Vibe Space 3D

Although the strange high midband/tweeter assembly can be purchased separately, the normal way to buy these three-way Space 3D component systems is delineated by the size of the main driver. Either a 5.25 or a 6.5 inch. The biggest set 6.5 inch is reviewed here. although a full set of specifications for the rest of the range is included below.
A three way metal-coned set of components, (tweeters are silk domes) engineered very highly with a great deal of dedicated tooling and brand marking. The tweeter assembly can be mounted coaxially with the small three inch diameter high-midband driver, making these utterly unique. The high/midrange is squeezed out from behind the tweeter assembly with help of a geometrically shaped back plate to ‘waveguide’ the sound out and around.
The passives have smoky see through plastic covers and are designed to be used as a feature item. The terminals on the main drivers are colour coded plastic mouldings encapsulating a grub screw connection for bare wires. The high-mid and tweeter have wires affixed to them that you connect to the passives directly. The chassis of the Space drivers are angular, good looking castings and are crackle finished in a dull grey shade. Shipped with the metal mesh grilles on to protect the 0.15mm thick Aluminium cones, they are held in place by a superb metal gasket that has only four of its eight mounting holes left empty. The other four are populated by the bolts holding the grille in place under the gasket. You can remove the gasket and refit without the grilles in place but as they are just 0.15mm thick-of-cone it is horribly easy to hurt them. In fact this happened to a set that were fitted to their Audi R8 within the first few minutes of contact with the public.
The top roll suspensions of the midbass drivers are described as progressive and are made of PU. (Polyurethane makes good impervious water proofing for cagoules, too!) Said to provide better low volume bass response while preserving high power and excursion capabilities.
The tweeters reach all the way up to the bat-like frequencies at 35khz, which is good for having an HF driver that really is still walking it rather than being strained down at the tones that we can hear. (Incidentally, humankind’s ears are only really designed for being best at hearing your baby cry, so we have huge midband sensitivity but are deaf as posts in the high frequencies compared to mice, deer, dogs, or birds, the last of whom use ultrasonics to sing and listen to.)
They are delivered in a satin-lined presentation case that makes them seem way more than their £200 price tag.
SPECIFICATIONS Space 3D, Space 5 set, Space 6 set
– Configuration Tweeter/High mid, Coaxial/Component, Coaxial/Component
– Speaker size 3inch, 5.25inch, 6.5inch
– RMS Power handling 70w, 100w, 120w
– Peak Power handling 210w, 300w, 360w
– Minimum input 32w RMS, 55w RMS, 65w RMS
– Sensitivity 86dB, 90dB, 90dB
– Frequency Response 2.5kHz to 35kHz, 60Hz to 25kHz, 55Hz to 25kHz
– Mounting Depth 31mm, 55mm, 65mm
– Mounting Diameter 57mm, 120mm, 143mm
– Voice Coil Diameter 20mm, 35mm, 35mm
– Magnet Material All Neodymium
– Magnet Weight 0.3Oz, 10Oz, 10Oz
– Magnet Size 18.5mm x 6mm, 80mm x 12mm, 80mm x 12mm
– Magnet Rating H35, Y35, Y35
Review by Adam Rayner
Vibe’s publicity material is as glossily printed and well written as any that exists in any market. They are fabulously web-aware as well. (In fact at time of writing, I know that there is a window on their site with Latin ‘matter’ copy in it that is put there awaiting an extract of this very review!) Of course, they are rightly proud of their product and like any manufacturer stand behind it with statements like ‘we believe we have reached the pinnacle of in car audiophile sound.’ In their description of the system. Even stating that you’ll never want to upgrade by buying any other system in the future.
Of course, while you can say, ‘well they would say that wouldn’t they?’ and you wouldn’t chide a maker for being proud of their output, I do know that car speakers exist in three way sets up to way more than the number of hundreds these cost, but in thousands. (CDT Eurosport – £1,300, Hertz MLK-3 – £1,700, Rainbow Reference £7,999) So, yes there is plenty of madder costlier engineering that could have been applied.
