Review

Brix Mk2 & LFX 2 Complete Review - Australian Hi-Fi Best Buys - Australia

01 Nov 2002

No prizes for guessing why Krix has redesigned its famous original Brix design! It’s because small speakers are always audience-pleasers, particularly when they’re as well designed – and well-built – as the Brix, and even high-end brands like Krix need an entry-level model.

Equipment

It’s rare to find a high-quality bass/midrange driver in such small speakers, but Krix has bitten the bullet and gone with one from the famous Danish manufacturer Vifa. Rather than use a cheap pressed steel basket, the Vifa TC11 has a moulded ABS chassis that’s reinforced with fibre, for rigidity. Quality is evident in the voice-coil former, which is aluminium, and supports a full-size (25mm diameter) coil. They drive a doped paper cone suspended by a rubber roll-surround. Krix is to be commended for using rubber as a surround material instead of foam. In Australia’s harsh climate, foam has a nasty habit of disintegrating rather quickly! The driver’s large (it’s 72mm diameter and 15mm thick) magnet assembly is not shielded, but its external field is damped by the addition of a flux-bucking magnet.

The tweeter is a tiny, 19mm fabric dome device whose size belies its performance. One reason for the exceptional performance is the use of neodymium as a magnetic material and another the incorporation of ferrofluid to increase efficiency and improve power-handling capacity. Unlike many small speakers, there’s no detail-destroying positive temperature co-efficient resistor in series with the tweeter to protect it, but it’s crossed over at such a high frequency (approx. 5kHz) that it’s hardly likely to need protection anyway.

Look inside any budget speaker and in most cases you will discover the designer has skimped on crossover components, such as using electrolytic capacitors and ferrite-cored inductors (or, worse, no inductors at all!). Not Krix. The Brix Mk2 crossover is certainly simple, but it’s very well made with a single metallised polyester film capacitor, and air-cored inductor and 10 watt ceramic resistor.

The one area where it’s possible to reduce costs without compromising sound quality is in cabinet finish, and it’s here that Krix has taken the obvious opportunity. Our sample had a standard black paint finish, but off-white and timber veneer versions are available. We should note that Krix’s in-house paint facility in one of the best and most technically advanced in Australia, so the painted finish is actually excellent.

The Brix cabinet is tiny, standing just 155 x 256 x 170mm (WHD), for an internal volume of approximately 3 litres. The inside volume is vented (yes, it’s a bass reflex enclosure!) by a tiny front-mounted port that’s 25mm in diameter and 63mm long. The inside of the cabinet is bare, save for a double layer of sheet foam on the inside of the base, just underneath the bass/midrange driver.

If there’s any criticism we could make of the Brix Mk2, it’s that the top of the cabinet projects forward over the top of the speaker baffle, providing an ‘early reflection’ surface for the tweeter. It would probably be better if this projection were cut back level with the grille.

Performance

Krix has got it as right with the Brix Mk2 as it did with the original Brix. The midrange is beautifully flat and uncoloured, with none of the telltale signs that would indicate suck-outs or prominences. Demonstrate this yourself by listening to a selection of female vocalists. On Bonnie Jensen’s new CD, Lucky So and So her voice soars through a succession of standards, finishing with a terrific version of Cyndi Lauper’s Time after Time’. Listening via the Krix speakers, the intonation is rock-solid. Tone production is maintained irrespective of pitch and the level of detail is reminiscent of a studio monitor.

Bass response rolls of rather rapidly of course – you wouldn’t expect anything else from such a small cabinet – but we fancied that Krix has managed to squeeze a few more notes in than the original. Not many, mind you, but every little bit helps! At the top end of the spectrum, the highs were nicely presented, but the treble obviously benefited when the speakers were placed with the tweeters at ear level.

What was simply stunning was the stereo imaging that’s possible with the Brix 2s, particularly if you stand-mount them around a metre out from a rear wall. With some careful positioning, we were rewarded with sound that was almost headphone-like in its spatial treatment of the two channels.

Conclusion

The Krix Brix Mk2 will find applications everywhere. If you want more bass, in a two-channel system it’s simply a matter of adding an LFX 2 subwoofer, which is custom-made to match perfectly. If you feel the need to add a home theatre capability, just add a second pair of Brix as surrounds. The Brix Mk2s image well enough that you may find you don’t need a centre channel at all, but if you must, there’s always Krix’s Centrix range of centre channels.

- Australian Hi-Fi Best Buys - Australia , Greg Borrowman

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