An even-handed, unfussy pair of speakers that play it too safe
Standmount speakers| £349| whf.cm/ElipsonHorus6B
While we love being treated to a big, booming and bank-busting pair of high-end speakers here at What Hi-Fi?, we are often equally enamoured of those models that can provide as much entertainment as possible on a budget. Hi-fi should be for the many, not just the few, as the likes of the Elac Debut B5.2 and Dali Oberon 1 both amply demonstrate.
The Elipson Horus 6B are the latest standmounts looking to add their names to the pantheon of budget bargains that can punch well above their weight. The French speakers retail in the UK for £349, though given that you could pick up a pair of the five-star Q Acoustics 3020i for £100 less, the Elipsons are going to have to offer something special to truly earn our full recommendation. The Horus 6B certainly have a name fit for the Egyptian gods, but is their sound utterly divine or just a desert mirage?
Understated look
There is nothing wrong with a pair of speakers looking unobtrusive and restrained, but there’s a point at which understated tips over into plain and bland. While we have seen and liked the look of the Horus 6B when they are daubed in a rather attractive light wood and beige colourway (one of the three finishes in which the speakers are available), the black carbon review models with which we are provided just seem dull and lifeless. Even with that textured front panel, they could be unfavourably compared with a pair of functional black gaming speakers.
It’s not that the Horus 6B look particularly offensive, but rather that there seems to have been little effort, especially when fitted out in black, to make them really stand out from the crowd. That may of course be the entire point, but we are more drawn to the little flourishes and aesthetic touches displayed by the rival Dali Oberon 1 than the slightly bog-standard look of the Horus 6Bs.
Internally, the two-way bookshelf 6Bs host a 25mm soft-dome tweeter accompanied by a 13cm cellulose-pulp mid-woofer that aims to give, according to Elipson, a “magnificent, airy sound image and an articulate extension of the bass register”. We’ll get to that later.
Playing it safe
We use our high-end reference system of the Naim ND555/555 PS DR music streamer alongside a Burmester 088/911 MKIII power amplifier to start off our tests, before moving to the more affordable Arcam A5 amplifier (tested at £749) to offer a more real-worl
