Aperion Audio Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid XD System Review

Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid Overview and Build Quality

We're no strangers to Aperion Audio, having reviewed their products in one form or another since 2005. We've experienced the gamut of products - from their earliest Intimus 5.1 system to the 522D-PT Powered Towers, to their latest Intimus Harmony 4B Harmony SD package. In each case we've found them to be an exceptional value with incredible build quality that surpasses most of their peers in the marketplace. This latest review takes the very best 5.1 system they have to offer - their Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid XD (whose 6T tower won our 2008 Consumer Excellence Award) 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 their 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.

In addition the recent cabinet redesign, the drivers have also been completely redone. The crossover is no longer their "HD-X3" version which has been around for several years now (since the x32 and x33 series at least). The new configuration looks to be a custom 2nd order crossover for the woofer and a 3rd order on the tweeter, which part ways at 2400Hz. For the drivers, they are now made from woven fiberglass (all around) instead of a composite or poly vinyl acetate (PVA) material as with older models. 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. With curved corners and an ultra-shiny piano black finish (Aperion calls it simply "High Gloss Black") this speaker looks more like a piece of furniture than a speaker. Normally I request Cherry, but I had already seen that finish with the Intimus 4B Harmony SD system we reviewed last year. Unboxing the 6T Towers was almost a sexual experience. I say this not because of anything deviant, but simply because the speakers come in a felt covering that is tied loosely at the top of the cabinet. Once we had the speaker unboxed we untied the top and the velvet paused for a second, then slid down the speaker like a silk dress. A friend and I stood there with our mouths hanging open both thinking the same thing as we watched it fall. Then we both laughed and continued on.

The towers stand about 41.5" tall and come with a permanently attached beveled base that extends out about 1-3/8" 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. They weigh 70 pounds each, thanks to the 1" thick HDF (high density fiberboard) which makes up the cabinet. Aperion includes 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.

The tower is front-ported and the two-way system is driven by a pair of 6.5" woven fiberglass woofers and a 1" silk-dome tweeter. The drivers are all new for Aperion and everything has been redesigned. The new tweeter, for example, features rear chamber venting that uses multiple rear vents outside the neodymium magnet. In the past, Aperion used a more traditional design with a single vent that went through the magnet’s center. The new tweeter maintains the integrity of the magnet and gives it a stronger motor structure that delivers a lower resonant frequency. The idea was that the tweeter could have a lower free-air resonance so that it could play lower and better blend with the mids. This is a huge improvement over Aperion's past products and results in more accurate midrange performance.

There was ample polyfil inside of the cabinet and the port, which is flared on the front only., This allowed us to see that it extended all the way down the rear of the speaker. The speaker has what I would refer to as a medium sensitivity rating of 91dB SPL at 1W/1m. This means that it can play reasonably loud with even entry-level amplification, provided your room isn't big enough to host a circus.

Intimus 5DB Dipole/Bipole Surrounds

There are numerous reasons to use dipole surrounds for movies. We won't go into that here (except for a quick Editorial note reminder below) but Aperion Audio gives you the benefits of dipole with the added advantage of adjustable bipole mode. What that means is that movie lovers will be able to have a speaker that simulates a speaker array, but music lovers can flip them into bipole mode and enjoy more direct sound for multi-channel albums.

Editor's Note: To reduce confusion, try to remember that Dipole speakers Diffuse the sound by firing the speakers Differently (one goes out while the other goes in; this is called firing "out of phase"). With Bipole speakers Both drivers fire at the same time.

We performed all of our music listening tests in Bipole mode and listened to movies in Dipole mode. There is a switch between the tweeter and woofer on each surround that flips the circuitry inside to properly invert the drivers' phase. These speakers have the same woven fiberglass drivers, though 5.25" in size as opposed to the 6T's 6.5" woofers. The silk-dome tweeters are mounted vertically, which gave the speaker a more directional dispersion. We found this to be better for music and not terribly detrimental for movies when the speakers were correctly placed at either the sides or behind the listening position at just above ear level. The 5DB speakers are about 7dB less efficient than the 6T towers, which may result in some higher surround channel levels needing to be set in your receiver's settings. This didn't seem to affect the sound in the least, but we thought it interesting to note.

