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Summary
by Audioholics.com
Every time we’ve review a product from Aperion Audio, we’ve found it to be an exceptional value with incredible build quality.
The Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid XD is the best 5.1 system Aperion Audio has to offer and drives it hard to see if it can stand up under fire.
Build Quality, Features
One of the first things anyone will notice about Aperion Audio speakers is the weight. They are heavy. Made from 1-inch-thick HDF (high-density fiberboard), these speakers pass the “knock test” with flying colors and are incredibly inert.
This new series has rounded edges, and we received a pair with the new “high gloss” piano black finish. The gloss was so perfect it was a veritable black mirror in our listening room, making the speakers out to be more pieces of furniture than audio instruments. Spouses everywhere will rejoice and should be more apt to allow these in their living rooms as a result.
The drivers have also been completely redone. The crossover is no longer the “HD-X3” version that has been around for several years now (since the x32 and x33 series at least). The new configuration looks to be a custom second order crossover for the woofer and a 3rd order on the tweeter, which part ways at 2400Hz.
The drivers are now made from woven fiberglass (all around) instead of a composite or poly vinyl acetate (PVA) material. The notable exception, of course, is the Intimus subwoofer, whose dual 10-inch drivers are aluminum. Those are some of the global changes, but let’s look at each speaker individually.
Intimus 6T Towers
The 6T Tower Speakers are simply delicious to look at, featuring curved corners and an ultra-shiny piano black finish. The towers stand about 41.5-inches tall and come with a permanently-attached beveled base that extends out about 1.375 inches around the cabinet. The base is finished in the identical high gloss black and provides a bit more stability to the speaker, though not nearly as much as a good pair of outriggers.
Each 5T Tower Speaker weighs 70 pounds and features height-adjustable carpet spikes that can be affixed to the bottom of the base to anchor the speaker to the floor and provide stability on carpet. If you have wood floors or tile, you can opt to not use the spikes at all, or use the provided footers.
Performance: 4.5 out of 5
Value: 5 out of 5
Price: $3,769
Pros: Luscious cabinets and build quality | Excellent low frequency definition | Free shipping, no tax, and in-home trial | Transferable 10-year warranty | One year full price trade-up program
Cons: Unforgiving to overly compressed music | Can’t bi-wire the speakers | Cabinet footers are a bit blah
You can’t compensate for music that’s been compressed and it’s the reason that mastering engineers request files that haven’t been compressed once the audio mix has been completed.
Even during the mix process once a file is compressed (say an acoustic instrument like a drum for example) you can’t uncompress to restore its dynamics. You have to start over again with the raw file.
Robert Archer
Does anyone know if an AVR can compensate for “overly compressed music”? The review states the speakers are unforgiving to compressed music, but I know many AVRs contain features designed for enhancing 2-channel audio, such as Pioneer’s 2PQLS and Yamaha’s Compressed Music Enhancer.
Or are there some speakers that are simply no good for compressed music?
Thanks to anyone who responds.
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I wanted to further clarify on the topic of compressed music.
Compression is done to artificially make a track sound louder and/or more even and balanced.
Once the waveform of the file is compressed you squash the dynamics of the content down to a level to match the rest of the content.
every track has some sort of compression whether it’s an electric guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals or drums.
Some compression isn’t bad and an engineer that knows how to use it can really make something sound fresh and punchy, but when a track is overly compressed to make it sound good on a set of iPod earbuds it can destroy the dynamics and clarity of the music.
Metallica’s last album is rumored to have as much as 10dB loss of dynamics and that its Rockband recordings are actually more dynamic than its last CD.
In consumer electronics there are technologies like the Pioneer solution that I believe to work to reclock and eliminate the jitter problems associated with digital audio.
Ayre Acoustics has a good white paper on the topic that it uses to educate dealers and consumers about jitter.
Jitter is however a completely separate issue and it has to do with the transmission of the digital data, and it’s unrelated to compression.
Other more well known technologies include oversampling and upsampling, which basically work to eliminate data reading errors and in the case of upsampling, apply algorithms to artificially create higher data word lengths and sampling rates.
The CD standard is 16-bit/44.1kHz and upsampling offers levels as high as 24-bit/768kHz.
All of these technologies however cannot restore those compressed dynamics.