CDT Audio CL-6EXT Coaxial Loudspeakers

Two-way coaxial loudspeaker with in-line 12dB per Octave passive crossover and thermal protection device, which is supplied shrunk-wrapped within a length of speaker cable. The pressed steel chassis is well coated in a purple shade and the 0.75in Silk dome tweeter, a swivelling type, is pole mounted and has a mesh metal integral grille. The speaker wire to connect this exits through the rear of the midbass cone’s magnet and the passive crossovers are supplied fitted within another length of wire and are to be wired in line with the tweeter by the installer. You simply connect the midbass to the same speaker wire as this tweeter feed connects to. A sort of semi-Bi-Wire. Although this is obvious to an installer, there is no more instruction supplied with these speakers than a small sheet to show you the correct application of the crossovers for a self installer. There is nothing about how you are supposed to connect both tweeter and mid driver to the same speaker feed line, nor any crimps supplied as Japanese companies do. US companies don’t and yet they do tend to offer some sort of manual. No grilles are supplied.
– Power Handling 90w RMS, 180w peak
– Impedance 4 Ohms
– Sensitivity 91.3dB 1w/1M
– Passband 60Hz to 20kHz
– Tweeter diameter 20mm
– Crossover slope 12dB with tweeter protection
– Mounting Depth 64mm
– Cone: Carbon treated, with Butyl surround
– Tweeter: pole mounted swivel type with wire protruding through rear of midbass
– Chassis: heavy gauge pressed steel with purple powder coating
– Complete with in line 12dB per Octave tweeter passives on lengths of speaker wire
– Grilles not included
Review by Adam Rayner
The ridiculous gulf between the excellence of the engineering and the paucity of the marketing of CDT Audio speakers is actually quite a lovely thing. They are so bloody good in performance, build and appearance but so bloody non-existent in the ‘Yay, whoop!’ self promotion department that the marketing material can lag behind. There is no brochure in existence I’m pretty sure they have only ever used single glossy sheets, like some kind of cruise event flyer. And the speakers we have, the CL-6EXT have an extra letter on the end that I can find nada upon the CDT site about and thus have published the specs of the CL-6EX, with no real way of knowing if there is much difference a ‘T’ makes.
For while some companies spend huge amounts on their packaging and extras to add value and Joy Of Possession, CDT simply use the same box for lots of speakers (with this warning printed under the product sticker, ‘Content of box may vary. See above for actual box content’ and let the speakers do it. I fired these up on the resident reference Pioneer DEH-P88RSII competition head unit and put them on the end of some absurdly high headroom amp channels in the shape of the Vibe BlackBox Stereo4, with 100w RMS per channel and only two channels driven, there was huge headroom to allow for these speakers to shine.
And shine they did. I was sceptical about the shoddy looking wiring but now realise it was just erring on the side of generosity as there will be plenty of surplus speaker cable in any install with what you are given. But the sound is scintillating. Clean and detailed with great presence and timbre. Pick out the number of guys humming in ‘I want you to want me too’ and hear the woody sound and the skin slaps of the bongos at the beginning. The tweeters are fast and sweet and lovely but possibly just a tad over bright. These get posher on CDT speakers as you past the $1,000 point with the brand but for coaxes and at the price of them, this is bonkers SQ and thus crazy value for money.
The bass is tight and rich but has a limit which will quickly be revealed with a nasty clack sound if you go too far. However, the speaker was being driven at around a hundred watts versus its nominal sixty so I forgave it and behaved a little more sensibly after that.
As is always the way with really good speakers, I found myself stopping and just listening to some music for fun instead of getting on and writing the review and that’s always a good sign. Lovely vocal clarity and you get that ‘see the looks on their faces’ thing going on. They really are a coaxial speaker of remarkable fidelity and excellent sound quality. In fact, so revealing and accurate are they that I was also using them to listen to the quality of the Vibe BlackBox Stereo 4 amp I used, which is amazing VFM as well and drove these with great clarity, lack of colouration and accuracy.
But you know what? I reckon if you changed your amp, in this case it’d be from a BlackBox series to the higher price, supercar-aimed ‘Litebox’ series, you would be able to hear the rise in signal to noise ratio between the two products. BB amps are about big power balanced with clarity, the Litebox amps seem to be more about turning on Porsche owners! But the point is, these speakers are nutty SQ and thus easily score enough for Talk Audio to happily recommend them.