Morel Hybrid Ovation 6 Review

Morel Hybrid Ovation Speaker

It has been said that a good speaker perfectly optimized will sound better than awesome speaker in a poor location. But what if you can’t or don’t want to change the speaker locations from the factory. Is their a speaker system capable of delivering high-performance sound in factory locations? Read on.

First Look

The Morel Hybrid Ovation 6 is a high-performance 2-way component system consisting of a 6.5 inch midrange and the MT-22 1.1 inch tweeter. The tweeter is a hand made dome using a textile proprietary material called Acuflex™. Morel has for ways for mounting the tweeter: flush, surface, surface angled and without housing. The relatively shallow midrange (2.37 inches) has the Uniflo unique aerodynamically designed cast aluminum frame that encompasses the motor structure and provides an open design that minimized back-wave speaker distortion created by the speaker basket. The oversized two-inch voice coil gives the Hybrid Ovation 6 a high power handling capability of 160 watts continuous and a music transient power handling limit of a whopping 600 watts. The Accuset MX-22 outboard crossover is housed in a cast aluminum chassis that has a minimalist industrial design.

Closer Look

The Accuset MX-22 is the nexus of the system. As with any high-performance system, the MX-22 is capable of standard, bi-wire and bi-amp capable. There is five tweeter levels giving you 8dB of control over the tweeter output. What is special about the MX-22 is the variable crossover slope. Both the tweeter and midrange output can be selected from either 6dB or 12 dB per octave slopes. The benefits are many. Rare in the world of car audio, a 6 dB per octave first order network is phase coherent design that minimizes crossover ringing and maximizes transient response. The downside to this design is that is puts a tremendous demand on the speakers. Fortunately, Morel has paid attention to woofer and tweeter.

Morel builds the Hybrid Ovation 6 midrange around unique proprietary technology. The midrange uses Morel’s proprietary Hexatech voice coil technology. This technology uses hexagonal shaped aluminum wire tightly packed around an aluminum voice coil former. Packing the voice coil wire tighter puts more wire in the magnetic gap of the speaker. The combination of an aluminum voice coil former and voice coil wire maximizes thermal stability and is the reason for such a high power handling of the Morel Hybrid Ovation 6 system. To create a compact power motor structure, the Hybrid Ovation 6 unites a common ferrite magnet with a high-performance neodymium magnet to create a compact powerful motor structure. The combination of the unconventional Hybrid Ovation 6 magnet structure and the efficiency of the voice coil increase the efficiency of the motor structure nearly 20 percent.

The MT-22 tweeter also incorporates the Hexatech voice coil technology. The oversized 1.1 inch tweeter has an impressively low 950Hz free-air resonance. Most tweeters have a free-air resonance three and four times that! This low resonance and high thermal power handling allows for Hybrid Ovation 6 to use an extremely low crossover point of 1800 Hz. Even more important, the robust MT-22 is sturdy enough to handle the demanding first order 6dB per octave crossover slope. The small size of the tweeter makes the performance even capabilities even more impressive.

Installation

The Morel Hybrid Ovation 6 includes everything but speaker wire to install the system. The basket of the midrange has a multitude of holes to fit nearly every factory speaker location. The tweeter is exceptionally small when compared to high-performance tweeters from other companies. As a result, the speakers are quite easy to install in factory speaker locations. This is a feat not common with high-end performance speaker systems. The speaker grilles are designed to minimize the sonic interference the grilles may impose on the speaker. While providing adequate protection for large objects the grilles could allow small objects to pass through. In most installations, this should not pose a problem.

The real beauty of the system is the Accuset MX-22. With the ability to control the slopes and output levels, the Hybrid Ovation 6 can be optimized even when the speaker locations aren’t. To aid in the tuning process, the Hybrid Ovation 6 system can be interfaced with the installer friendly Accuset crossover alignment system. This system allows remote access to all of the crossover settings. The installer can sit in the listening position and fine tune the crossover. Due to the complexity of the tuning capabilities of the Hybrid Ovation 6 system, it is strongly recommended to have the system installed by your local authorized Morel dealer.

Manuals/Web Support

The manual for the Morel Hybrid Ovation 6 is quite simple and basic. It provides just information on mounting the speakers, configuring the crossover for standard, bi-wire or bi-amplifier systems. A simple pictogram outlines all the crossover adjustments and settings. The Hybrid Ovation 6 is a recent addition to the Morel product line-up. As a result, information about the products is not fully integrated into the company’s website. When I went to Morel’s website, http://www.morelhifi.com, information on the Hybrid Ovation 6 system was contained under new products. The manual for the Hybrid Ovation 6 was not available for download.

Sound Q & Performance

Impressive. Sound quality is why you buy this system. It is impressive not because it sound great; it is impressive because it sound great in the factory locations of my test vehicle. The speaker locations had the tweeter high in the door and the midrange at the bottom. The system not only blended well, it places the vocals in the center of the vehicle. More important was the detail. These speakers reveal details in the music I usually only find in my hi-fi home system. On the testing side, the Morel Hybrid Ovation 6 was equally impressive. After tuning the system and tweaking the control on the head unit, the system delivered a frequency response of plus or minus 4dB over its entire bandwidth. From 300 Hz up, the window tightened to plus or minus 3dB.

Summary

Having your cake and eating it too. That is what the flexibility and performance of the Morel Hybrid Ovation 6 offers. Even though this system price of $899 may seem expensive, the performance it delivers is well worth the price. This system is perfect for someone who wants high-performance sound without modifying the car vehicle interior. If you were find the optimal speaker locations, the performance would be stunning.

Detail Product And Price visit http://www.newmastersound.com

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