However, the real skilful engineer can do great things for less money than the next one. That’s why they knighted the bloke who designed the Mini, not the Corniche as the Rolls Royce owner is paying enough for an ‘I should think so, too!’ sort of an attitude to being told how fabulously well made his car is.
I was hugely impressed by all the Vibe signature tooling. A real sign of a successful product is one that can afford to have lots of bits with its name embedded into the components. Decals and stickers or even engraving is one thing but whole pieces like the top gasket of the main drivers, looking so sexy and well made is a real joy-of-possession thing for the Vibe customer.
I have to tell you that I reviewed one of their domestic woofers for Home Cinema Choice magazine. The in-house photographer laid it on its side to snap as it was using a beautifully tooled port mouth and a woofer with a pretty top. They have never pictured a home woofer like it before.
After reading the Hybrid Audio Technologies review and learning that they had supplied their own test enclosures, Vibe asked if they could make some for Space 3D for me to test. I of course agreed but first they had to go off to Germany to Sinsheim for the mobile electronics trade show they hold there each spring. I gather staff had to physically restrain one or two of their keener distributors from taking them away with them to use in their territory as they are like full on HiFi enclosures, with a lower port mouth and crackle finish. The passives are featured in the front panel and they do look lush.
I fired them up on a bridged MTX X Thunder 704 four channel amplifier as it was a) left in the rig and rated very well for both sound quality (which I shame-facedly admitted to being surprised by) and also sheer Wellington and I am one slothful git given the choice. Also, despite knowing their own BlackBox Stereo 4 amplifier is well ‘ard and scored a coveted Talk Audio magazine Best Buy award, I wanted to see how Space 3D would cope on an amp not made by Daddy.
First off, let me say that the Space 3D system is the best speaker set that Vibe have ever put out. Head, shoulders and hairy Moobs above anything else they do. Unfortunately the boxes they were in were not really too clever. I don’t know if their man thought I was a bass head to the exclusion of the rest of the frequency spectrum but they were boomy as hell. I stuffed a towel up the big square ports and that tamed that. Then it transpired that the HF drivers had been hot melted into place instead of using small self tappers in drilled holes or even T nuts and bolts, so when the pressure rose inside the now sealed box, one of them simply stripped a bit of MDF off and popped out to dangle on its wire.
All of which is utterly inconsequential to the review. Fix it, carry on
The metal cones are a special thing and are both light and rigid. I was the original product manager for Acoustic Energy loudspeakers, who restarted the new era metal cone revolution. Metal cones give pistonic motion without flex and if made aright, you get a thermal wicking to the cone which cools so fast that you get a low ‘power compression’ sound with high rise time peaks and disproportionate amounts of bass for a given cone size.
So yes, they go fast and they can produce a big sound. However, I am not as enamoured of the tiny three inch driver as I might be. I feel it makes the whole sound a bit hard under big drive and feel as if the mighty low frequency performance of the set makes the midband seem under-produced.
I played a track from the Focal disc I heard in Mark Turner’s mental Pioneer ODR car (£2,000 for a two way set) at their bash link and found that the difference was less than £1,800 worth. The Space 3D are a tad forceful and aggressive in presentation but are definitely fighting way above their weight class for the price. The tweeters clearly reach up a long way but then since the midbass drivers are so quick anyway is it possible this small driver is answering a question that wasn’t asked?
I would need to spend some serious time and money in an anechoic chamber (well just one wee session would cost plenty) with some Bruel & Kjaer TMI kit and a horribly expensive calibrated microphone to learn more but one thing’s for certain. Any R8 driver who doesn’t invest in a set of these will be getting second best versus the Teknik of what he is driving. They are perfect for R8 and I know for a solid fact that Vibe put themselves on the Audio waiting list a friggin’ AGE ago for their car. I reckon that the Space 3D was designed to go with the R8, even if subconsciously, by the designer who knew where they were to go. Right up to the acoustic signature you need when you have that many horsepower of Lambo-derived hell breaking loose right behind your lucky wealthy head!
They score enough to garner a well deserved Talk Audio Recommended flag.
Overall 8.8
Sound Quality 8
Build Quality 9
Power Handling 9
Efficiency 8
Value For Money 10