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Infinity 652i www.infinitysystems.com |
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| Infinity’s newest coaxial design offers a commanding amount of midbass and tight, solid response. | |||
| by Brian Smith | |||
| Infinity’s 652i’s are 6.5-inch coaxial units that utilize injection-molded polypropylene midrange drivers and 1-inch silk dome tweeters. Features include an angle-mounted, rotating tweeter assembly and a mounting system that allows the 652i to be installed in a wide variety of those “standard” 6.5-inch locations. Subjective When we receive a set of speakers for evaluation, they’re installed in a set of test enclosures of about .5 cubic ft and we audition them in a nearfield studio-type setup. For comparison purposes, we have a set of active reference monitors and a switching system that allows us to do A/B tests. It may seem a bit unusual to evaluate car speakers in this manner, but by doing so, we can be certain that we are evaluating the speakers rather than their installation. The type of car and the speakers’ placement within the car plays a major role in the system’s overall performance. By eliminating the car, we remove the largest variable and put everybody on a more or less even playing field. After we publish the review, most of these speaker systems wind up back in their original packaging and make their way to our warehouse. However, only a select few of these systems (i.e., the ones that I really like) will hang around the shop and do light duty playing our favorite CDs during office hours. We have one set that haven’t been removed from the test boxes in nearly four years. My point here (at last) is that the next time I have to test a set of speakers, the number of test boxes at my disposal will be two fewer than they were at the beginning of this month. It looks like the 652I’s will be pulling shop duty for a while. No warehouse action for these speakers in the near future — these puppies sound really good. The first thing I noticed when auditioning this systems was an unusual amount of low frequency energy emanating from those little 6.5-inch drivers. Nothing that’s going to compare to a good subwoofer, but the 652I’s should prove quite capable in the midbass department. Compared to our reference monitors, the 652I’s seem just a shade heavy in the upper midrange, but, otherwise, everything sounds as it should. The 652I’s quality of reproduction is quite surprising considering that the system’s crossover network consists of one cap in series with the tweeter — the mid runs full range. In most systems, this causes all sorts of problems in the frequency range where the mid and tweeter overlap, but it seems that Infinity has managed to pull it off without severe detrimental effect. This means that they must have spent a fair amount of time matching components for these systems. If you’re looking for a pair of 6.5s, I’d suggest that you check these out. Objective Impedance measurements for the 652I show a maximum of 21 ohms and a minimum of 3.4 ohms over their usable range. These values occur at 100 Hz and 16 kHz, respectively. One-watt at one-meter sensitivity measured 89 dB with 200 Hz to 5 kHz band-limited pink noise. RTA measurements show the 652I’s response in a highly reflective environment, while semi-anechoic measurements show the system’s response devoid of reflections. Both measurements show a relatively flat overall response with a rise of about 3 dB in the 4 kHz range. |
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| Price & Contact: $119.95; 516-496-3400; www.infinitysystems.com |
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