 | Home > In Car Electronics > Review of Blam Relax 100RS and Car Audio Centre |
 
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| Cupboard Member Since: 21 Mar 2014 Location: Suffolk Posts: 2971   
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I've had a set of Edge ED204 coax speakers in my 2011 Defender for the last 7 years (installed by the previous owners) which have never been particularly brilliant and I broke them recently. So I was in need of an update.
I was in a bit of a hurry and the normal recommendation of Focals was out of stock. I wasn't after spending a huge amount of money (it's a noisy tin box at the end of the day) but I did want to be able to hear speech and music a bit more clearly. Not louder, but clearer. That lead me to wanting a set of speakers with tweeters to fit in the dash. On 25th May I bought a set of Blam Relax 100RS (S= separate, C = coax) from Car Audio Centre for £119. They were listed as in stock, 2 day delivery, all good stuff. Payment taken on 26th May, but no order confirmation or anything. Anyway, trip away coming up I decide to fix the old speakers and was once again blown away by their mediocrity. Over the next few weeks I got multiple request from Car Audio Centre for a review, and a month after payment was taken on 26th June I emailed them to say "oi, you've taken my money but not delivered anything". I've not had a reply to that email yet. 30th June I had an email saying my order had been dispatched and it then arrived on 2nd July. So review of Car Audio Centre - I guess they did eventually sent what I payed for but communication was bad and the speakers arrive after a huge delay. If I'd known there was going to be a delay of over a month I'd have waited and bought the Focals.  Click image to enlarge I installed the speakers over last weekend. I cut out the grille from the existing tweeter blanks and slotted the 40mm tweeter in, I think it works well. I've stuck the crossovers inside the dash with sticky pads and I just poked the wires fro the crossover in to the factory tweeter wiring. It's a temporary measure that may become permanent! Pretty simple job. Had a play about with the different settings of the crossover. It's either 0dB or -3dB. 0 was far too much, TBH I think -3 is probably too much too. Click image to enlarge Review of sound... It's OK. It's a lot better than the previous speakers that were entirely firing at my shins! Speech is much, much clearer and you actually get some stereo effects that I never had before. However, there's too much top end and you lose backing instruments in the middle. To use an example that I really noticed last night, ZZ Top's "Give It Up". The vocals, drums and main guitar parts come through but the rhythm part just seems to be missing. Now, I have no other car speakers to compare it to, the Defender isn't great from an audio perspective and at home I'm either listening on monitor speakers or a set of Beyerdynamic DT150 monitoring headphones. Those are both higher end than car speakers and it's not a fair comparison. The Blam speakers are better than the ones the replaced, but they're not quite right. The spatial separation of the sound is weird, and I don't know if that's an issue with the speakers or the vehicle. I also think the tweeters need turning down more than they can be. If you listen to the tweeters in isolation they don't seem to be doing much but in combination they're very dominant. I haven't made any phone calls yet to see if the tweeters cause any feedback issues. Anyway, if anyone in East Anglia wants a listen or to compare with theirs, give me a shout! |
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11th Jul 2021 11:22am |
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