The rear of these speakers features the familiar Aperion design, with raceways for allowing cabling a place to go when mounting these 17 lb speakers directly to the wall. Instead of keyhole mounts, the 5DBs come with a bracket that gets fastened flush to the wall. Be sure to locate a stud if possible for at least one of the mounting points. If you can't do that, we recommend self-tapping drywall anchors. The mounting system isn't the easiest to use, but it should work well and allows a nice finished appearance. As with all of the speakers we tested, the 5DBs come with high-quality gold-plated 5-way binding posts that can handle any kind of connection imaginable.

Intimus 6C Center Channel

Aperion's flagship center channel has always been a fascinating design to me. If you step back, you'll see it as a well-designed two-way speaker that is vertically-aligned, closely matching the dispersion of the left and right towers. Additionally, Aperion adds a couple of 6.5-inch woofers to round out the bass response. So it’s a three-way speaker that is a timbre-matched design with correct dispersion and extended low-end response to get a better blend with the subwoofer. The 6C has the same 1" HDF construction but is a sealed design (there's no port). The nice thing about a sealed Center channel design is that those who are required to put it into cabinetry or alcoves will be able to do so without fear of blocking a rear port. And of course with a Center channel, you don't want to waste valuable front-side real estate on a port either. It's a decent design and one that resulted in a natural presentation with a surprisingly low frequency extension (we believe it got down to every bit of its stated 55Hz response, far below the 80Hz crossover frequency we set for the system.

Aperion Bravus 12D Subwoofer

The build quality of this sub really surprised us. Not in the "wow, they actually did something right" sort of way, but the "holy cow, our readers really need to start checking these out" sort of way. So many other Internet brands get recognition for subwoofer performance and build quality, but I think we might need to take a second look at the 12D as a new stand-alone contender. The sub has two 12-inch aluminum high excursion drivers with rubber surrounds that were durable and nicely stiff. Aperion supplies Bravus 12D owners with 4 metal carpet spikes and footers, 4 rubber feet, a remote control and grill removal tool. The AC power cord is removable, making it easy to move the sub around if needed or, if you're so inclined, you can experiment with all those esoteric power cables that cost a ton of money and typically do anything beneficial.

A 500 watt rms BASH amplifier drives the system and the sub supports line level and speaker level inputs. There is also a dedicated LFE input which will save many users the need for a Y-cable splitter. On this sub the left-right inputs are for full range line-level signal, perfect for those who have legacy receivers or integrated amplifiers without a subwoofer output.

What you see here is it - other than power, the rest is via software control

Oh, back to the remote. Yes, you can (and must) control everything via remote control or the side-mounted LCD screen and directional control pad. You can actually set up presets for Movies, Music and Games and recall them as desired to adjust the subwoofer level for those modes. This is excellent since I frequently use different subwoofer levels for music and movies. With gaming, all bets are off - crank it up! If you're a true audioholic, you'll program these into your universal remote control's macro commands. There is no analogue pot control on the rear of the sub for setting volume, nor is there a phase switch or high-pass crossover adjustment. Everything is done via software. I'm not a huge fan of this, as it seems unnecessarily complicated, but I can appreciate the trade-off in order to gain the functionality of having the settings and not requiring a separate video display to use them.

The remote has controls for menu navigation and selection. It also gives the user access to Power (On/Auto/Mute), Mode selection (Music/Movie/Game discrete buttons), and Volume. The remote is versatile and does a lot with its minimal buttons. While the up and down arrow buttons control volume normally, hold down the Enter button for 3 seconds and you'll get into the menu system. At this point the four directional controls will be used to scroll through and select menu options and settings.

About the menu system. By using the remote, you can enter into Setup Mode for the Room EQ (1-band parametric equalizer) or customize each of the three listening preset modes (Music, Movie and Game). Just hold down the Enter button for 2-3 seconds and you can set the parametric EQ and configure each of the preset buttons to your liking.

