Morel car speakers shopping guide

or decades Morel has been building and testing their high-end car speakers by hand, providing endless opportunities to improve their non-traditional speaker designs. With every innovation, they’ve moved closer and closer to their goal of audio perfection in the car… and they have the international accolades to prove it.

Morel's high-end designs and materials

Morel has developed a lot of technology and design elements that makes them such a standout speaker brand. We'll try to explain it as we go, but we'll also include a glossary of Morel's technology after we cover the speakers.

Understanding Morel's car speaker lineup

Let's take a look at Morel's three tiers of speakers — Performance, Reference, and Resolution. Each step up in tier represents an improvement in the design and materials, and the inclusion of more of Morel's proprietary technology. These upgrades result in a dramatic increases in performance and sound than the tier below.

Morel has a couple design variations that you'll find in some tiers.

• Nano are shallow-mount speakers that need less than 3/4" of mounting depth. That means they'll fit where a lot of other speakers won't, and still deliver incredible sound.
• Morel's Integration Series are vehicle-specific speakers designed to be direct upgrades for BMWs. Integration speakers are available at the Performance and Reference levels of Morel's lineup.

Morel speaker design is based around MANY bits of proprietary design and technology. We'll talk about them in each speaker discussion, but you'll find full explanantions of these design features in the bottom half of this article.

Now, let's check out the speakers.

Morel Performance speakers

Performance represents Morel’s entry-level offerings, but affordability doesn’t mean that quality is compromised. Quite the opposite actually. Because these speakers are among Morel’s most popular, they act as the brand’s ambassadors of quality. The Performance lineup includes:

• Maximo and Maximo Ultra Series
• Tempo Ultra Series
• Sensus Series

Maximo and Maximo Ultra Series

The Maximo and Maximo Ultra Series provides a major step up from factory sound. If you’ve been wondering what aftermarket speakers can do for your listening experience in the car, these speakers offer a night-and-day difference in sound. The treated paper composite woofer cone and soft dome tweeter deliver impressive full-range sound. In their component systems, Morel includes an MXR crossover to deliver an ideal blend of the highs and lows for a solid stereo image.

Tempo Ultra Series

The Tempo Ultra Series upgrades the motor structure and magnet over the Maximo Series. It uses a treated paper composite woofer, soft dome tweeter, and MXR crossover like the Maximo and Maximo Ultra Series, but the components in the Tempo's crossover are seriously upgraded. The result is that the Tempo Ultra Series has increased power handling and smoother sound across the spectrum at any volume. This series also gives you the first opportunity to enjoy Morel’s Integra embedded-tweeter design if you’re considering coaxial speakers.

Sensus Series

The Sensus Series is the latest addition to Morel's Performance line. It consists of two 6-1/2" component systems — the standard 2-way set with a separate tweeter and woofer, and a 3-way option that adds a midrange speaker.

Design upgrades include a dual-layer DPC woofer cone, hybrid double-magnet motor structure, and Morel's tried-and-true 1.1" silk dome tweeters (which originated in the high-end Elate Carbon Series component speakers).

These speakers reproduce mid bass and low bass all the way down to 40 Hz. The tweeters produce an atmospheric, concert-like quality. Upgrading to these speakers from factory will make an impressive difference in the depth and accuracy of the music.

Morel Reference speakers

If you’re ready to push beyond reliable audio into profound musical moments, you’ll want to explore Morel’s Reference tier of speakers. Upgrading to the Reference line steps up the technology and design elements to create speakers that handle a lot of power and deliver remarkable sound.

• Virtus Series
• Hybrid Series
• Elate Carbon Series

Virtus and Virtus Nano Series

The Virtus Series speakers step you up into a truly distinctive Morel experience and offer some important features for custom installation that are hard to find elsewhere. Virtus speakers let you experience these advantages for the first time:

• Acuflex-coated soft dome tweeters for a smoother blend of highs and mids
• EVC motor with a Hexatech aluminum voice coil reduces heat build up
• C.A.R. filter on the bottom of the basket to act as a built-in baffle to improve bass response
• Lotus grilles to reduce the resonance that other grilles might create

But the most exciting thing that happens with the Virtus Series is the introduction of Virtus Nano, which allows you to fit 6-1/2” speakers where 6-1/2” speakers have never gone before. These speakers sport a remarkable depth of only 11/16”, making installation possible in the most unlikely locations. The coaxial version of the Nano uses the Integra tweeter design for even more space efficiency.

Hybrid Series

Morel's Hybrid Series gives you the enhanced performance of the large Acuflex coated soft dome tweeters, EVC motor with a Hexatech aluminum voice coil, and C.A.R. filter that you'll also find in the Virtus Series, but adds two new elements to the recipe:

• One-piece damped polymer woofer cone which steps up accuracy and overall durability.
• Hybrid magnet motor which combines ferrite and neodymium magnets to increase motor efficiency.

Give Hybrid Series speakers more power and they use it well, transferring all that energy into high-quality sound.

