Morel Virtus 602 2-Way Component Speakers

Speakers: Morel Virtus 602 2-way components
Manufacturer: Morel
Distributor: Flagship Distribution
Website: Morel
Typical Selling price: £599.99
020 8838 8838 (Auto Audio) to order
In A Nutshell
The still reassuringly expensive, yet affordable end of awesome, as far as car speakers go. For Morel stomp on most makes for simply being able to charge proper money for serious engineering. They will never be mass market but then, neither are an awful lot of the cars that the folks who deal with millionaires’ rides, like to choose Morel loudspeakers for. These have wonderful fast sweet and tinkly tweeters and are a very high quality audiophile set, yet with some ability to play loud.
Overall 8.6
Sound Quality 9
Build Quality 10
Power 9
Efficiency 9
Value For Money 7
Recommended by Talk Audio

Editor Review : Morel Virtus 602 Component Speakers
What They Are
A set of two way speakers that are just a whole world upstream of most other makers’ offerings. This is because they are six hundred quid! Thus, each of the sizes of midbass driver, be it a four, five and a quarter or a six and a half, has the full parameters described in the manual. Seventeen other things apart from the eleven ‘˜normal’ ones! They can come as a three-way system and each one can be used with the passive crossover, either the MXR200 or 300 passive, or else most assuredly intended for use fully active. Also, there is a magical silk soft dome fully 3.5inches across, that goes a peach with the tweeters and mids. These usually end up installed in the ‘˜A’ pillars of competition cars in sculpted builds. But this adds two hundred quid and becomes even more rare and exotic to the regular reader.
So, I had the Morel Virtus 602 set, comprising MXR200, MT120HF and Virtus MW6 mid. It has an attenuator for the tweeter, by two or four decibels in truth, by leaving a jumper in place on the board inside, or moving it to one of a couple of other spots, to ‘˜turn down’ the highs a bit each time. I hate the resistor and think I can hear the detail smeared off the top. Like a perfect crystal of calcite, prised from the mud at the shoreline at the Isle of Sheppey. A perfect crystalline point, that once struck and dulled, ruins the whole piece of crystal for me. So I leave the attenuators set to nothing. Like all makers, Morel produce their tweeters to be damn lively, so that they will work well in lots of possible locations. The least attenuated position of the jumpers in the passive crossover, says ‘˜+2dB’, which cannot be an amplification as the passive has no electricity to use to ‘˜plus’ or amplify anything. It is by definition, passive. The driver is no lie down item, though as the silk soft dome runs sweet and fast.
How Are They Made?
Fashioned with high levels of proprietary tooling. I don’t think there is any a part that Morel buy in. Made with exquisite attention to the environment they are going into, with a good shallow mounting depth, compared to Americana built for B52 Whalemobiles.
Here is a deep-detail unpacking video of the two way AND the three-way Virtus set. I had never seen them and could not see through the grille to tell that the three way set has the biggest, sexiest DOME in car audio at 54mm. There is some cool stuff about the mad end gear as well here, and dare I say it, is a nice tour-de-force of Raynerness! Reflections and insane care NOT to reveal a number plate on the awesome cars.. so prepare to see several million pounds worth of cars in ONE car audio installation ‘˜bay’!
http://youtu.be/T423Ui2keWM
How Well Do They Work?
I was delighted when I fired these up, to even hear them, as my battery was on its last legs after three years of abuse as the test rig beastie. But the Kenwood XR-400-4 amplifier I used was well up to the job. And at three hundred quid would be about the right level of spend to match these speakers well.
For they like a bit of power, despite being really pretty efficient. So it could be a good idea to buy these just to upgrade and better use the ‘˜4x50W’ that comes from most aftermarket headunits and yet be happily able to drive them a whole load better once you add that amplifier.
