ELAC Debut ConneX DCB41 Powered Speaker Review

With a solid array of useful inputs and an overachieving level of sound quality for its size, we’re betting that the ELAC Debut ConneX fits the bill for a lot of different listening scenarios.

It’s been an interesting time for ELAC lately. The company recently celebrated its 90th Birthday, an impressive landmark of longevity for any institution these days. They also experienced the departure of Andrew Jones, the celebrated speaker designer who had become so synonymous with the brand since its return to the US market. But by all accounts, things continue apace at ELAC and they have been busy working on several different projects. One of which is the little Debut ConneX DCB41 active speakers we have here. At first blush, they seem like a simple pair of powered mini speakers but digging a little deeper they look to offer some unexpected features and options.

The ELAC Debut ConneX DCB41 is a stout little two-way speaker that, in all honesty, brought back memories of my old Radio Shack Realistic Minimus 7 speakers, as I was unpacking them. Those little Minimus speakers still work after over 30 years and have seen duty in every conceivable application that I could come up with for them. So bulletproof and versatile have the Minimus been they’ve developed a bit of a cult following. The ELACs, while similar in size to those old Realistic speakers, have a whole dimension of different features and advancements that open up possibilities that the old Realistic speakers couldn’t even dream about.

The ConneX DCB41 uses a 3/4” soft dome tweeter set inside a waveguide combined with a 4.5” polypropylene long-throw mid-woofer. The enclosure is made from 3/4” MDF with a slot port incorporated in the rear.

On the bottom right corner of the front baffle is the combination IR sensor and status light. The LED status colors are [BT – Blue], [HDMI – Green], [USB – White], [Optical – Red], and [Phono – Pink]. Input selection, along with turning the X-Bass boost on and off is determined by the small handheld infra-red remote control. The X-Bass feature has two levels of intensity. Pressing on the remote-control button once (for two seconds) activates the feature, while additional short presses toggle between either a 3.5dB or 7dB bass boost centered at 55 Hz. Turning X-Bass off simply requires another 2-second press of the appropriate button.

The rear panel of the master powered speaker houses all the electronics, power circuitry, and inputs. It can also be designated as either the L or R speaker, with the other speaker connected to the master via the included speaker cable. The back panel of the master speaker has the following inputs: HDMI ARC, PC USB, Optical, and analog RCA with a switchable MM phono stage. Outputs consist of an analog subwoofer out, and a pair of speaker outputs to connect the other speaker. The subwoofer output is designed to send a low-passed signal from 200 Hz down to any connected subwoofer. When a subwoofer is connected, the speaker’s output remains full range. There is also a rotary volume control, a phono ground lug, a separate USB jack for firmware updates, an L/R speaker selector switch, and a 2-prong power cord connector.

Inside the master speaker are two 50-watt Class-D amplifiers (one per speaker) with a passive crossover between the woofer and tweeter. The slave speaker simply has the small passive crossover between the tweeter and the mid-woofer. The speaker wire connection between the two speakers carries power from the master to the slave.

Accessories include. An IR remote control, an HDMI cable, a power cable, speaker wire, speaker grilles, and a set of rubber feet for each speaker.

Available finishes are a Black Ash or Walnut vinyl wrap or a Royal Blue painted finish, all with a black front baffle.

I had initially set up the ELAC Debut ConneX on my desktop headphone listening station, connected via USB to my Surface 3 PRO tablet’s dock. The Surface doubles as my ROON Core so they had direct access to my digital music library. I soon found however that the ConneX worked out really well repurposed in my kitchen where I could Bluetooth music to them from my iPhone in the mornings. They also worked out as gaming speakers connected to my younger son’s computer, as TV speakers in our upstairs living room, and as a simple turntable listening rig in the bedroom.

Setup at my desktop headphone station, connected to my tablet, the ELAC Debut ConneX DCB41 sounded clear and transparent with an appealing midrange, if not just a little bass shy. This wasn’t surprising as they were far from any walls for the rear slot ports to get any bass reinforcement from.

When I decided to move the ELAC Debut ConneX into our kitchen, I positioned them a few feet apart on the built-in desk space. In this case, being much closer to a wall, the bass output was solid enough with the “X-Bass” setting turned down to 3.5dB of boost. My iPhone 12 PRO Max paired to the speakers easily and would automatically connect from then on whenever I would select the Bluetooth input on the speakers via remote. I would stream music, local radio, YouTube audio, and TV audio via the respective apps on my phone. Bluetooth range seemed consistently excellent as I could carry my phone all through our kitchen and living room while maintaining solid a connection to the Debut ConneX.

While our living room TV isn’t new enough to have an HDMI ARC output, I did connect the TV to the Debut ConneX via optical cable. With the speakers placed on short stands on either side of our entertainment center, our TV watching/video streaming got a noticeable boost in sound quality from the little Debut ConneX. I even connected up a little ELAC subwoofer I had been using in my studio and this now modest 2.1 system performed exceedingly well in our medium-sized living room space. In this application I turned the DCB41’s X-Bass feature off as that resulted the most balanced sounding blend between speakers and subwoofer. Pushing the volume a bit while watching “Ready Player One” was a good deal of fun and elicited no unpleasant sounds or noticeable distortion during even the most intense action scenes. The onboard amplifiers on the ConneX speakers seem more than up to the job of keeping the drivers sounding clean and well-controlled in all cases.

Little powered speakers are a dime-a-dozen. With the Debut ConneX DCB41, ELAC has made a truly useful and flexible modern mini speaker that doesn’t scrimp on sound quality.

ELAC put together a versatile little package in the Debut ConneX DCB41. As an active speaker, it has a plethora of digital and analog inputs making it useful for all manner of situations. Having the onboard phono stage and HDMI ARC is a nice touch too. They are physically, fairly compact so they can be easily adapted for stand mount or desktop use. But flexibility is meaningless in this case if the little Debut ConneX didn’t sound good, which they more than certainly do. The acoustic quality from these little ELACs is excellent with an appealing and natural sound signature. The quality of the built-in Class D amplification also seems very robust, allowing the Debut ConneX to play loud without any noticeable strain. Add in the well-designed adjustable X-Bass feature, and you can get a surprising amount of punch out of these little guys. Enough that I found myself laughing out loud on a couple of occasions. Great sounding little speakers that can be used in almost any situation and sound really, really good while doing it. Who doesn’t need a set of those? Maybe even two?