Infinity Reference 6532i Coaxial Loudspeakers

A two-way coaxial from the Infinity Reference series made to look a bit posher perhaps than its stable mates, the recently tested JBL GTO 6528 in the same size. These share a similar set of technologies but as they, like so many really classy speaker makers, offer up the electro-mechanical specifications, or Theille-Small parameters of their midbass drivers, you can compare and see that they are quite different animals on paper and so deserve a listen. But you may be forgiven for thinking bad thoughts about rebadging and branding issues, since both sets have the ‘Plus One’ bigger cones and both have a two Ohm voice coil to show the amplifier, be it in your headunit or a separates job and both have this tweeter switch on the front. On the JBL it is a push switch in/out and says it is a plus SIX dB increase. Of course, being a passive device you cannot ‘increase’ a damn thing on a speaker being fed by watts but you can get in its way, impede or reduce the amount with a resistor. On the JBL GTO speaker it was a full six dB reduction as said and I thought smeared the detail off the tweeter’s sound. On this product, however, the tweeter switch is a slider type and reckons to ‘increase’ the HF by half that – 3dB. They were tried in both positions attenuated and direct with the resistor switched out, or ‘+3dB’. This tweeter is also angled on its pole and can be swivelled. It is shared technology again with the JBL speakers we have seen recently but whereas JBL call it UniPont„¢ and trade mark it for JBL, when used here it is called UniPivot„¢ and also trade marked, this time for Infinity! The pressed steel chassis has fourteen holes around its circumference to fit many kinds of cars’ stock locations as custom replacements. For ‘feature’ fitting, they come with smart grilles made of metal mesh and two plastic mouldings and a neat Infinity badge on the front. They feature a hole for the tweeter to play through. Being a TWO Ohm impedance loudspeaker, these will draw more current from a headunit or regular amplifier than a ‘normal’ 4 Ohm one.
– Power Handling 60w RMS, 180w peak
– Impedance TWO Ohms (normally four, this low load will pull more power from an amp so be careful.)
– Sensitivity 93dB 1w/1M
– Passband 58Hz to 21kHz
– Crossover slope 12dB
– Mounting Depth 60mm
– Cone: Plus One® design for greater surface area
– Tweeter: 25mm, edge-driven textile dome in UniPivot„¢ rotating housing
– Chassis: Pressed Steel with lug terminals
– Complete with: eight screws and eight panel screwclips, gasketing of foam pieces cut to curve shape and window sticker
– Flux density: 3.90T-m
– Suspension compliance CMS (µm/N): 304
– FS: 83.1Hz
– QES: 0.95
– QT: 0.84
– QMS: 7.46
– Moving Mass: 12.06g
– VAS: 7.52 litres
– Piston Area SD: 132.7cm2
Review by Adam Rayner
The Infinity Reference 6532i coxes are a comfy slice more costly than the JBL GTO 6528 coaxes also reviewed and yet while they seem so very similar to each other from their details of manufacture, you can read those specs and see that the Infinity’s midbass is a much wobblier driver with a bigger VAS or air-equivalence in springiness. This means its ‘Fs’ in Hz or the frequency it is happiest to wobble at, it a full ten cycles per second (Hz) deeper than the JBL product. Likewise, to get badass geeky on their case, the Infinity’s even got a couple of square centimetres of extra cone area. Yet while it is specc’d to finish effectively at 58Hz versus the JBL’s deeper 50Hz, this is the driver with the better bass output for those who have no subwoofer.
These are not as aggressive as the JBLs. Rather, they are sweet and accurate and getting absurdly close to audiophillic for the money. I enjoyed them immensely but you can hear the limits of the performance versus the really expensive stuff, with the fastest edges of the ‘s’ sounds Adele makes, or the pishing cymbals on the Spirit of Sound #6 disc from Focal, not quite as rapid and delineated as you can hear on the megabuck tweetered kit.
With most of our hearing centred around the midband and treble zone for sensitivity, we get most of the definition and detail and leading edges even of bass sounds, from the tweeters and you can go on and on paying for them with discernible audible improvements arriving with each price rise. My fave HF tech would be the Bowers & Wilkins vapour-deposited Diamond diaphragm devices in tapered rubbery-mounted isolated tubes.
But the point is that the tweeters in this set are high quality.
They share the front switch idea with the JBL GTO 6528 and I like the fact that Infinity use a slider switch so you can tell just by looking at it as to which setting you are using. The JBLs have a push switch which is not always so easy to see. However, like the JBLs, I found that by switching out the resistor from the tweeter’s path by invoking the ‘+3dB’ nonsense (or rather removing the obstacle) the sound was better, more detailed and yet more likely to fatigue the ears on axis, as again these are meant as stock massive-improver products and not intended as a high end option – they have component sets with 350gramme passive network arrays in boxes for that.
So I was impressed. They are dynamic, sweet sounding, clean and rich with the basso stuff when they have to, despite the tough specification there and above all, they are incredibly efficient and will suck like a carp on a boilie upon your amplifier’s outputs, be they a chip amp in the headunit or a regular two-by-a-few stereo job. Just be warned, if you do hook these to a ‘normal’ or a cheapo amp, they may need wicking back on the gain as they will demand twice the watts the amp is normally asked for at any given point.
Definitely upholding the Infinity reputation for well made and sweetly voiced, these DO share technologies with other Harman brands but they do so with care and aplomb within keeping of the whole illustrious history and personality of the brand. I needn�t have worried, they are everything you expect from an Infinity speaker, including a totally brilliant Value For Money Score. Would still be worth it at £75 a set.
Sound Quality 9.0
Build Quality 8.0
Power Handling 7.0
Efficiency 9.0
Value For Money 10.0
Overall rating 8.6