The bass end is surprisingly fat and yet I would not want to use these without even a small eight inch woofer somewhere in the car, or even an under seat wooferator, as they are good but of course lack the bottom octaves. With the big pair of ovals I had in the test rig, I tried at first with crossovers running to keep the deep bass out of the sixes but I need not have bothered. Of course, huge bass track lows would be silly to send, so maybe some filtering of a subsonic nature, perhaps even cutting in, at say 35Hz for the Morel Virtus system. But the bass was smooth and was able to play while the cone was busy doing all sorts of other stuff as well.
But for me, the star of the show has to be the lovely sweet silken dome tweeter. I was playing hippy tunes. A bit of Pink Floyd and a track called TIME, that starts with three dozen clocks ticking, then chiming and finally all their alarms going off. It is one of the all time toughest tests of resolution for a whole system.
The Sony MEX-1000 was up to it, playing a rare SACD with a rare ability, in a single RCA-out unit (go figure, it looks like SACD was there as a simple convenience rather than an audiophile selling feature.) and the sweet little squashed Kenwood XR-400-4 was plenty clean and powerful enough, with a nice rapid rise time, (even on poor voltage) to make the seriously quick tinkly stuff give me goose bumps.
In fact, as only ever happens on a few occasions, I got lost in the thing, listening and musing and so help me, I shed a damn tear. It was a bit embarrassing really.
But my mum burned those circuits to a crisp back in the Seventies when I was a kid and she would broadcast those embarrassing things that are normally saved for fiancés, to the nation. So I tell you now, the emotional response was entire.
I loved these speakers and reckon that they will compete with anything at a price to around £800and if you do get them, try to afford the three ways, as I suspect they are fabulous, with the midband doing its thing that way. In fact, I reckon I shall have to hear some.
Specifications
Speaker System: 2-way component
Virtus MW6 6.5in composite cellular fibre formed paper cone midwoofer
T120 Tweeter with 28mm Acuflex„¢ hand coated soft dome.
MXR200 Crossover Network effective @ 2.2kHz/12dB/Octave
Peak Input Power: 300W
Rated Input Power: 140W
Sensitivity: 91dB/W/m
Frequency Response: 55Hz to 22,000Hz
VIRTUS MW6
Nominal Impedance (Ohms) 4
Power Handling Wrms 140
Max. Trans. Pwr Handling Wrms 300
Sensitivity (2.83V/1M) 91dB
Frequency Response Hz 55-4,000
Resonant Freq. Fs Hz 65
Voice Coil Diameter mm (inch) 54 (2.1)
Voice Coil Height mm (inch) 12 (0.48)
Voice Coil Wire Hexatech„¢ Aluminium
DC Resistance (Ohms) 2.7
Voice Coil Induct. @1kHz(MH) 0.33
Magnet System Double ferrite rear vented
HE-Mag Gap Height mm(inch) 4 (0.16)
B-Flux Density (T.M) 0.65
BL Product/BXL 33.41
Max. Linear Ex./Xmax mm (inch) 3.5mm ( 0.14)
Suspension Compliance CMS – mm/N 0.57
Electrical Q Factor QES 0.99
QTS 0.74
QMS 2.96
Mech. Resistance RMS – Ohm/meter 1.57
Moving Mass MMS gr 5.9612
Equiv. Can Air Load VAS – L (cu.ft) 11.38 (0.45)
Piston Area SD sq.cm (sq. inch) 119 (18.45)
Cone Type Formed paper
Cone Material Composite cellular fibre
Unit Diameter mm (inch) 165 (6.5)
Mounting Depth mm (inch) 61 (2.36)
Mounting Cut-out mm (inch) 141 (5.55)
Net Weight Kg (lb) 0.739 (1.61)
MT120
Nominal Impedance (Ohms) 4
Power Handling Wrms 80
Max. Trans. Pwr Handling Wrms (10ms) 250
Sensitivity (2.83V/1M) 90dB
Frequency Response Hz 1,800-22,000
Resonant Freq. Fs Hz 1,150
Voice Coil Diameter mm (inch) 28 (1.125)
Voice Coil Former Aluminium
Voice Coil Wire Copper
DC Resistance. Ohm 3.7
Magnet System Neodymium
How a three way set looks