Alpine Component Set - Test Report

by CAE, Jul 01, 2002

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On jazz, I found the SPR-176A's had good ambience on percussion and the drum kit. On most of the tracks I found the piano reproduction to be a little "boxy," and small sounding. Yet the room ambience was always well above average with all of the musical tracks that I selected.

From smooth easy listening to METAL! Rage against the Machine's "Know your Enemy" is fun and energetic on the reproduction. The male lead vocal is a little thin sounding and could use more chest. Metallica's "Ride the Lighting" is reproduced with fast and detailed double bass and excellent guitar playback.

The Alpine SPR-176A component speakers do so many things good in the bass all the way to the midrange, that it is hard to complain about the high frequency deficit. I enjoyed my time listening to the Alpine SPR-176A's and with a retail of only $280.00 a pair, they are a deal.

PARAMETERS   Alpine SPR 176A Fs Hz 72.52 Re Ohms(dc) 3.3 Qms   14.32 Qes   1.025 Qts   .957 Vas(Sd) liters 6.594 Mms grams 11.859 Cms mM/Newtons 406 Bl Tesla-M 4.17 SPLref(Sd) dB(2.83V) 86

  Points Alpine   Possible SPR-176A Sensitivity 10 8 On axis response 10 9 Off axis response 10 8 Total Points 30 25

  Points Alpine   Possible SPR-176A Overall Sound Quality 20 15 Tonal Balance 10 8 (above 80Hz) Low Frequency Extension 10 10 Clarity at Low Volume 10 6 Clarity at High Volume 10 7 Image stability 10 9 Listening fatigue 10 8 (moderate volume) Flexibility/Ease of installation 20 15 Total Points 100 78

On Shoanna Z's breakout rap album the deep bass extension is quite remarkable through the SPR-176A when I play "NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN..." which opens with a powerful 40Hz bass line. The vocal layering and clarity are excellent. I also listened to "Quotable Quotes" from this album to test the spoken male voice. The Alpine SPR-176A's were very rewarding with three-dimensional placement of the person speaking and separation and depth of the musical background track.

Next, I plugged in some classical music from Telarc's 20-bit recording of Schubert's Symphony #9, "The Great." This speaker has smooth and realistic midrange, bass and midbass responses. The string bass has good authority and definition. The violins, violas and cellos were great! The brass section is good and solid, but lacking in the upper frequency overtones, leaving the brass a little too "brassy" sounding.

Mounting the speakers has also been thought through well. Many cast frame speakers have large flanges that make them very difficult to mount in factory holes. The Alpine woofer has an outside diameter of 6.5" and a mounting diameter of 5.75", making it fit standard holes perfectly. Its depth of 2.75" is a bit much for compact cars, but it should drop in to your SUV just fine.

The silk dome tweeter is simple, easy to install and has the smallest possible size for a 25mm dome (i.e., it doesn't look like an afterthought when mounted in your door). There is a provision for both flush and surface mounting via a unique mounting ring that tightens down to the door panel by threading onto the outside of the plastic housing.

The crossover could be seen as just another variation on the rectangular box theme. However its shape is smooth and elegant; it is made of a dark smoked plastic that is nearly completely opaque, giving it a very high quality (price) appearance. Inside the crossover strikes the same balance. Good quality components (mylar caps and air core inductors), and a simple and functional design (12dB highpass with polyswitch protection, 6dB lowpass).

So now the question is, "Do they perform as well as they look"?

With all of the obvious attention to engineering as well as cosmetics, the answer of course is yes.

The testing was done on a MLSSA system using ACO pacific 100kHz. mics., a class A lab amplifier, and ultra high grade cables. The speakers were mounted in an EIC baffle accurate to 200 Hz. and frequencies below 200 were tested by the near field method and spliced to the 1 meter responses. Parameters were also tested using MLSSA using the fixed Mmd method. All of the response graphs were exported to LEAP to make their graphic output higher quality.

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