Vibe BlackBox Stereo 4

Product Details
Manufacturer: Vibe
Distributor: Midbass Distribution
Website: link
Typical Selling price: £199.99
The Vibe amplifier lines were born from the designer’s urge to make amps to drive his own woofers. The Vibe name was derived from the original business of Vented Innovative Bass Enclosures and indeed, the midbass company, who are the home of Vibe (and Fli, and Edge and BlackDeath!) are still at their very best when making subwoofers. A foray into making subwoofers for home use saw their product up-ended for the photography so the home audio magazine could marvel at their lovely cast alloy chassis and spun metal port mouths underneath them! (then give them awards) Amps matter like hell to Vibe and they have had some doozies with insanely high sonic specifications.
This product is the four channel BlackBox Stereo 4, having four equal channels rated at four by 100 watts rms. It features a nice asymmetry in the controls where a crossover for one set of channels is better arranged for high pass frequencies and the other for low pass including the facility to add a remote bass gain knob that can be used to control subs plugged into these designated ‘bass’ channels. The BBR09 wired remote control is not included but the amp is beautifully packaged and well printed underneath so as to ensure that even if the carton gets lost the amp will be easy to understand for installers in the future. There is a powerful bass boost switch (up to +24dB @ 45Hz) on each pair of channels and you can input the music either on conventional RCA cords at up to a whopping 5.0V of signal, or you can use the speaker level input Molex loom to piggy-back onto a set of speaker cords and use that to drive the lows. A snazzy new yellow spacer of plastic between the main chassis and neat hidey-wire end caps has appeared to help you identify the new generation of amps. These seem to have a lower signal to noise ratio but the amps are still hugely powerful and bear a much lower price tag as a result. I liked the stereo version but is this four channeler as good? Does it have a sufficiently powerful supply circuit to drive all that muscle? It looks like it, let’s go see.
– Class AB
– 4 x 100w RMS @ 4 Ohms
– 4 x 125w RMS @ 2 Ohms
– 2 x 250w RMS @ 4 Ohms bridged
– Black anodised case with internal convection cooling and end caps with yellow spacers
– Power and speaker terminals use cross-headed grub screw bare wire socket connection
– Low and high level input via RCAs and supplied speaker wire Molex
– Adjustable input sensitivity on each pair of channels, 250mv to 5.0V
– Stereo, & dual mono bridged operation
– Frequency response 5Hz to 43kHz
– Switchable zero or +12dB or +24dB Bass Boost @ 45Hz on each pair of channels
– Signal to Noise Ratio 88dB
– Channel separation -57dB
– Remote bass gain socket for channels 3 and 4. BBR09 remote is optional extra
– 24dB per Octave high/low pass crossovers
– High Pass Filter 50Hz to 1kHz
– Low Pass Filter 30Hz to 300Hz
– Fuse Rating 30A x2
– HxWxD(mm) 57 x 448 x 224mm
Review by Adam Rayner
I had a go on a BlackBox Stereo2 recently. It wears a new livery with a nice yellow stripe of polymer sandwiched between the end plate caps and the rest of the chassis to denote it is a new product, in Version Three, or V3. However, the BlackBox Stereo 4 amplifier we have here is still the V2 incarnation inside, despite it having the same snazzy stripe of yellow on its livery. This means that unlike the Stereo2 that had some rationalisation of its circuitry to reduce costs a bit and make the amp more competitive, the four channeler here has had the cosmetic change but still has the same insides as before.
And most excellent insides they are too.
I used the amp to help test a posh set of coaxial speakers from CDT Audio and they are a pure SQ product. No real balls nor rort but very sweet and clean and dead revealing of whatever you plug in to drive them. I used a Pioneer DEH-P88RSII headunit and an audiophile CD from Focal, as usual.
I found the beauty and detail of the music coming through with great accuracy and tonal faithfulness. You could hear how many black guys were humming during ‘I want you to want me too’ and you can hear the slap of a hand upon a bongo and hear that the drum is wooden. Tremendous stuff!
Only trouble was, the speakers are rated for sixty watts and the amp is good for 100w into four Ohms and 125w RMS into two, making it a half kilowatt of bass if you choose to use the dedicated asymmetrically-arranged crossovers to drive the low end. You get a bass control adjust socket but don’t have to pay for this in-flight bass upperer-and-downerer if you are a grown up and wish to set to ‘correct’ and leave it. Nutters and bass heads will want to go buy the extra controller that allows you to turn it up and down from the front of the car.
The bass boost is huge at 12dB, which is normal, then also offering a 24dB option, which is bloody huge and will need you to set your gains lower overall but it will be phat! The CDTs would clack nastily if overdriven and the amp could do this with ease. So I wicked it back and allowed the other speakers I had connected, a set of big old six by nines in boxes, get the power, too.
At full wellie with all the gains adjusted and the bass boost on +12dB for the rear channels and the CDT’s actually crossed carefully so as not to send them much if any bass tones, I was able to raise utter Cain in the test room but didn’t lose clarity or definition. The amp is a good clean source of proper muscle for a sensible price and comes with all sorts of things that make you love what you bought, from a window sticker to a key ring to a set of data about your amp and also stuff about other product lines from Vibe, all packed in the best set of packaging in the world, and the amp itself in a little cloth baggie with some Vibe branding upon it.
A very good building block amp and related to some real bass bruisers, which I feel are its natural stable mates and really aught to be next in line for some testing. Not over flash, not over-endowed with stuff you have to pay for, just lots and lots of clean watts in four easy to control pots.
I’m sure their daddy is proud of them.
Sound Quality 8.0
Power Output 9.0
Features 8.0
Build Quality 8.0
Value For Money 9.0
Overall rating 8.4