Micra 6 HTiB Build Quality and Construction
The Micra 6 MS Satellite build quality was quite impressive when considering their price
of only $550 for the entire system.
As with most of our reviews, we took the liberty of
dissecting the speakers in order to thoroughly inspect their construction.
The cabinets were
molded Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) thermoplastic.
ABS was likely used because it was
easy to machine, tough, low cost with a high impact strength.
I was surprised to see at least some form of dampening material on the back of the cabinet. The plastic port was glued in place and the woofer was mounted against a rubber gasket, once again surprising me during my examination. The crossover was mounted directly on the back side of the tweeter.
The
speaker cabinets had rounded tapers to provide an attractive modernized
look.
The removable grills fit tightly onto the speaker leaving minimal edge
gaps thereby enhancing their esthetic appeal.
The grill
had a series of ribs running across it's back side.
When we asked the manufacturer about this they indicated that it was
done for several reasons.
One of the reasons included the fact that the grill is injection
molding and the ribs stiffened the grill while producing an
acoustically transparent design without using metal mesh. They went on
to explain that the grilles are removed quite a bit on fast sales
floors like Best Buy, so they wanted to make sure they were durable,
strong, not easily breakable, and sonically as transparent as possible.
The 1/2" Textile dome neodymium magnet tweeter was based on the Teteron tweeter which is found in athena TECHNOLOGIES Audition and SCT series. The MS satellites included one 3 1/2" injection molded Polypropylene cone with rubber surround and 9-oz magnet woofer and was magnetically shielded. The MS center channel had a matching tweeter and two woofers.
MS225 Subwoofer Build Quality and Construction
The athena TECHNOLOGIES MS225 powered subwoofer included the
following features:
- Down Firing, Front Vented Bass Reflex Active Subwoofer
- Frequency Response: (+/-3dB) 30-100Hz
- MOSFET power amplifier - 225 watts - 75 Watts RMS
- Woofer: 8" High Excursion Injection Molded Poly cone
- Front Control for simple level adjustment
- Crossover system pre tuned for improved blending with the MS satellite speaker
- RCA and High Level inputs for flexibility with most audio video receiver
- Built in isolation spikes
I began my study of the subwoofer by removing the 8" woofer from its cabinet. The woofer seemed to be well braced using an injection molded plastic basket. A total of 8 screws mounted the driver to the MDF constructed cabinet. The cabinet appeared to be well constructed but did not offer any internal bracing which I suppose is reflective of the price it is being offered. There was a fair amount of dampening material within the cabinet.