Parametric EQ
For this mode, you can select the phase of the sub (0 or 180 degrees, no increments), the parametric EQ frequency (30-90Hz in 10Hz steps), EQ Width (Narrow, Normal, or Wide), and the EQ Level (+/- 6dB in 1.5dB increments). At the end of each menu system you can save and store the new settings. What you'll want to do with this sub is locate the most active frequency peak in your most common listening position. You can do this with a test CD or simply by playing a subwoofer sweep that can be found on any THX DVD. When you hear that peak, take note of the frequency and see if dropping it 3-6dB helps even out the bass response in your room. We're betting this feature will help lots of consumers get better bass response overall. As always, we don’t' really recommend boosting, stick with cutting and you'll be better off 90% of the time.

Presets
For each of the preset areas you can select the Crossover frequency (50-150Hz in 10Hz steps), and Low Bass Adjust (this is a +/- 6dB level control). In this way, we could set a strict 60Hz crossover for music, but flex into an 80Hz crossover for movies to give us more bass, but also a smoother integration of the surrounds. We could also increase our sub level for movies by 3dB in order to deliver a bit more bass. For music, we wanted the bass to be a bit more controlled and subdued. It's a flexible system and one that we feel will get a lot of use from tweakers... and people who like to press buttons (but I repeat myself).

Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid Listening Tests and Conclusion

For this review we utilized the complete Aperion Audio Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid HD 5.1 system. This includes the two 6T towers, 6C center, two 5DB surrounds and Bravus 12D subwoofer. There are three principle issues when positioning a 5.1 system: Placing the mains for best imaging and frequency response, positioning the surrounds optimally for the room, and locating the subwoofer in the best possible location to minimize room modes. What surprised us the most was that the Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid HD system was incredibly easy to set up. So much so that I spent more time convincing myself that no better placement was possible, then I did actually placing the speakers in their initial positions.

The room we were in had 10 foot ceilings and was about 18 feet deep and opened up into a dining and kitchen area, making it essentially 45-50 feet wide. This is a medium-sized room in THX language, but a big room in terms of the average home theater. I positioned the 6T tower speakers wide enough apart (about 55 degrees) to give us a nice soundstage. Toe-in was minimal and the speakers performed best in that configuration compared to completely straight or fully toed-in to the listening position. Once we were configured we calibrated levels, set the proper distance delay, popped in some music and let the system fly at near-reference levels.

DTS: Eagles - Hell Freezes Over
We started with my favorite track "New York Minute". Don Henley's voice held that gritty natural sound that characterizes this song. It carried all of the texture I expected, but didn't crisp over during intense passages when Henley pushed his verses to the top of his range. The song stayed true to life and the effect was of having Don deliver an intimate performance for myself and a friend who were enjoying the experience. The sax solo came through with a slightly brittle top end, but I could easily attribute most of this to the room acoustics which were best described as reflective (drapeless and with drywall on three sides). Our ears eventually broke in and compensated for the room - a physiological miracle of human design that, thankfully, results in the ability to evaluate speakers in almost any room or environment with positive and fairly consistent results. The Bravus 12D subwoofer had a decisive thump that just seemed to blend perfectly into the song. Walking around the room I could hear the ebb and flow of the bass due to the standing waves and room acoustics, but I would swear that the Aperion system had much less problems than many other speakers we've tested to-date. "Every seat a good seat" is THX' motto, and the Aperion system, and especially the Bravus 12D subwoofer seemed to help that along quite nicely. We couldn't find a truly bad seat anywhere within reasonable listening distance of the mains.

"Seven Bridges Road" blended perfectly in the room, with the vocals form the falsetto-belting Timothy B. Schmidt combining beautifully with Joe Walsh in the surrounds. Those vocals then melted into Henley (coming from the Aperion 6C center channel), and Don Felder and Glen Frey across the front mains. The effect was intoxicatingly perfect and while you could pick out each artist, the combined ingredients would make Chef Ramsey smile with pleasure.

DVD-Audio: Toy Matinee
The first track, "Last Plane Out" had well-anchored vocals and the thunderous sub really hit you in the chest (while this sounds violent, it was totally awesome at high playback volumes). The central guitar break was absolutely like sitting in the control room during the session and you really got the sense that every bit of detail this recording had to offer was being faithfully reproduced by the Aperion 6T towers. In this song in particular, the soundstage was shown to be much wider than the room and the imaging of these speakers was above-par, with instruments able to be easily picked out with precision.

