 |
 |
 |
Jensen ATS 6.5c www.jensenaudio.com |
||
| With an abundance of midbass, Jensen’s latest coaxials may add the kick you’re looking for. | |||
| by Brian Smith | |||
| The ATS 6.5c is a coaxial design that utilizes 6.5-inch, aluminum midrange drivers, 1-inch ceramic dome tweeters, and 2-way passive crossovers. Features include gold-plated binding posts, butyl surrounds, and rubber-coated, stamped baskets. The external crossovers provide a 3 dB pad for the tweeter and a switchable 100 Hz high pass filter. Subjective Jensen certainly seems determined to make us forget all of those 6 x 9’s that they sold in the ‘70s. The literature that we received with the ATS 6.5c’s reads like one of those British hi-fi magazines. I’m not sure what most of it means, but the author’s mastery of the English language is undeniable. The 6.5c’s performed quite well during our subjective evaluation. There’s something around the bottom of the tweeters range that sounds a bit off kilter, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a simple EQ. The most impressive characteristic of the 6.5c’s performance is the abundance of midbass. It makes me wonder if Jensen sent somebody over to measure our test enclosures while I was out to lunch. These little 6.5-inch aluminum drivers will almost keep up with our reference monitors in the lower frequency ranges. What happened to all those thin sounding, overly bright coaxial and component sets that we’ve seen in the past? I’m not picking on Jensen, this was an industry-wide trend less than a year ago. I’m sure there are still a few holdouts, but it’s nice to see that Jensen is among those shooting for something that resembles a flat response. Until we all drive the same model car, use factory speaker cutouts, identical components, and ignore personal preference, it is absolute folly to attempt to ‘optimize’ a speakers response for automotive use. Few setups offer the imaging and staging potential as a properly installed and tuned set of coaxials. However, if you absolutely have to place your tweeters elsewhere, Jensen also offers these drivers in a component set. If you’re in the market for a speaker system, check these out. They’re definitely not your big brother’s Jensens. A note to the manufacturer: Can you guys say Audi A8 demo vehicle? Aluminum car....Aluminum speakers.... If you don’t do it, someone else will. Objective Impedance measurements for the ATS 6.5c’s show a maximum of 8.5 ohms and a minimum of 4.9 ohms over their usable range. These values occur at 1.6 kHz and 3.1 kHz, respectively. One-watt at one-meter sensitivity measured 86.8 dB with 200 Hz to 5 kHz band-limited pink noise. Both RTA and semi-anechoic measurements show a relatively smooth overall response. However, the ATS 6.5c’s do exhibit a rather sizable lump in their response in the 6 kHz range. |
|||
| Price & Contact: $240 per pair; 407-333-8900; www.jensenaudio.com |
 |
  |