Morel Ovation 6 Review

MOREL
DOTECH
OVATION6
WHEN PERFORMANCE
SURPASSES PRICE
MSRP: $499.95 MOREL IS NO STRANGER TO THE
PAGES OF CA&E. Moreover, the company
TEXT & PHOTOS
is no stranger to praise. Since the brand
CASEY THORSON
reinvented itself stateside just a few years
back, we've had the opportunity to run sev-
eral 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 cov-
eted "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 wallet-
cleansing $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 con-
siderably lower than those aforementioned
Morel components at a mere (by compari-
son) $499.95, there's no doubt I'm interest-
ed to hear them. So let's get to it.
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IMPRESSIONS
Morel really knows how to make an
appearance. The box for the Dotech
Ovation 6 is simple, artsy, and sophisticat-
ed 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" (approxi-
mately) 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 corru-
gated 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 top-
side of each crossover. The case itself is
nearly a half oval made of black injection-
molded ABS plastic and furthers the
REVIEW
ELECTRONICALLY REPRINTED FROM MARCH 2007
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 encompass-
es 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, horse-
power 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
COMPO-