Vibe Litebox Stereo 4

Lite Box amps are part of the new wave of ever yet more compactly and efficiently built product from the likes of Alpine and Massive Audio and others. This, the four channel Lite Box Stereo 4 claims a peak output of a kilowatt from a very small chassis.
The amp looks clean and simple to the point of under-featured until you turn it over where all the controls are kept as well as a lot of very useful printed warning and instructional stuff. There is an aperture for the fan intake and air is forced through the amp’s internal heatsinks and exits at either end through a slotted vent. There are connections for four RCAs and four pairs of dual conductor speaker wires on one end on screw connector blocks in clear housings, with power connection and the 2x30A fusing on the other. Controls look to be placed under the amp to make the likelihood of messing about with them and ruining careful set ups by pro installers all the harder! The crossovers are the same 55Hz to 550Hz range jobs for both high and low pass functions. The Vibe logo sits on the top panel in a raised logo-piece and the packaging is typically Vibe in that it is exquisite, with a little cloth bag, top notch Polyurethane foam pieces and a glossy gifto-box that’ll keep Vibe amps hot as used sales for as long as the buyer keeps the packaging in the loft!
The manual has no tech specs but does have useful install stuff and of course you get a tempting promo for the Vibe cables and accessories and a window sticker. Finally, there are two RCA-to-speaker wire connectors so you can use speaker cable inputs from OEM headunits and all you need do is flick the switch underneath to auto-sensing and then you needn’t find a blue switching wire on your OEM deck, it’ll start up as it senses signal at the inputs.
– Class GH
– 4 x 90w RMS @ 4 Ohms
– 4 x 125w RMS @ 2 Ohms
– 2 x 250w RMS @ 4 Ohms bridged
– Satin finished outer panel with internal heat sinking and fan cooling
– 8Ga. Power Terminals with cross headed grub screw bare wire socket connection
– Low and high level input via supplied RCA-Speaker wire adapters and level switch under amp
– Adjustable input sensitivity independent on each of the four channels
– Stereo, & dual mono bridged operation
– Frequency response 20Hz to 20kHz
– 0 to 15dB Bass Boost @ 45Hz on rear channels
– Signal to Noise Ratio 109dB
– Channel separation not quoted
– 24dB per Octave high/low pass crossovers
– High Pass Filter 55Hz to 550Hz
– Low Pass Filter 55Hz to 550kHz
– Fuse Rating 30A x2
– HxWxD(mm) 50 x 295 x 135mm
Review by Adam Rayner
The first thing to get out of the way is the ruddy noise the fan makes. A steady brrrrr, it will only irritate you if you have a direct line-of-sound link to your ears from the place it is installed. Of course in my test rig it’s right in my face. If in a deep boot build or under a shroud with fan cooling or anywhere but close to your ears, you really won’t need to worry. Unlike on-demand fan systems, driven by a thermal switch (like on Genesis amps) this one is a simple it’s on, so it’s on job.
I liked the controls underneath and especially the four separate gain controls, one for each channel. Normally they go in pairs and only better amps do this. Thing is, I reckon this IS one of those better amps. The signal to noise ratio looks huge and indeed, I found myself first playing the super Spirit of Sound #6 demo disc from Focal with all its fabulous HiFi recordings but soon flipped open the current reference head unit A Sony MEX-DV1000 SACD player and slapped in one of my two precious SACD discs – Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The resolution on the SACD system is breath taking and you could hear it all through the amp. I have played the disc to death on various systems, so I know the amp was doing an amazing job, extracting and tracking all the speedy details and on the regular CD front, coping with the high rise time clacks of the percussion on the Focal disc. Indeed, the power was so fast to rise that the grille was punched off one of my test speakers. A three way speaker with a horn tweeter and excellent balanced sound, they were singing like they have not often before.
As far as features go, it does have the auto-sensing circuit for the use of speaker wires from OEM head units without the worry of trying to find a switching wire under the dash, and it does have a bass boost for the rear channels alone but it is a bit primitive when it comes to the crossovers. These are simple one-decade (55 to 550Hz) pots and it’d be cleverer if these were super wide range and could be used as subsonics as well. However, that is to fret about stuff that most buyers simply won’t be concerned with and it keeps the price under control.
I will admit to utter scepticism about the power this amp could make and even thought it had to be bogus since the Black Air and Lite Air speakers I had run on it had not struggled or coughed with the effort at all. However, this is a feature of the Vibe line and is about being rugged. The test speakers were not of that ilk and really spanked under the same drive.
A remarkable little spud and in many ways superior to the Lite Box Bass 1 in that while the Bass 1 has some savage competition on the low end front, the Lite Box Stereo 4 (and 2 for that matter) have a real slice of something more than most car audio amps can deliver and as for the claims about hybrid Class GH being as sweet as AB and yet as efficient as Class D or at least approaching it, I would tend to believe it now!
Sound Quality 9.0
Power Output 9.0
Features 8.0
Build Quality 8.0
Value For Money 9.0
Overall rating 8.6