MA Audio SY65C1 Car Audio Component Set

Subwoofers are probably the hottest item in car audio today. It's become so popular as to overshadow everything else. What about the rest of the system? It is always important to have a broad spectrum of music that only a component set can reproduce. In this month's review we tested MA Audio's new Synergy series component speakers.

The SY65C1 component set arrived in a craft brown gift box that contained two 6.5-inch woofer/mids paired with a set of 25 mm (1 inch) aluminized PEI dome tweeters. Two large outboard crossovers, wires and an accessory kit completed the set along with a brief manual. The mid-woofers look tough the way they were constructed, with stamped steel baskets, mica-injected poly cones, and a rubber surround. Positive and negative terminals reside on either side of the woofer, thus eliminating any chance of the connecting wires or tinsle leads from shorting. A sharp looking wrinkle-finish basket really completes the overall appearance. All in all, very nice cosmetics.

Addressing the importance of mounting, baskets of the mid-woofer have multiple holes around the mounting flange to match them up to a large number of factory mounts, making a sometimes challenging job easy. The enclosed grills can be mounted flush with the door or off the door approximately a half-inch with the application of the included spacer rings. This spacer ring mounts behind the grill ring and is a nice feature if you are having some depth issues in a shallow car door.

Once the grill ring is mounted, the speaker can be inserted and permanently fastened to it. The grill can then be press-fit into place. On our test samples, the mounting templates did not have any lines for the speaker itself, only the grill ring (according to the manufacturer the product consumers purchase has templates with the lines).

The 25 mm tweeters appear as though they are titanium, although they are actually aluminized PEI domes. PEI is plastic composite material, much like Mylar, which is used for its lightweight quality and rigidity. These common-sized tweeters use neodymium as the source for magnetic energy, as is the case with most manufacturers' products nowadays. Mounting the tweeters is fairly easy and can be done in different ways: flush or surface, with the ability to angle them in either of the mentioned ways. The tweeters snap into their mounts in much the same fashion as the grill on the mid-woofers, but the fit is so tight that they can be difficult to pull apart should you ever need to. However, you will never have to worry about the tweeter falling out of the door if you slam it too hard. MA Audio takes a unique approach in the crossover design. More specifically, the two-way crossovers can be used with a single amplifier to power both the mid-woofer/tweeter combo, or (here is the unique part) the system can be bi-amplified. Bi-amplified means that separate amps or channels are used for each individual mid-woofer and tweeter. This is displayed by the two inputs, high and low, and the two outputs, tweeter and woofer. The crossovers come from the factory setup for a single input. Therefore, if these components bi-amplified, and the jumper setting on the circuit board remains in the factory setting, then this could be disastrous to your amplifiers. In the manual there is no mention of changing these jumpers, and the diagram provided displays a connection only for bi-amplification.

Peering through the smoked acrylic case, you can see other features of the crossover. For instance, a five-position tweeter attenuation circuit that uses a removable jumper instead of a less reliable switch. This can cut the output of the tweeter by up to -6 dB. The DC current absorbing light bulb is another nice feature that effectively protects the tweeter. It is worth clipping the outputs of your amplifier once just to see the bulb illuminate.

Although these crossovers provide great features, their size is a bit on the large side. This may make mounting them behind the common door panel difficult. It is best to try to find a spot for these under the dash or behind a kick panel.

Frequency response on-axis(simulating kick panel mount) withthe tweeter's wires reversed and-6 dB attenuation on the tweeter.There is still a big climb towards10,000 Hz and things are jumpyafter that, but rap and hip-hopmusic lovers may appreciate it.

This is the off-axis response (30degrees to simulate door mounting).The purple line is with the tweeterwired as the crossover indicates.The green line switches the positiveand negative wires at the output ofthe tweeter crossover. Switchingmakes quite a difference in response, but there is still a dip around 2000 Hz.

The green line indicates the woofer'son-axis response while the purpleline is the tweeter's on axis response with reversed wires and -6 db attenuation. The red line is the combination of both.

This graph shows the impedanceof the system. The bump on the leftside is the resonance of the woofer, while the wave in the middle is the tweeter/crossover combo. Thiscould probably use some tweaking,but there's nothing to drive anamplifier mad.

Testing
We mounted the SY65C1 on our test baffle board with the tweeter as close to the mid-woofer as possible. Testing for frequency response was first done on-axis. This would be similar to mounting the components in kick panels. The next response test was performed 30 degrees off-axis, as if they were mounted in the doors of the vehicle.

The first on-axis frequency response results told us immediately something was not quite right. Our response curve revealed a large dip located around 2-3 kHz, the transitional area of the mid-woofer and tweeter. Apparently, the tweeter was out of phase. The problem here is the 12 dB crossover used on the tweeter. A 12 dB crossover changes the phase 180 degrees. This is a simple fix and can be made by swapping the positive and negative wires on the tweeter output of the crossover.

Continuing on, with the positive and negative wires of the tweeter switched at the crossover, the test was conducted again. There was little surprise: the wire switch went a long way towards smoothing things out by greatly reducing the dip in the response. However, the response indicated that there was a lot of output around 10 kHz. Looking at the graph, you'll see quite a bit of sizzle as the frequency increases. Luckily, the five-position tweeter attenuation circuit (the manual makes no mention of this feature) on the crossover allowed us to calm things down a bit. At -6 dB, it appeared fairly reasonable.

Changing to 30 degrees off-axis we encountered dips in the frequency, once again in the 2-3 kHz range. The same response we had initially encountered showed up again. The good news is that you can use the angle mount insert for the tweeter to cure most of this null.

Things appear fairly smooth on the impedance graph. You can see the bump of the woofer down at 70 Hz, right at its resonance with a little wrinkle from the crossover circuit, and topping off with the resonance of the tweeter. Our results indicate that there's nothing here that's going to drive an amplifier crazy, but some tweaking to the crossover could improve the curve.

Judging from the Theile/Small parameters, the woofer will likely have a nice bass bump centered around its resonance of 70 hz. When it's put into a vehicle, it will probably go pretty low, too. If you're not adding a subwoofer immediately, that's good news.

All told the MA Audio SY65C1 is a competent speaker component set. There is some trouble in the crossover and the manual leaves a lot to be desired, but overall, the system looks impressive, and is made of quality materials. If purchasing a set has crossed your mind, remember to just make sure to wire the tweeters backwards and make use of the tweeter attenuation.