf Speaker

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A native of Toronto Canada, Carlo's interest in audio began at a young age when, unbeknownst to his mother, he started taking apart her numerous transistor radios to see how they worked. This desire for “knowledge through deconstruction” continued through to the family’s 8-track tape player, turntable, headphones, and speakers. Carlo subsequently spent a lot of time in his room. Toronto was a fertile ground for Hi-Fi in the 1970s and 80s and Carlo spent much of his wayward youth hanging out in downtown Toronto stereo shops, listening to all manner of gear and picking the brains of the various store owners. Through that formative experience, Carlo developed an appreciation for good music and good sound reproduction. Also, as a budding graphic artist, the aesthetic aspects of a given piece of gear became increasingly of interest to his eyes. It was at about that time as well that Carlo began purchasing “Audio Magazine” on a regular basis and came to appreciate, in particular, the writing and reviewing of the late Leonard Feldman. Later on, he was also influenced by the writing and observations of the staff at Sound and Vision Canada, helmed at the time by Alan Loft. Carlo graduated from Sheridan College with a degree in Classical Animation and was subsequently employed by Walt Disney Consumer Products for 10 years as a Character Artist and Art Director. Having become disenchanted with Los Angeles, he then decided to strike out on his own. Carlo started his own company and has been freelancing artwork, from his home studio, primarily for the toy and publishing industries since 2001. In 2013, on a bit of a lark, Carlo answered a “Call for Writers” ad from an AV website that he had been regularly reading for about 5 years called Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity. He had come to appreciate the website’s combination of subjective impressions along with the objective bench-testing available in several of the reviews. The “B-Team” must have been working that day because by some miracle he was hired as a writer and his first review for the site was published early in 2014. Carlo has been continually writing, editing, traveling, listening, and learning on the company’s behalf ever since. Carlo currently lives in Granville, Ohio with his wife, two sons, and a very old, but chill dachshund.

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