It seems that every audio show you go to will have at least one manufacturer who completely sideswipes you. It’s usually the local guys, folks who are at only their first or second show and seem a little bit nervous about being on such a big stage. It goes like this: you enter half a dozen rooms that have you leaving after four or five minutes, saying, “Hmm, yes, very nice.” And then you wander into a room that knocks you on your ass. This time, it was ElinsAudio’s.
ElinsAudio is a small electronics manufacturer headquartered near the town of Katowice, in the southern part of Poland. At Audio Video Show 2024, the brand debuted its latest amplification system, the Opera. Note that I said “amplification system”—this company offers, essentially, what you’d normally call “separates,” but as an integrated solution. Put in plain English, the ElinsAudio Opera comprises two mono amplifiers and a preamplifier. The Opera system is the brand’s new flagship product.
Before we dive into the specs and cost of the system, I should mention that ElinsAudio also brought its lower-level products to the show, but it was the top-of-the-line Opera playing in the room while I was there.
The Concerto is a true integrated amp, meaning it comes in one chassis, and it can deliver 250Wpc into 4 ohms. It costs zł28,000 (all prices in Polish zlotys). The higher-tier Mille preamp / mono amps set (zł76,000) can crank out 1000Wpc into 4 ohms. The new Opera does twice that again—a crushing 2000Wpc—and costs zł96,000. As you’d guess, these are class-D amplifiers, based on ICEpower amplification circuitry. The company also showed its Cello phono preamp, which is capable of handling both moving-magnet and moving-coil cartridges. It costs zł21,000, but it wasn’t hooked up while I was there.
What was hooked up was a pair of Chors 7 speakers from Diora Acoustics, another Polish brand. The ElinsAudio rep estimated that these three-way, four-driver floorstanders cost around zł36,000 a pair, plus or minus a few thousand zlotys. The speakers are available in a number of different finishes, he explained, so the final price depends on the customer’s choice. An Eversolo streaming DAC served as the source in this room.
What I heard was an astounding sense of balance, with no unnatural emphasis anywhere in the audioband. The ElinsAudio room sounded razor-sharp, perfectly controlled, without a loss of the natural timbre of the instruments or of the human voice, something which is difficult to achieve in even the best circumstances. In other words, things sounded right to me in this room. The Diora speakers are impressive devices in their own right, but I wonder if they’d sound so good without the gut-twisting horsepower of the Opera amplifier system backing them.
One more thing. ElinsAudio includes power and RCA cables in the price of its amps. Talk about turnkey. ElinsAudio is going on my list of cool brands that I’m glad I’ve discovered.
Matt Bonaccio
>Contributor, SoundStage!
