Went to the TAVES show back in September, and a pair of ELAC towers were one of my favorite speakers at the show. Powered by Atoll gear I believe. Hard to make any definite conclusions from listening for just a few minutes at an audio show though.
According to their website they make 6 different "series" of speakers. There are a number of models within each series. That's a freakin' lot of different combinations.
Whenever I see a speaker manufacturer producing 40+ models I have to wonder; why? If the manufacturer has a concept of how music sounds, how can it be divided into 40+ subdivisions? If the manufacturer has decided they can put out several major divisions of "perfect", why should I care?
My preference still goes to the speaker designer who produces just a few models and, apart from how loud they play and how deep they go in the bass, they are largely indistinguishable from each other.
I understand the point and it's a bit of a red flag I guess, but I'm not sure it really matters if you love the sound of one of those 40 models. ELAC's been around, they are pretty well respected as far as I know.
Their website is a little difficult to understand, but I don't really see that much diversity in what they make. It's not like they do a ported box, a transmission line, open baffle, planars, and high efficiency minimalist speakers. Then you might wonder if they do any of those at a very high level. Most of their models seem to have a ribbon tweeter and are probably ported boxes. They make some models geared for home theater, including a few subs, and they make one or two active speakers, along with those speakers geared towards audiophiles.
You probably pay for better build, design, and drivers as you go up the line. I think this is pretty standard as far as speaker brands go, though they do likely have more models than most other makes. Maybe they are the GM of the speaker world.
Only in that they make so many different models. I wasn't trying to go very deep with that comment, obviously they aren't near as bloated as GM became and there are likely many more differences than there are similarities.