Big home cinema & electronics fan, married with 3 children. I also like motor vehicles, I am a senio...
Big home cinema & electronics fan, married with 3 children. I also like motor vehicles, I am a senior programmer analyst for a small software house.
Member since:15.01.2004
Reviews:38
Members who trust:2
Firstly these speakers are known by various names, but they are basically the 6 1/2" or 165mm fit component speakers from Infinity.
eg REF605CS or REF6500cs are two other names used.
These are the cheaper component - the Kappa range are more expensive, but look very similar.
Prices are generally between £90 and £120 I paid just under £100 including carriage from an internet reseller.
The speakers came with a large amount of fitting accessories, including grills and tweater flush mount kits, I needed very little of this as I was replacing original fit speakers in a Vauxhall Omega - which were burnt out.
Other things I needed were Vauxhall to 6 1/2" speaker adaptor kits, self adhesive pads, wire and a lot of time.
There are not many instructions as fitting speakers is different in every car, I had to use the Haynes manual to work out which original wire to use.
Fitting the bass driver was easy - just fit to adaptor plate and fit - leaving the cable accessable, the tweeter fitted into the same space as the original tweeter - again leaving cable accessable.
However the difficult bit was the cross over - this is a small box very roughly about 120mm x 80mm x 40mm, this connects to the existing car wiring and the outputs to the tweeter and bass driver. However placing this box was difficult, I had to avoid the window, speakers, side impact bar, and also the bar which stops the door opening too far, for fitting I used self adhesive pads, and when I refitted after shutting the door - those bars!!!! I also used cable ties after drilling small holes in the door to attach them.
Now to using them. The original fit car CD player did not have enough power to drive them - being on high volumes for not much sound output - this is because the speakers are not that sensitive, needing a decent amount of power to drive them.
I would recommend using an amplifier if you have one to drive them.
I fiited my MD player and this can handle them (30w RMS per channel), the speakers can handle 90w per channels.
Sound quality is very good, almost up to home hifi standards, but suffered from the usual car problems of tweeters being mounted quite a was from bass drivers - this is a car problem not with the speakers.
Unusually for car speakers you can tell what source material is used - you can even occasionally hear Minidiscs ATRAC compression in action which is extremely rare for car audio.
Frequency range is good - almost as good as my main hifi speakers, for normal music I can see no benefits for a subwoofer.
Bass is strong and smooth sounding, treble is clear and precise, mid range is not lost .
I would recommend these for replacing standard fit speakers but be aware they are not simple to fit and need a strong amplifier to drive them.
I have used Ease of Use for Ease of fitting, as that is all you do with them as speakers sit there and get used.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Car Radio - Panel Release, Panel/Quick Release - with CD Player, With CD-Player - without CD-Changer, With changer control - with MP3 Playback, With MP3 Player - 208 Watt
very helpful by (100%):
