Car Audio Buff

The RDd65cs is Phoenix Gold’s 6.5″ component set from their latest Radial SD line of products. The Radial SD line has amplifiers, subwoofers, coaxials and component sets. The RSd component sets’ features are listed below.

Mid-bass Drivers

• Injection Molded Aluminum Plated Grained Polypropylene Cone
• Butyl Rubber Surround
• Flat Linear Roll Spider
• Rigid Powder Coated Anti-Resonant Steel Frame

Tweeters

• Silk Dome Tweeters
• Protective Phase Plug
• Pivoting Tweeter
• Flush Mount or Surface Mount Capability

Crossovers

• CAE/CAD Designed
• Absolute Phase
• High Order Asymmetrical Design
• Tweeter Adjustment (0, +2dB)

RSd65cs Specs

Power Handling (Minimum RMS/Peak): 5 watts/120 watts
Impedance: 4 ohms
Frequency Response: 45 Hz – 20 kHz
Sensitivity: 91 dB @ 2.83V/1M

Review

The package includes an owner’s manual, a warranty card and a template for the woofer cutout. The woofers have multiple-bolt patterns which should fit most standard and non-standard bolt configurations. It also has an optional black grill. The soft-dome tweeters can be swivel-mounted via two differently-angled pedestals, but you can also use the bare tweeter for factory mounting or flush-mounting. The crossovers have a translucent cover wherein you can see the components neatly arranged. The speaker terminals are gold-plated.

Due to installation and car acoustics playing a very major role on how the RSd65cs can sound, we’ll try to just criticize the basics—those that we think should stand out regardless of the install (assuming at least a good standard is applied).

The bass response is really good. They had a good mix with the instruments and vocals. Almost too “just right” in fact. Bass this good from out of the box should be really easy to play with and tune.

The highs can sound a bit too bright at times especially for cymbals and high notes of wind instruments—on both crossover-tweeter settings. The set can also sometimes lose valuable detail on complex recordings like orchestras or big bands, but that is really only expected on higher priced sets.

Other than the two mentioned above, the overall performance of the RSd65cs came as a surprise. It sounded very good and very unlike its price. This really is expected for newer speakers (which is good news) because the technology (materials, etc.) can only become cheaper, while the designs have already been tested and proven.

For a list price of $159, most car audio enthusiasts would consider this set as budget to mid-priced. What’s good about this market segment however (for the consumer), is that many manufacturers are trying compete for that coveted quintessential bang-for-the-buck component—that which has the best price to performance ratio. The Phoenix Gold RSd65cs should be up your list if you are looking to save a little while having a “competitive enough” system. With the proper tuning and installation, this set can compete with the best of them.

This test on the RSD65cs was conducted in a 2003 Honda Civic running a JL Audio 300/2v2 amplifier without a subwoofer. Tweeters were surface mounted using the supplied plenums.

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