Morel Ovation 6, Dotech Ovation 6 Review
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MOREL IS NO STRANGER TO THE
PAGES OF CA&E. Moreover, the company
is no stranger to praise. Since the brand
reinvented itself stateside just a few years
back, we’ve had the opportunity to run several of the company’s products through our
daunting tests only to report back to with
enthusiasm. Heck, we liked one set so
much that it landed Morel a spot in our coveted “Best Of” for 2005. In retrospect,
though, all that praise by our evaluators was
for products in the upper echelon of Morel’s
lineup, such as the $500 Supremo tweeters
and component sets retailing for a walletcleansing $900 and $1,150. So I guess the
question needs to be asked: “Can Morel
build an affordable system that performs?”
I was recently sent the Morel Dotech
Ovation 6 component set; a set I hope will
answer my question. With a price tag considerably lower than those aforementioned
Morel components at a mere (by comparison) $499.95, there’s no doubt I’m interested to hear them. So let’s get to it.
MSRP: $499.95
TEXT & PHOTOS
CASEY THORSON
IMPRESSIONS
Morel really knows how to make an
appearance. The box for the Dotech
Ovation 6 is simple, artsy, and sophisticated with its natural, light brown exposed
corrugate packing. A 1” x 1” Morel logo
adorns its topside while the front, rear, left
and right panels get a 1/2” x 4” (approximately) imprinted paper badge with the
system’s model number. There is nothing
cheap about the looks and, at this point, I
would hope that’s an indication of the
product inside.
After running my hand over the corrugated box a couple of times, I lifted the lid
and started pulling out the components.
The Dotech Ovation 6 is your typical 2-way
system using a pair of 6 1/2” woofers, a
couple of 28mm (1.1”) tweeters, and a
crossover duo. Also found was a pair of
modern, highly unique woofer grilles
stamped out of a nice thick-gauge steel
with half-oval cutouts adorning one large
circle in the center and a goody bag of
mounting hardware and accessories that
even includes gaskets for the woofers.
Morel took a giant leap in the crossover
design for their products, at least in terms
of cosmetics. I’ve been told that they look
like little spacecraft, but personally I think
they have a more alien-being appearance,
resembling giant eyes with the two clear
acrylic oval windows snapped into the topside of each crossover. The case itself is
nearly a half oval made of black injectionmolded ABS plastic and furthers the
impression of an alien. But that’s where the
sci-fi ends. Protruding from the straight
edge of the case is a red masked pcb
holding the crossover components and
barrier terminal strip. The woofer gets a
good size air core inductor making up the
-6dB filter, and the tweeter side uses a
smaller iron core inductor and Mylar
capacitor for -12dB filtering along with two
resistors for tweeter attenuation. The
tweeter level can be selected between +3,
0, and –3dB by removing the left window
to access to the jumper.
In their own right, the 6 1/2” woofers in
this set are just as unique as the
crossovers, but not as foreign in look.
Somehow the engineers at Morel figured
out how to stamp a basket out of steel to
some serious depth. Honestly, I can’t recall
ever seeing metal stretched in a manner
such as this — the frame fully encompasses the motor! Sure, you can cast a basket
like this, but this was once a flat piece of
metal, and a thick gauge at that! Morel
calls it a unified one-piece chassis and
claims it was “aerodynamically designed to
reduce sound reflection distortion and
mounting depth.” Behind the cone are
nine semi-circular holes punched through
the metal and perforations on the bottom
to vent the motor.
Under the hood, so to speak, horsepower comes from a double-magnet drive
motor. This creates the force to move the
large, yet lightweight 2 1/8” diameter
Hexatech aluminum voice coil that’s
REVIEW COMPO-
MOREL
DOTECH
OVATION 6
WHEN PERFORMANCE
SURPASSES PRICE
ELECTRONICALLY REPRINTED FROM MARCH 2007
wrapped around an aluminum former.
Using such a large coil format means that
the ferrite magnets actually reside on the
interior to save space. Morel also uses their
unique C.A.R filter (Controlled Acoustic
Resistance), which is an acoustic material
located to the inside of the magnetic rings
(and behind the dust cap) and is said to
improve acoustical accuracy and provide
greater cone control in infinite baffle environments (i.e., the doors of your car).
The woofer cone is made of a composite cellulose fiber that is paper based. It
has a nice metallic look to it and a matching dome dust cap of a different material.
Morel uses an NBR rubber for the surround with additional compliance handled
by a poly/cotton spider.
High frequencies for this set are handled by Morel’s MT-12 Acuflex-coated soft
dome tweeter. This compact driver uses a
neodymium magnet and a large 28mm
(1.1”) voice coil that is said to allow for a
wide frequency response and lower resonance point. The driver is situated in a
plastic housing that incorporates a permanent phase alignment plug sitting above
the dome, the latter also acts handily as a
grille. The tweeter’s plastic housing pressfits into different mounting options, two of
which are surface mount and one, flush
mount. If additional protection is desired, a
mesh grille is also provided that simply
press-fits into a small gap around the driver in any of the three mounting options.
Overall, it’s an impressive design with
thoughtful engineering behind it.
MANUAL
The manual is a 4-page affair that uses a
single sheet of paper folded in half. Words
are few, but the pictures are detailed and
plentiful. Just about every application scenario is covered for mounting the woofers
and tweeters, connecting the system with or
without an amplifier, and tweeter attenuation
instructions for the crossover, complete with
graph. The back page includes an entire list
of parameters for each individual Dotech
Ovation speaker model and even crossover
specifications. Unfortunately no warranty
information included, but a call to Morel’s
U.S. headquarters informed me that it is
three years, dealer installed, and one year,
consumer installed.
SETUP
As I mentioned earlier, the Dotech
Ovation 6 is a typical 2-way set. In order to
properly fit the components, I made new
baffles for my well-damped, 2.25ft
3
test
enclosures. The manual thoughtfully pro-
vides cutout dimensions for both the
woofer and the tweeter (flush mount), so
the new baffles were a snap. I mounted
each pair of drivers within an inch of each
other, with the tweeter above the woofer.
Supplying the amplified signal to this
component system, I wired up an Alpine
CDA-9857 head unit directly to a TRU
Technology C-7 amplifier (conservatively
rated at 125 watts x 4). Channel A was
used for the left components and channel
C for the right, providing ample headroom
while limiting crosstalk. The channels were
level-matched within 0.05 volts. No addition crossovers or processing were used.
I finished up my setup with some basic
listening to determine the best position for
the test cabinets, verify phase and to
adjust the passive crossovers accordingly.
Yielding the best results, I ended up with
the enclosures nearly on-axis in a close
proximity of my seating position and the
tweeter attenuation circuit of the
crossovers set to –3dB. You read that correctly, –3dB. One would naturally think that
the 0dB setting would be the proper
match, but the midranges were a little
tame by comparison to the tweeters at
that level. The lower setting proved to be
an excellent compromise to get that
desired linear response.
REVIEW COMPONENTS
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