Vibe Black Air 5 Component Speakers

Two-way component speakers with cast Aluminium chassis with cut surfaces here and there. The terminals are a screw down type on the midbass driver and the tweeter is housed in a similar feature-cast vein. A metal mesh grille is supplied with a trim ring of cast Aluminium for the mid and there is a good length of high quality flat Vibe speaker cable supplied along with fixings and a window sticker.
The cones are made of fibreglass and have a squared-off dust dome that looks as though it may be the same sort of constructional feature as found on the Lite Air speakers reviewed at the same time but this is purely a ‘looks’ thing. The metal ring around this raised dome piece is a lot like the same feature on the shallow mount product and may also have some structural importance. The chassis of the main driver is heavy duty and shows a pair of shiny edges where large top and bottom plates are built into the structure. It’s held together by engineering-grade Allen headed bolts but the crossovers’ casings, despite looking the same serious build are actually simple interference-fit plastic lids and the time I spent looking for Allen keys to fit the oddly-not-metric-nor-imperial ‘hex heads’ was an hysterically stupid thing to do! It does prove that it looks as real as the real ones of course!
These crossovers feature more than twice the number of component parts as those for the Lite Air products. You get a brace of big air-cored inductors and two capacitors as well as a trio of resistors and a three-way switch so you can place one, two or all three of them in line with the tweeter so as to offer a choice of how much you want to attenuate the output. The terminals are well marked and solid although rather small and fiddly to use.
– 38mm Silk Dome tweeter
– Cast Aluminium Chassis
– Aluminium front gasket ring to midbass driver
– Glass fibre cone
– Polyurethane surround
– RMS Power handling: 100w
– Peak Power handling: 300w
– Minimum input: 50w RMS
– Sensitivity: 90dB
– Frequency Response: 60Hz to 25kHz
– Mounting Depth: 61mm
– Mounting Diameter: 120mm
– Voice Coil Diameter: 35mm
– Magnet Material: Ferrite
– Magnet Weight: 10Oz
– Magnet Rating: Y35
Review by Adam Rayner
Vibe’s Black Air V2 speakers are a hybrid of the best bits of the previous SEK and Black Air V1 speakers – indeed these still bear the SEK labelling upon their sticky-out square edged dust dome pieces. ‘made better and less expensive’ according to their tech dept. The chassis is as big and meaty as any on the market so they have a very high Donald Gennaro Rating. (Obscure Jurassic Park film reference meaning they are weighty.) I found mounting them a tad effortful in the test boxes as they needed to have some woodwork rasping away to make them fit well.
Nothing to worry an end user of course, as you do get a template to use in each product. I really liked the flat Vibe cable supplied and feel it adds a slice of VFM to the whole package. Nice and meaty yet easy to slide under trim. You get four quite good lengths of this, two per woofer. The speakers were played with a Vibe Lite Box Stereo 4 amplifier, set to play bridged with one speaker side each using a pair of summed channels to offer a stated 250 watts per side.
This proved that the power handling of these five inchers is prodigious.
The silk domes are large and have a real ability to cut through a huge bass field as after all, the Vibe story started with Vented Innovative Bass Enclosures and these will be likely to be playing above some Vibe beats.
Of course, being just the regular 130mm size, there is no way they could make deep bass of any weight but the amount of low frequencies they did generate was impressive. The glass fibre cones are fast despite the loading of the mass of the stiffening pieces. In fact these must be part of the high power handling nature.
I played a slice of the Spirit of Sound #6 disc from Focal and gave the speakers some real level, adjusting the gains on the Lite Box Stereo 4 amp to offer some serious power. Definition and clarity were good to excellent with layer upon layer of the guys warbling during ‘I want you to love me too’ and the tiny tings and pings of triangles and brushed cymbals in the bluesy bits. I can see that some would want to lower the potency of the tweeters’ output and the -3dB or even -6dB switch inside the handsome feature passive crossover will definitely be being used by some. However, I enjoyed the power of the high end of these speakers.
I tried them at a lower volume and was less impressed as the high power handling has been achieved at the cost of some low volume linearity. In other words, it gets a bit flat and boring at lower volumes. None of that easy-to-blow, hugely efficient esoterica here. These are made with two power levels in mind, Big or Lots. As you turn them up they go from merely doing it to suddenly coming alive as they have energy in their guts to kick some arse. (Note to non-UK readers: arse = ass) The difference is marked. That said, even at a decent wellie they still had some headroom left for boomy moments and so they will work a treat for those who want all the detail to cut through for dance.
They ain’t especially high of the HiFi but that is to miss the point. It’s Focus ST vs Rolls Royce. The performance and speed are to be respected. They look just bloody fabulous and feel a million bucks. Your girlie friends will love hearing Dizzee Rascal’s vocals crisply and they will stay audible even if you have monstrous bass as well in there.
Clean sound with real power ability and just fabby for the lover of featured rather than stealthy or hidden sound equipment.
Overall 8.4
Sound Quality 8
Build Quality 9
Power Handling 9
Efficiency 8
Value For Money 9