Clarus C51-2
MSRP: $469.99
Sometimes an obsession with one's hobby can morph into a career. That's what happened to me, and apparently that's also what happened to Scott Buwalda, founder and president of Hybrid Audio Technologies. After many years of successful competition and world championships in various sanctioning bodies, Buwalda decided to start the company to bring what he'd learned from competition to the public at large.
Impression
Upon opening the attractive box containing the Clarus components, I found a pair of unassuming 5.25-inch midwoofers, 1-inch soft-dome tweeters, and passive crossovers. Everything was nicely packaged including the bags of installation hardware for the components. I even found speaker wire, which has become a rare occurrence in today's market.
You notice that I didn't mention an owner's manual as I unpacked the component box. Instead, I found a card inviting me to visit the company's website to download the manual, so I did just that. What I found was one of, if not, the best owner's manuals I've ever encountered in my many years in this industry! It is a comprehensive description of the speaker system and a lengthy and very informative tutorial on sound quality system setup in general, applicable to any brand product you're using. Read it thoroughly, follow the suggestions, and I think you'll have a much better understanding of the principles to employ when designing your own SQ system. Go to www. hybrid-audio.com and click on the "Downloads" icon.
Since the manual is so thorough, I'm not going to go into intimate detail about all the technical aspects of the contents of the component set, but I'll give you a brief description of what I saw.
The woofers for this set employ a robust cast-aluminum frame with a standard 4-bolt pattern to keep all the components of the woofer in proper alignment. The frames are coated with a textured, matte black powdercoat finish. The cone is made of pressed paper that's said to allow these drivers to play lower treble frequencies effortlessly. This allows the use of a higher crossover point to create a "point source" for better imaging, where most of what you hear will come from the woofer. The front of the cone is left untreated so that it doesn't affect the damping qualities of the paper cone, and the backside is treated with a coating to protect the cone from the occasional water drip that may find its way into the door of your car, if that's where you decide to mount them. The surround is an inverted high-loss rubber design, which sometimes will allow better clearance when mounted behind factory grilles. The spider is made from a phenolicized fabric with the tinsel leads woven into it so there's no problem with them hitting the back of the cone at high excursion. The underhung, vented, 1-inch voice coil uses two-layer aluminized copper windings on a round former, and works inside a ferrite motor system covered by a black rubber-protective boot.