The Infinity Reference 6000cs : OK Bang For Your Buck
Written: Jun 10 '05
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Pros: Construction, sound, looks, price
Cons: Sound, bass handling
The Bottom Line: Good cheap speakers
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| AVaddict's Full Review: Infinity Reference 6000cs Car Component System |
A Little Background
These components were installed in the front doors of 2004 Nissan Xterra. They are complimented by a set of Infinity Reference 9602i 6x9s in the rear. All these speakers used basic 12g cable and are powered by a Polk/MOMO c400.4 receiving signals from a Sony CDX-F7715 (w/XM…. boy do I love XM). No damping was used on this install and the amps and sub box all being located in the rear has essentially turned this truck into a sedan.
A single 3 farad cap was used before the distribution block and all primary power cable was 4g StreetWires. 8g no name was used to feed the amps. Two 10” E-Type subs in a box that was far larger than necessary was used for low end, powered by an ancient Nakamichi. They bulk of the sound from that arrangement is mud. The owner acknowledges he needs a smaller box, whether he chooses ultimately to do so remains to be seen, it’s been several months now. The end result of that is a lot of the tweaking was done with the sub section pulled waaaay back or simply off.
Install
The install on this vehicle was very easy. The dash just pops apart and there are a lot of nooks and crannies (as well as a lot of dead space around the rear wells) to hide cables. The doors are very easy to get apart as is the rear panels. This application had wind up windows (manual, yeah, they still make them) so a specialized tool was needed for removal of the handles, but the cheap versions are $3 at the local parts store and will do the job just as well. BTW, it is not the pickle fork style used on a lot of American cars, it is the flat style. The integrated grilles in the doors clear the speaker just fine, even when using the factory mounting plate.
Once in the door, you will, obviously, have to remove the mounting plate and remove the oem speaker. The speaker can be dropped in the door, but I chose to use the oem mounting plate which will have to be modified a little (Dremel) to get the speaker to sit properly. It’s easier than it sounds, and once it drops in, you can then mount it directly to the plate. I used 2” drywall screws cause they are skinny and the huge pitch allows for “mistakes”. Previous to screwing them in finally, I applied a small bead of 1800lb. epoxy around the edge to better damp and permanently bond the speaker the mount. Using the oem mount also ensures clearance will be appropriate and you can use the oem hardware, which quite frankly, I find preferable.
Having said that, I mounted the tweeters in the doors up high rather than the factory tweeter location in the A-pillars. The A-pillars didn’t offer a whole lot of room and when I did mock something up, it looked weird, so I swapped them out with a junkyard set that didn’t feature the pillar mounted tweeters. They didn’t fit perfectly, but very close. The Infinity (and shared by JBL) i-mount system is quite versatile and should be something that will match almost any app. I mounted the crossovers were mounted in the door panels themselves and put connections in line to make the panels to easier to take off if servicing of some kind is required. As I always do, I selected the low setting for the tweeters.
Performance
First impressions with these speakers were mixed. The headunit functions the same to the vast majority of Sony receivers out there, it just took a while and a lot of attenuation to get things where they need to be. High pass filters were set to 125Hz for the final set up, but in simply assessing their ability I turned off the subs to try to better simulate what a h/u might produce. At low volumes the bass and midrange are warm and subtle if not especially strong. Highs are as clear as they can be without being super bright, but I did take the -3db route on the crossover. Keep in mind these comments re: having no sub section. It does become quickly apparent that even without any bass enhancement or “bass boost”, these speakers prefer not to bump. I am not saying they aren’t happy reproducing the frequencies, just not with any gusto. If classical or jazz is your thing and you are not going to use outboard amps, these very well could be your components.
For the headbangers out there, do not despair as these units perform quite well over 125Hz, just be sure to have some accurate bass behind it cause it won’t come from these on their own, regardless of the amp. With the equalizer function of the h/u it becomes a little easier to actually smooth things out, but in the worst case one could just simply pull back on the bass feature of the given headunit and make it up with a little more from the sub(s). Either way, once tuned these speakers will perform fairly admirably if you are simply willing to do a lot of testing with various types of music. Most h/us today offer a lot of presets for sound and if the time is taken to set these to the appropriate levels, you’ll be a lot happier when switching from Fiona Apple to Helmet…. at high volumes.
Brass Tacks
The numbers are more important than sometimes realized. I list these more for reference than anything else and here is one of those cases that it really does make sense to look other than the review itself. What I mean by that, is in this case regardless of numbers, I wouldn’t go hooking these up to an amp rated at better than 60 or 70 wpc. Here are the three basics…
Response 53hz-21khz
Handling 2-80wpc
Peak 270wpc
Final Thoughts
The end result made me happy, not ecstatic, but definitely pleased. I wasn’t expecting much from these being low line Infinity, but the price paid (they were brought to me) was outstanding. So, for the price, he got a lot more than he paid for, but God knows he couldn’t have even touched the tuning aspect of the whole install. In low volume situations I can see almost anyone being really happy with these components. I would not recommend just replacing half of a cars speakers, so do keep in mind, if you get these, it is in your best interests to get corresponding speakers for the other half of the system. I would recommend same level, same brand units regardless of size in most cases, but any aftermarket speaker tends to trump factory units. Just something to keep in mind.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 103
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