Massive Audio SX6 Two-way Shallow Series Coaxial Loudspeakers

Two-way coaxial loudspeaker with simple 6dB per Octave crossover and thermal protection device, this is from the Slim Series of Massive Audio’s components and coaxes line. A very shallow basket, these are meant to fit where others cannot. The chassis is well coated and the simple highpass capacitor used as a six decibel crossover is also married to a small brown discoidal component which is there to stop hooligans from blowing up their tweeters. Called a poly switch, it turns the HF open circuit if there are too many watts flowing. Thermally operated, I gather the same feature is done with a variable resistive device in the posher passive crossovers of their component (SK)  versions a light bulb! The tweeters are mounted at the apex of the cone rather than on a long pole, in just the same way that Clarion do for the same reason (and for that matter Tannoy, too) of ‘point source’ sound. The idea is that the acoustic centre of the tweeter and the midwoofer are thus in the same spot and this helps imaging. Let’s go see.
– Power Handling 60w RMS, 180w peak
– Impedance 3.6 Ohms
– Sensitivity 88.7dB 1w/1M
– Passband 80Hz to 15kHz
– Tweeter diameter 20mm
– Crossover slope 6dB with thermal poly switch tweeter protection
– Gold plated terminals
– BL: 4.427TM
– F0: 63.313Hz
– QES: 1.199
– QT: 0.845
– QMS: 2.856
– Moving Mass: 16.884g
– VAS: 9.363 litres
– Piston Area SD: 132.73cm2
– Mounting Depth 42mm
– Cone: Mica-filled Polypropylene with Butyl surround
– Tweeter: 20mm mounted at cone apex for point source, with Ferrofluid cooling
– Chassis: heavy gauge pressed steel with black crackle powder coating
– Complete with: eight screws and eight panel screwclips
– Grilles are metal mesh and plastic ring type
Review by Adam Rayner
These are about big bass performance in a shallow space. I played some rock and some dance and then some detailed pretty girly vox stuff through them from Adele, a bass CD and even some Pink Floyd off an SACD for huge-mungous resolution tests on the Sony MEX DV1000.
They sounded really big and rich with a bass end that quite belies their shallow mounting depth and despite the specifications reading a bit low on the efficiency side and also on the power handling side, these really do a creditable job of the lower end from a very shallow-angled cone indeed.
At first I wasn�t that impressed with the performance of the tweeters, thinking that they were where the money was saved, as with some level running, I found they could be a bit spitty and harsh. But oddly enough, despite these being a classic custom replacement speaker with a simple metal mesh grille that you are expected to not really need to use, they do sound far better on axis than off axis, which is the opposite to normal.
However as they are unlikely to be installed into a specially custom built on-axis foot well enclosure or even end up in posh door builds angled up and at your ears, so I feel this may of limited value and benefit.
That said, I was impressed by how fulsome the overall output was and reckon that the price has to reflect some of the engineering used rather than being entirely about the SQ output. They do image very well and that point source stuff does work, making a cheaper tweeter sound better for being more coherent with the rest of the music than normal. So it�s a clever speaker with the real �family� sound of Massive Audio, which is big, bold American and in yer face.
Good for music with edges and boom and beats rather than girls singing in Norwegian close miked.
Sound Quality 7.0
Build Quality 8.0
Power Handling 7.0
Efficiency 7.0
Value For Money 8.0
Overall rating 7.4