Ice Age

New age ICE doesn’t have to be big to achieve a colossal sound. One listen to this JAE T5.1 will open your ears to new heights of aural pleasure

- James Wallace

Subtle? Most definitely. Effortlessly cool? Of course, it’s in VWt. Shocking and surprising? Well, probably not until you step foot inside this masterpiece of new wave in-car entertainment and turn up the volume. Long gone are the days of hoofing great sub enclosures that restrict access and/or useability. The ICE industry has come of age, cleverly evolving away from outright decibel fests into sublime stereo imaging, and the manufacturers of the audiophile quality products are now focussing on layered and textured sound, as close to perfect as possible within the imperfect connes of a vehicle.

For anyone who likes a nice set of high-end, stand-mount speakers and a costly ‘separates’ system at home, this will convince you it is possible to achieve a similarly mindblowing sound in your Van. Hell, while I was taking the snaps of this particular T5.1 from Johnsons Auto Electrics, a Seat Leon turned up belonging to the marketing guru from Four Car Audio, and proceeded to amaze my lugholes further still. It was like an assault on the senses, neither demo being conducted at ear splitting SPL levels, but then that’s the real beauty of these systems. While they can obviously go loud and blow your door panels off should you wish, the outside world need not know about your penchant for high-end audio the majority of the time. That’s largely down to the impressive level of sound deadening used in both vehicles and the clarity. This might be the first time we’five ever compared a vehicle to a pair of ‘proper’ domestic speakers, but it seems fully justified here.

Skinz up son