Elate Carbon and Elate Carbon Pro Series

Morel uses carbon fiber as a woofer material in other series, but the Elate Carbon Series improves on how it's used. This component-only series employs a dual-layered carbon fiber/Rohacell (foam) woofer design that minimizes distortion and promotes accurate sonic reproduction.

Elate Carbon provides a serious step up in tweeter design as well. Morel’s MT450 silk dome tweeter uses an Acuflex coating but also features an open-cavity design derived from their flagship Supremo Piccolo tweeters. Morel designed these for a very low crossover point, which improves soundstage accuracy for even the most complex music.

Morel created these speakers to be neutral, without coloration, so that you can use an active crossover to craft exactly the right sound for you and your vehicle. If you want to use passive crossovers, optional Morel MXT280C crossovers are available.

Morel Resolution speakers

Morel’s Resolution tier encapsulates the very best the company has to offer — the Supremo speakers.

Supremo Series

Morel makes every component in their flagship series by hand and tests them to meet their premium standards. The Supremo Series borrows from Morel's expertise in the realm of hi-fi home audio, using a version of their famous "fat lady" mid-bass driver as the Supremo woofer. It’s a a sturdy yet responsive one-piece carbon fiber cone that uses EVC technology for the best heat dispersion and efficient performance. The Supremo Piccolo Acuflex-coated silk dome tweeter handles the high range masterfully, eliciting reviews from our customers like, "astoundingly beautiful" and "gorgeous".

A glossary of Morel technologies

We used a lot of weird technology names up above. And in Morel's case, that's not just "marketing speak". Their speakers sound so good because they're based in real engineering and sound design. Here's what it all means.

External Voice Coil (EVC™): Morel's Hexatech™ (meshed aluminum wire) voice coil is located on the outside of the magnet for space efficiency and energy efficiency. Since the voice coil surrounds the magnet, all of the magnetic energy is harnessed by the voice coil and not lost outside the speaker. Greater efficiency means more power is devoted to the reproduction of better quality sound.

Hexatech™ aluminum windings: Morel discovered that hexagonal windings on the voice coil increase surface area and contact between the wires of the voice coil. With no air gaps to cause heat buildup, the thermal efficiency of the voice coils increases by 20%. It also turns into improved efficiency, durability, and less distortion from heat in the motor.

Uniflow™ chassis: A chassis, or more commonly, basket, is the foundation of a speaker. It's the frame that holds and protects the moving parts. The Uniflow chassis is durable and dissipates heat, making the speaker itself more efficient. The die-cast aluminum basket is designed with holes of varying sizes to improve airflow. By keeping the speaker cooler, impedance stays consistent even when you run them for a long time. Die-cast aluminum keeps the speakers lightweight yet rigid, and the additional thermal conductivity also helps heat dissipate while resisting corrosion and lowering mechanical interference.

DPC Cone: Paper is a traditional cone material for speakers. It's light, responsive, and brings out the warmth in music and sounds. The drawback of paper is often durability. The dual paper composite (DPC) is a layered, reinforced paper that was analyzed to create smooth transitions between highs, mids, and lows. Most factory car speakers are made out of cheap paper. OEM speakers in a car are designed to sound OK for about 5 years. Morel's treated paper cones harness the warmth and efficiency of paper to give them high sensitivity and natural sound, without the fragility or lightness that leads to degrading sound in untreated paper cones.

TLC Cone: The TLC cone (tri-layer composite) is a layered speaker cone with 3 different materials. Foam sandwiched between a polymer, and then two outer pieces that are fiber-reinforced bring rigidity without adding a lot of weight. The foam adds damping so that the sound doesn't get affected by outside sound waves bouncing off the car's interior.

Neodymium flat pancake magnet: A flat pancake design makes for a compact motor. Morel designs some of the thinnest speakers available without compromising sound quality.

Controlled Acoustic Resistance (C.A.R.™) filter: In the cases where Morel uses an open-air chassis for cooling, Morel seals the base of the woofer magnet's center channel with their C.A.R filter. The filter compensates for the sonically chaotic, open-air surroundings of a car door by acting as a built-in baffle. This improves cone dynamics and serves up fuller-sounding bass.

Integra design: In some of their 2-way speakers, Morel uses the Integra design to improve traditional coaxial design. Rather than mount the tweeter on a pole in the woofer cone, Morel integrates the tweeter with the woofer, concentrically aligning the two drivers for reduced phase problems and a wider dispersion of high frequencies. The result is better sound, even when you're off-axis. If you can't make component speakers work in your vehicle, Morel has made Integra speakers the next best thing.

Acuflex-coated tweeters: Morel coats some of their silk dome tweeters with an "Acuflex" coating for a more accurate response. The thin layer improves rigidity and minimizes dreaded break-up at high frequencies.

Lotus grille: If you’re planning a custom installation, Morel provides some of the coolest speaker grilles in the industry. According to Morel, the distinctive metal Lotus grille design provides a level of sonic transparency that other grilles can’t, allowing the speaker to perform as if no grille is standing between the speaker and your ear.