Blaupunkt Velocity Vb 800

For what is just a pair of eights in a box, this is a stylish and well thought out item. It has an ovoid race-track cross section, with a brushed metal wrap around its girth and end pieces also in the same brushed metal. The edges are rubber armoured and the eight inch drivers, which have only two Ohm coils (as against the normal in-car four Ohms rating) can show a choice of many hook-ups as they can be connected via the two pairs of binding posts, rather than their being internally connected to show a simple four Ohm load. They can be thus ‘seen’ by an amplifier as said four Ohm load by series connection or even show a single Ohm with parallel hook-up or just connected as a pair of two Ohm loads to a single channel each of a stereo amp fed in mono. This is enlightened and simple design and shows that Velocity have thought about the end user. Above the dual paired binding posts on the rear (which can accept a heavy duty speaker cable) there are two screw connections for the 12V DC input. This draws only a small 120mA current and lights up the logo inlaid on the shiny piano-black plastic front of the unit as well as lighting up the two clear cut-plastic guard pieces that protect each woofer. A handsome decal is applied underneath but this is not seen in normal use, as if laid that way up, the logo is inverted. There is a large single gas-flowed curvy-mouthed port at the rear and the unit comes supplied with straps and fixings. The manual is basic although it does describe an empirical and non-technical method of setting the crossover based on what you hear. The product comes with a free European Mobile Multimedia Association competition music CD and a flyer about EMMA.
– Frequency response: 30Hz to 500Hz
– Power Handling: 2 x 150w RMS
– Two 2 Ohm impedance eight inch drivers
– Net Volume 43 Litres
– Illuminated logo and clear plastic subwoofer guard pieces
– Separate 12V DC connection terminals for illumination, which draws 120mA
– Injection Moulded Polypropylene cones
– Mounting depth 211mm
– Efficiency: 93dB 1w/1M
– Dimensions (WxHxD) 591 x 276 x 360mm
– Mass: 11.5kg
– Complete with fixings, sturdy webbing straps with buckles, EMMA sheet and free EMMA competition CD
Review by Adam Rayner
Definitely designed to be seen, with bits that light up in blue, this is the sort of product you can build a whole boot build around. To get right to the point, you can ride your mates around with your new Velocity bass system and then after they have respected your lows you get to show them how it looks. It’ll be like a blue version of the scene in the Tarrantino movie Pulp Fiction when they open up the case and it glows Golden!
The illumination I have seen in the past on cheapie stuff has been weedy and weak, yet the Velocity Vb 800’s lights are like a bloody blue Las Vegas. The clear pieces over the woofers are ground-edge cut such that the light they receive is really well distributed, then of course they are mind bendingly bright. The inset logo is lit in Blau blue but the model number ‘Vb 800’ glows in bright white. I love it. I will admit at first that despite the pleasingly dense and weighty feel to this enclosure, I was a bit sceptical. I feared that the output would be polite rather than forceful but I was wrong.
I used the headunit and six by nines on the Odyssey PC925 super-duty battery and the Vibe BlackBox 5 Class GH monoblock amplifier to test the unit.
Carefully
The sub’s terminals were hooked up using banana plugs as I wasn’t driving I would use the screw down element of the binding posts for proper installed use if I were you. A short section was hooked from one coil to the other from red to black and the single speaker wire from the amplifier was hooked to the other two terminals. I turned the gains way back and gently introduced the Vb 800 to a nice man called Neil. Mr. Case is in fact the Bass Mekanik and his track ‘Operator’ has savage throb and really sweeping melodic changes to the bass notes. A real test for a nutty woofer let alone a box of two eights.
It took absurdly offensive amounts of bass and watts to finally begin to overdrive the Vb 800 and at the first sign of any distress, I wicked back. Adjusted finally, it took a fat slice of gain, some quite low crossovery and even a spud of bass boost from the clever features of BB5. It was quite startling as my preconceptions crumbled. I really thought I had re-mapped my feelings about the Velocity brand but not since the Weapons-grade subwoofer driver that won an award in Fast Car, have I had such a slapping around the guilt gland. I thought I was up to speed. As well as looking really cool but not in a cheap way, the bass can track fast notes and in the eight inch size can drop to really quite bizarrely low and weighty tones. The suspensions of the woofers are wide and fat and they are able to move a long way. However, there is also really excellent box design going on here as the fat pipe in the back is so well tuned to the speakers it is married to that the cones do not seem at first to be really moving much at all. You can only tell once the bass is playing with some meatiness.
Best in smaller cars, perhaps, I now really want now to feel the effects of a ten incher as well, the Vb 1000. I can infer that the output of that would be impressive, which got me thinking. Four of the VB 1000 boxes would come in at under a grand (they are under �220 each) and would look awesome as well as giving you eight tens, enclosed and lit beautifully. I’d love to hear a big van (A sprinter by Mercedes) with a floor to ceiling wall of lots of them!
But just one in your car will enable you to feel the richness and texture of your mids and tweeters all the better and enhance the experience in all directions as any true sub-bass system should do. It is well designed, sounds great and looks like it should cost a minimum of �200. That it is less than �180 is definitely deliberately aggressive low pricing to bite a piece out of the market, as this unit could be used for sound off competition. You would have to mess about a bit with placement as you would for a Bazooka tube and you will get competition-quality bass. Simply plug and play where you want it to look best and it will do a rocking job.
A well made, designed and sounding product that easily earns its coveted talk Audio ‘Recommended’ flag.
Sound Quality 9.0
Build Quality 9.0
Power Handling 8.0
Efficiency 9.0
Value For Money 10.0
Overall rating 9.0