"Things She Said" is a song I like to listen to when I'm evaluating the smoothness of a subwoofer. There is a sequence of drawn out bass drops that occurs in the intro and first verse and the Bravus 12D/6T combination rendered it smoothly, with its gradual dips and valleys. With other systems, I've heard this intro drop into oblivion, but with the Aperion 6T-DB Hybrid XD system the bass stayed on track and every note swept through.

"There Was a Little Boy" opens with a piano, after which the guitar and percussion tracks dive into the surrounds. In Bipole mode we actually found that much of the side-mounted surround information was being directed to our ears from the rear wall, due to reflection. This had a very pleasing and immersive effect that we felt was really enjoyable and added to the track's appeal. The piano had a lot of midrange detail and the 6T's seemed to bring out a three-dimensional reverb that filled the room and gave serious depth to the soundstage.

CD: Seal (1991)
I only use this CD for one thing and that is to test track 3 at 5:15. "Crazy" has some crazy subsonic bass frequencies after 5 minutes into the track that most systems simply won't reproduce. The first time I heard the track was in a car audio system after a subwoofer had just been installed. I had been listening to that CD for several years and had never known that there was so much bass information near the end of the song. Since that day Seal has followed me everywhere I want to listen to low frequency performance. The Bravus 12D subwoofer pumped out the bass hits efficiently and with much control. I heard no breakup and the pounding my chest took told me that this sealed design was still putting out enough output to cause much tactile response - even in this rather large listening space. It only took a few passes before I was convinced that this subwoofer might need a follow-up review all of its own. After the $1099 Bravus 12D, I really wanted to know if it might not be a sleeping giant to take down some of the Internet brands that we hear so many people talking about. I certainly would like to see a shootout and might have to arrange something like this down the road.

DVD-Audio: Porcupine Tree - In Absentia
Porcupine Tree In Absentia is a bright album that has a lot of high energy tracks. The reason we like to test with it is to see if we can tax a tweeter and generate output that would be deemed fatiguing to the ears over time. If you have a speaker with a cheap tweeter, this album will cause you pain - and fast. In "Blackest Eyes" liquidy vocals poured forth from the mains while vibrato guitar issued from the surrounds. When the chorused vocals kicked in and filled the back of the room I knew that this system had good balance and could be listened to for hours on end. Bass guitar was clean and rolled out with a clean medium-toned performance from the front. I really liked the control this song displayed and the Aperion's allowed themselves to be led along, starting and stopping with the music while not blurring the sound or becoming muddy.

"Trains" has a super clean vocal that was slightly left of center (on purpose) and the gentle falsetto drop of the chorus filled the room with reverb-laden lead vocals that quickly had us misplacing 3 minutes of our lives before we even realized what had happened. These speakers are sweet to listen to. ".3" leads off with a bass accompanied only by a windy pad. The effect is an authentic bass lick that repeats over and over. What's nice was its revealing fingering and nice extension. Again, the transition from the mains to the sub was almost seamless, making this one of the most well-integrated systems we'd heard in some time.

Conclusion

After listening to so much music, we barely had time for an official evaluation of movies, but we had watched several and found the results to be more than a little satisfying. Explosions, like those in U-571 and Heat, were off the hook and dialogue was always crystal clear from the Intimus 6C center channel - something that made intelligibility a serious strength of this system. In a nutshell, movies were a blast (quite literally sometimes). The bottom line is that the Aperion Audio Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid XD system is one of those systems you'll get hooked on quickly. There's simply no way to miss how well they mesh together into a cohesive system and how well they handle lots of output without compressing the top end or losing control over the bottom frequencies. I wonder how well the system would do with two subs - I suspect that would be an upgrade many users might want to consider for even better bass integration.

About the only concern with these speakers is that 'they give what they get'. If you feed them compressed, high-energy music or poorly-recorded material you're going to be assaulted back with fatiguing results. If you send them high resolution audio, you'll be in for hours of pleasing listening enjoyment. This is a well-rounded system that is sure to please for both music and movies. At just over $3700 for a complete 5.1 system that doesn't really skimp on anything, this is not only a good-sounding system - it's a bargain.

Aperion Audio
MSRP: $3,769 shipped
http://www.aperionaudio.com

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The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

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Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Appearance
Treble Extension
Treble Smoothness
Midrange Accuracy
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Imaging
Soundstage
Dynamic Range
Fit and Finish
Performance
Value