Max Power Awards  

Magazine-England

With cost no object, what makes the best speaker? Is it split components or a coaxial? Each speaker was mounted into a test enclosure and an exact signal was swept up the things to a rising pooooweeeee sort of a sound.

Meanwhile, a super-costly, super-accurate B&K microphone was placed at exactly one meter away. The test sweep was run with the speaker pointing directly at the microphone and then with the speaker turned away at a 30 degrees on a turntable. This is vital in cars, because we very rarely get to mount our front speakers properly on-axis (as this is called) to our ears. Thus, the performance of the speakers when listened to from a less-than-perfect position is crucial. The wobbly pen of the exalted Bruel & Kjaer test equipment wrote its telling curve on the log graph paper of the printer and the absolute truth about the speakers linearity and efficiency figures we quote here are the averaged-by-eye over the whole passband figures, rather than the more normal (and usually higher) 1kHz signal.

Winner CDTAUDIO HD-642

Efficiency 1WE/1M: 85dB
Not terribly efficient compared to the pure 1kHz test point used by some manufacturers, but these are very even across all the music spectrum.

Power Handling: 80%
The passive cascade one into the other but do not saturate easily. This means they sound good and can take some real driving.

Build Quality: 95%
Some of the most elegantly put together products on the market. Well painted/coated cast baskets, passives clean enough for one to feed the other via an output.

Test Sweep Results: Where the rainbows went all to sh*t once off-axis, these CDTAUDIO speakers just changed in intensity.

Verdict: As per so many sound off boys this year, a superb set of components, clearly designed for car use from the ground up. Smooth, even, sweet and capable. Meet the winner of the 'Best Full- Range Speaker.