JL Audio C2-650X Coaxial Speakers
Manufacturer: JL Audio
Distributor: Celsus
Website: link
Typical Selling price: £169.99
In A Nutshell
A startling experience for those who think that car audio is a load of old boom and tizz. These JL Audio C2-650X loudspeakers sound like the sort of posh home hi-fi speakers that would cost way more than the price tag asked for these. A real slice of the high-end experience, they are beautifully built and the silk dome tweeters feature ferrofluid cooling and damping for an astonishing performance. The bass output is literally remarkable, all but the deepest notes handled with aplomb. Even at £170 they are a 10 for value for money.
Overall 9.2
Sound Quality 9
Build Quality 8.5
Power 8.5
Efficiency 10
Value For Money 10
The C2 650X is a smartly-built product, with a good quality rubber boot over the ferrite magnet
These earn a Best Buy badge within Talk Stuff’s audio genre, one up from ‘˜Recommended Product’ and means they offer a real slice of quality and potency of sound for the money.
Editor Review : JL Audio C2-650X Coaxial Speakers
This set of JL Audio loudspeakers represents entry-level to the high-end. Although as I write, we are in the midst of the Black Friday promotional period, the full retail price of these loudspeakers is £170 less a penny. So the difference in price between these and the most expensive Kickers (KSC 670) in this group test is the same £70 price of the whole mid-price CSC 674 set! At more than four times the price of the beefy MTX Terminator XTR65C, how do JL Audio justify the price?
Before we listen to them, let’s look at the engineering. The basket is stamped steel. Ruggedly shaped, it is extremely rigid at this size of loudspeaker. A decently chunky ferrite magnet wears a nice thick branded rubber boot. And here is the costly bit, that lovely tweeter. It is a 19mm silk dome whose voice coil is bathed in the wonder material called Ferrofluid. For those who do not know, this is like a liquid iron filing solution. It is mind-bendingly expensive and always has been. A tiny amount introduced to the voice coil gap of a tweeter will conduct the heat from that tiny coil almost instantly away to the body of the neodymium magnet. Unlike air, and just like water, ferrofluid is incompressible. This means that the voice coil is also massively damped by this fluid. Because it is essentially liquid ferrous, it is also magnetic and thus transfers the massive magnetic forces from the super-duper rare earth magnet directly to the voice coil. Adding ferrofluid to any loudspeaker dramatically enhances performance. And we are talking an order of magnitude here. A 10W tweeter may now take 100W briefly and run happily at multiples of the non-cooled/damped RMS. And also dramatically improves the break up modes in the higher frequencies. It can get pretty tech, but ferrofluid is the nuts! I now have huge expectations of C2-650X. After all, the silk dome remains the easiest way to get scintillating, delicate, tinkly highs. Those frequencies where the subliminally sexy mouth sounds of vocalists are so eagerly sought by audiophiles.
For at the absolute end of high fidelity, the listener is transported into the very presence of their adored vocalist and I am on record as saying that the bonkers money some blokes spend on loudspeakers is about them closing their eyes and kissing their chosen vocalist in their imagination. OK, that’s a little far out but it does offer you some motivation as to how come a £170 set of loudspeakers can be called ‘˜entry-level’. The next model up is called C3, (no’P.O’ ok) and the full retail is a whopping £330 less a penny. The C5s above that are £430, again that’s less that crucial British penny. We shall get to them in due course.
Right, time for the reckoning. The JL Audio C2-650X speakers were fitted into well damped wooden enclosures and powered from a brand-new Morel four channel amplifier. I bridged this to make two beefy channels the speakers would enjoy. Having now tested four other sets of speakers on this amp, I am deeply impressed and I feel it is of sufficient reference quality to be able to review the rest of the loudspeakers through. First, the video.
This is the fifth set of seven pairs of 6.75in coax speakers I am reviewing. There is still that worry about having the ability to tell them all apart. They call that, the corollary of The Dunning-Kruger Effect, recently described to me by Facebook but from research done in 1999. Wherein, ‘in the field of psychology, the DunningKruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is.’ To quote Wikipedia. Or idiots who think they know stuff.
I have always maintained that any not-deaf person can tell but, there is also this: ‘The corollary to the DunningKruger effect indicates that persons of high ability tend to underestimate their relative competence and erroneously presume that tasks that are easy for them to perform are also easy for other people to perform.’ But the whole issue of worrying about if I could tell where the extra seventy quid Sterling was going, sound-wise, was piffling.
Because these loudspeakers are good. And I mean really good, verging on the awesome. I was on-axis with equal path-lengths to my pointy ears, which always helps but they were bloody amazing. First off, there is that proper stereo soundstage, with instruments, voices and items all being placed where the producer put them. Quite apart from the boxes, this was like ‘˜real’ hi-fi. I played various tracks, from a specially produced CD by KEF, and cranked some power through a brand-new Morel four channel amplifier, bridged into two beefy channels. The JL Audio C2-650X absolutely loved that. They sang. So did Lorde, Will I Am & Britney and Pharrell Williams. Each track was delivered with a real crisp scale and power. Instruments were all separate and discernible and even when playing loud fat bass lines, could hit lower again and reveal how absurdly deep these speakers can play. That lovely silk dome tweeter delivers a delicious level of definition and clarity. And with the ferrofluid loading, it is the heart of sudden details and it feeling louder on high rise time peak sounds, like the leading edge of slap of the bass drum.
The specification sheet of the JL Audio C2-650x describes both efficiency and sensitivity ratings, which are 3dB apart from each other. To be completely honest, I do not think I have ever had a proper explanation of the difference between measuring a speaker’s ability to make music from watts by the 1W/1m method or the 2.83V/1m method. However, I can tell you that the tremendous efficacy with which these JL Audio speakers turn wattage into music is bloody epic. You get a big, luscious, rich, expansive sound filled with emotion and impact. I was bloody impressed.
Yes, these are not cheap but what you get is a key to the door of an experience with genuine emotional involvement. If you like your music to give you goosebumps, this is a bloody great way to purchase some spine tingling loveliness. The JL Audio C2 650X is one hell of a set of speakers for the money. A BEST BUY. 
Specifications
Speaker System: 2-way coaxial
Tweeter: 19mm (0.75in) Silk dome with Ferrofluid cooling and neodymium magnet
Woofer: Injection moulded, mica filled polypropylene cone with butyl rubber surround. One inch voice coil, on Kapton former, flat symmetrical roll spider and ferrite magnet.
Passive crossover is a single high-pass electrolytic capacitor to split the highs off to the tweeter at 6dB/octave
Rated Input Power: 60W
Recommended Amp Power: 15 to 100W per channel RMS
Peak Input Power: 225W
Efficiency: 91.0dB @1/W/1m : 97.0dB @1W/0.5m
Sensitivity: 94.0db @ 2.83V/1M
Frequency Response: 59Hz to 22,000Hz ±3dB