Subjective
The TS-A6999s seem most at home playing good old-fashioned rock-n-roll. Audiophile recordings reveal a few colorations, but most tweako-types wouldn’t tolerate full-range speakers in the rear deck anyway. Rear staging is a huge no-no on the competition scene, but when Kid Rock kicks into “Cowboy,” nobody in his right mind gripes about image placement and stage depth.

The majority of the time most of us listen to material that has only three real requirements from an audio system — the speakers should be capable of playing at high volumes with relatively low distortion, they should carry a fair amount of+ bottom end, and the overall spectral balance should be within reasonable limits. The TS-A6999s will not leave you lacking in any of these areas. This doesn’t mean that you couldn’t build a killer SQ system with a set of 6 x 9s — especially these. Frankly, with the lack of cone area in the front stage of most SQ systems, it’s hard to believe that we’ve yet to see a set of 6 x 9s up front. These speakers (6 x 9s) have been putting more cone in less space for longer than many of our readers have been alive. A system’s staging and imaging characteristics are determined primarily by speaker placement, so a little creativity may be necessary. Of course, there’s also a lot to be said for the old school approach as well.

Objective
Impedance measurements for this unit show a maximum of 9.2 ohms at 94 Hz and a minimum of 3.2 ohms at 20 kHz. Average impedance measured 5.1 ohms. One watt at 1 meter sensitivity measured 89.8 dB with band-limited pink noise. Both RTA and semi-anechoic measurements show a somewhat peaky response that fits within a window of about 15 dB over the system’s usable range.